Dan Hsu at EGM:
http://www.1up.com/do/blogEntry?bId=...UserId=5379799
lot of different message boards are blowing up over our E3 awards in the October issue of EGM (with Silent Hill 5 on the cover). Specifically, some people are crying foul over our decision to give Halo 3 the "Lil Award" for Smartest A.I. and Killzone 2 the award for Dumbest A.I.
Bias! Moneyhats! Fanboyism! Well, it's been getting so much attention, I decided to answer my own FAQ about this, to help clarify how we picked those two games.
A Microsoft game vs. a Sony game. How convenient.
OK, that wasn't really a question, but it's a legit comment. We didn't pick Halo 3 and Killzone 2 specifically to go against each other or to cause extra controversy. We voted as a staff (including the entire 1UP Network, which includes 1UP.com and GameVideos.com), and we honestly and independently came up with Halo 3 at the top of the list for best A.I. and Killzone 2 at the "top" for worst. We didn't even think of it as Microsoft vs. Sony thing until we realized that both games won their respective categories.
But is it fair to pick Halo 3 because you guys actually got a chance to play it? Versus Killzone 2, which was only on demo, played by the developers.
Good question, but no...our previous hands-on experience with Halo 3 (for our last cover story) did not factor into the voting. Very few of us actually played single-player Halo 3 when we did our cover story, and when I voted, I kept that game time out of mind for these awards. I based my best/worst A.I. votes purely on what was shown to me at E3...and Halo 3 and Killzone 2 were both on equal grounds there. Both were not playable by us, only played for us by their respective developers, and based on those E3 demos and those demos alone, we voted the way we did. I saw excellent A.I. from Halo 3 specifically from the E3 demo, and I saw an extreme example of bad A.I. from Killzone 2 (see below)...also at E3. That's why I voted for those two games for those respective categories.
But there's gotta be some other, lesser-profile games with worse A.I. than Killzone 2.
Based on what we've seen and what we voted on, totally fairly, Killzone 2 nabbed the award. Part of the problem is, the Killzone 2 showed some very noticeable flaws. It wasn't like the enemies were just standing around. Like we mentioned in the write-up, the bad guys were actually jumping out of cover to get *in* the line of fire. It's like they wanted to get shot. That alone, unfortunately, made Killzone 2 look worse (A.I.-wise) than it probably is.
So you guys hate Killzone 2, huh?
Shut up, you stupid FAQ man. The write-up in EGM greatly compliments Killzone 2 as a whole. We're just making fun of one specific thing: that whole "jumping out of cover" business.
OK, then you must hate Sony.
Heh, check out how many good awards the company picked up in the same feature.
Isn't it unfair to compare a game that's still months away from release (Killzone 2) to a game that's almost finished (Halo 3)?
Oh, for sure, but that's part of the problem for any E3 judging...all games are at different points in their development. But we still have E3 awards in EGM. We still have our annual E3 opinionated guide in EGM. The industry even has its own E3 awards. Are all of them fair? No...not if you look at how far along each individual title is in its development. But then again, yes...the companies are putting these products out for the media to see, and as we've done many times in the past, we'll judge them (knowing full well they're incomplete games). So in the context of these being E3 games and E3 demos, we're treating them all equally and as fairly as possible.
Shouldn't you be in mourning or something?
Actually, Shoe killed himself after last Saturday's Michigan football game. This is his ghost writing this.
Posted at Tue, 04 Sep 2007 22:25:55 PDT
ME: I really hate stupid people. Sorry if this has been posted.
t:
'. 
