Your example would be more of an exception rather than a rule. Gamers need to read reviews before buying games. If the product looks half finished, DON'T BUY IT. Wait until patches fully fix it and then reconsider teh purchase. Although the publishers/developers made a flawed product, you're not forced to buy it.
Problem with this is that you can't name a single reviewer I would consider credible these days. Actually the only one would be Yahtzee on Zero Punctuaion, but that's mostly because him and I seem to be quite alike in our standards for games, and he still seems to know what the purpose of a review is. Simply put, most reviewers long since forgot their job, and that's to be a CRITIC. Game reviews these days are nothing but full-page advertisements, extolling the virtues of this pointless feature or that. Deceptive journalism is why I was stupid enough to buy a copy of Oblivion, inarguably one of the worst games I've ever had the displeasure of playing. Rather than point out how every aspect of the game was flawed in some way, or that compared to oldschool CRPGs the game didn't stack up whatsoever, instead I got a two page PC Gamer advertisement describing how varied and incredible the world is, all the great dark places to explore. Instead I got a huge forest of randomly-paced coniferous trees dotted with prefabricated lego-brick dungeons with absolutely NOTHING in any of them.
Let me put it this way.
This is all IGN had to say about the voice acting in Oblivion:
Actually engaging NPCs in conversation is absolutely impressive, as each character in the game has spoken dialogue. Considering the titanic amount of NPCs in the game, that's a lot of spoken dialogue. Though in many cases they're just canned responses using a repeated voice (every Argonian female sounds pretty much the same), there are always some unique samples for every quest. Whether the NPC is pouring their heart out to you because they need help or detailing an intricate history of a specific item, it's all voiced, though not free of occasional excessive cheesiness.
9.0 Sound
Aside from a few glitches, voices, music, battle sounds and enemy screams are a treat for the ears.
Here's how I would describe the voice acting in Oblivion:
The voice acting and character interaction is an affront to the genre and one of the most glaring flaws in the entire game. Expect to have any semblance of immersion torn away mercilessly as you stumble across a game world populated with NPCs who all sound exactly identical. Morrowind veterans can expect to be disappointed as most racies voice characteristics have been flattened in an attempt to cut development costs, and instead you will see most races voice by the exact same voice actor. Dunmer now sound exactly like wood elves, Nords and Orcs sound alike, etc. In addition to the repetetive sounding voices, expect to be battered with the same myriad of inane chatter. While walking through Imperial City, I ran across several NPCs spouting one of their whole of three dialogs at each other, usually about mudcrabs. With absolutely no pretense at how shamelessly low quality the voice acting is, expect NPCs to randomly change their tone, affliction, and age without any sane reason. A beggar with a raspy voice, when asked about local rumors, assumes an air of nobility and talks like a young woman. The Oblivion voice acting is without a doubt amongst the most poorly executed I've ever seen in a video game, and does not even begin to hold a candle to the clearly staged 'previews' Bethesda provided us.
This is not a matter of opinion. Are there only a handful of voice actors? Do they voice more than one race sounding exactly alike? Do they do this in lieu of established lore? Do they randomly change tone and affliction for seemingly no reason? The answer to all these is yes, and yet not one of them was mentioned in the IGN review. Curious.
Every aspect of every torturous moment of that horrible game was like this. I can seriously list off every aspect of the game, and how it was utterly crippled and poorly designed. Even the uninstaller left folders cluttering my hard drive.
In the case of Far Cry 2, I am VERY torn however, because this game just looks so damn good. I am a lukewarm fan of STALKER, and this kind of persistent open world play has been something I`ve been looking for for a long time.
Given how low people's standards are these days, I'm hearing a lot of negative things about FC2. My decision to buy/not buy was made long before I had to worry about the quality of the game, however.
Reminds me invariably of paying for the movie theater experience, only to be forced to sit through the usual mundane media we all tried to escape from... by paying for the movie theater experience... .
I... actually thought I had that in there. I've been posting this on several forums (notably the official FC2 forums) and I think I accidentally chopped the end off, but I described why I don't see movies in theaters anymore. About $15 before I even get to my seat, and then I have to sit through 30 minutes of advertising which begins at 'showtime'. No thanks. I'm not a sheep.
