Putting the Marketing Cart Before the Gaming Horse - Pro Evo 2008

As games and licenses get bigger and better, we're treating to ever increasing levels of spectacle and wonder: vast virtual environments that make the Sistine chapel roof look like ten minutes with a spraycan, colossal set pieces that make the Pyramids look small-minded, and Normandy beach landings reminiscent of, well, the goddamn Normandy beach landings.

The only price we have to pay for these wonders is the death of creativity and originality.  A game that costs a bajillion dollars and four years to develop (the PS3 cell processor requires a team of ten MIT doctorates simply to turn on for development), nobody will risk that investment on anything but the most guaranteed return.  Think of the last five major releases you played - were there any that didn't have numbers in the title, sequel number substitutes like "Galaxy" or "Corruption", or that veered from the formula of "Tough guy shoots beautifully rendered things"?

Whether this shift to marketing over making is good, bad or unavoidable is an open question.

But when the launch date becomes more important than little things like "finishing the damn game" we have a different sort of problem.  A serious, insulting, we-must-not-put-up-with-this-or-be-damned-forever problem.  As PS3 players of Pro Evo 2008 discovered recently: the simultaneous launch saw a wonderful XBox footy game paired with a piece of software that converts the most powerful console in the world into an under-spec'd 486SX trying to run Bioshock.

Random freezes, stuttering graphics, broken online play - it's a disaster from start to finish. And Konami knew this.  There's no way they couldn't have - were their quality control department staffed entirely by brain damaged chimps, even those slow-switted simians would have noticed that the moving thing on the screen sometimes stops bloody moving.  The Konami "All system FAQ"(which might as well be called "Reasons the PS3 version sucks") lists such helpful tips as "Buy a high definition television" (as  excellently highlighted by Kotaku). 

Listen here, Konami.  If my girlfriend started refusing to play with me until I bought her a high-definition TV that would be the end of the relationship.  And that's after three years, and she does a damn sight more than your franchised football screwup.  So your goddamn broken game can take its hardware demands and jump into an incinerator powered by the burning corpse of whoever said "It's fine, just release it".

Because of the preset release date Konami went ahead and sold a broken game, something that wouldn't even have flown on the NES.  The much-maligned "Nintendo Seal of Quality" didn't check games were any good, but it was only awarded to games that actually work.  Take a moment to let that sink in.  Deadly Towers, one of the worst games ever created for an 8-bit console, was awarded a qualification that a latest-generation top-ten franchise would not.  We've finally reached the point we were warned about by those visionary writers over at Pointlesswasteoftime.com - reason #16 on the famous Gamers Manifesto, "Releasing Broken Games".

Short of jumping out of the monitor and smashing something in your room I can't truly communicate to you my rage at this situation.  This cannot be allowed to stand.  If a single copy of this game remains unreturned to the store with a note saying "F-, must try harder" then we'll be telling the developers that this sort of thing is okay.  I don't even like football games, and this is how I feel.  If this had happened to title I cared about the article you'd be reading here is "Gaming writer arrested for arson, aggravated assault, and bouncing a marketing teams' heads off a boardroom table four hundred and thirty eight times".

-Luke McKinney