Features// SPOnG's Review of the Year 2010: September

September wasn’t just about reviewing games - we even passed judgement on game reviews themselves, and asked what could be done to make them better. Liam wonders whether the immediate 10/10s that AAA titles get are reactions of hype rather than a result of quality time spent with them, the role of the readers when interpreting game reviews and how our expectations have changed in this generation of Metacritics.

I had another chance to interview Sonic Team’s Takashi Iizuka on Sonic Colours and I was able to play more of the game itself than was probably necessary. As a massive Sonic the Hedgehog fan, I felt it was my duty to play Sonic Colours for 25 solid hours. It was for science!

A huge preview was the result of my experience, and I was able to say with authority that Sonic fans did not have to cling onto false hope - this would be a Sonic title they could be proud of.

There was time to have a little kickabout on Pro Evolution Soccer 2011 (despite the weather), as well as preview the first single-player stage in the Goldeneye 007 remake. Without judging Eurocom’s efforts with rose-tinted glasses, I found the Dam remix interesting and rather enjoyable. Bizarre Creation’s Peter Collier also had a chat about another James Bond game, Blood Stone, for Xbox 360 and PS3. I’d like to say that we shared Vodka Martinis that day, but we didn’t.

One game that stood out from the crowd at last month’s Gamescom event was Namco Bandai’s action adventure, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West. Lauren previewed Ninja Theory’s latest ambitious work, and it seemed like a great take on the ancient Chinese tale (Journey to the West - you might remember the story more vividly in the classic TV series, Monkey).

In fact, Ninja Theory co-founder Tameem Antonaides was the subject of a BAFTA presentation later that month, offering plenty of insight into the work that went on behind the scenes. He contacted SPOnG the next day to clarify comments that were made comparing the motion capture techniques between Enslaved and Naughty Dog’s PS3 best-seller Uncharted 2 (Ninja Theory’s Tameem Antonaides Clarifies Uncharted 2 Comments, 28th September).

There was no escaping any month without some kind of rumour regarding the PSP it seemed. September was different - word spread from multiple UK first and third-party studios who had apparently received development kits for a PSP 2 device (28th September). This was quickly followed up by anonymous sources that we contacted revealing that some sort of announcement or launch will happen in Q1 2011 (29th September).

Finally...

Bit of a harsh one, this - getting banned on Electronic Arts’ game forums was confirmed to also have a knock-on effect on your EA Game Login. So if you acted like a prat on the Command & Conquer forums and got banhammered, you wouldn’t be able to sign into any of your EA games.

A moderator revealed that this was because both your EA Forums and EA Game logins are one and the same. This was after EA had publicly declared that your game logins would be safe should a member be banned on forums. Guess the company had a rather abrupt change of heart.