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Hydrophobia Creators Fight Back Against Bad Reviews
Bad reviews of bad games happen, but that doesn't mean that the developers always just sit back and take the abuse. Hydrophobia developer Dark Energy Digital have lashed out at some critics of the game and even accused some reviewers of either not having played the game at all or at least the way Dark Energy would have liked them to.
Ars Technica has an article detailing that Deborah Jones, one of the game's creative directors, believes that some media outlets haven't given the game a fair shake. The problem is that she's gone beyond the pale and lobbed accusations at publications like Edge, who gave Hydrophobia a 3 out of 10, saying: "Clearly they haven't played the game. No, it's not a third-person shooter, and no, it doesn't just have a stun round. The game is about the environment, it's about the water. What you really need to do to get the depth out of the game is about using the environment...If they don't do the review properly, they shouldn't do a review at all." Edge says it stands by its review and clarifies that the reviewer did indeed play the entire game. Jones also harassed one of Destructoid's writers for a random – and negative – tweet about the Hydrophobia.
"We absolutely believe in the freedom of the press to make a fair and independent assessment of a game's merit," Jones told Ars Technica, "And we believe it is our role as a developer to independently provide materials to facilitate a fair and accurate review." It looks like when Jones says "materials," she's referring to strongly worded phone calls after the fact, but Game Informer hasn't run a review of this game, so we can't stick our nose in this one. Unless simply by writing about it we already did. We'll have to wait by our phones and see what happens.
[Thanks for the submission from reader Warbuff]
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