A heads-up on the status of the Assassin’s Creed Unity PC review here at IncGamers towers.
So, Assassin’s Creed Unity is out in the US. Let’s all rejoice; or not. For the past couple of weeks we’ve been chasing down Assassin’s Creed Unity review code for the PC. This morning we were supposed to get access once the embargo lifted. We then discovered that instead of supplying a uPlay code, Ubisoft in their infinite wisdom decided to post a copy. Where they have posted it to is actually unknown at this point, and the fact they wanted to post a copy instead of just mailing a code is a complete mystery.
There’s a lot of talk today about the Assassin’s Creed Unity review embargo which lifted after the game launched, a policy that doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in the game. This is not uncommon, especially for PC versions of games, it’s something (like trying to chase review code) we battle with week in week out.
We’ve had a discussion here about the situation this evening and we are now in two minds on how this problem should be handled. There are two choices: we review the game when it arrives and the review goes up a few days after the actual release, or we don’t review the game at all.
While the latter doesn’t help anyone looking for a PC review to help decide whether they buy it or not, it means we don’t spend 20-30 hours reviewing a game post release that people no longer necessarily want to read about. As regular readers will know, we have a review policy of completing a game before we post a score. It’s a policy that is clearly not shared by all reviewers, but it’s one we think is very important.
We would love to know what your opinions are on this because at the moment the IncGamers team has become increasingly frustrated with PR departments and review embargoes. Not being able to provide a timely review doesn’t help us or our readers.
