Cage Speaks Out Against Bad Reviews

David Cage has posted over on his IGN blog some scathing reaction to the small number of less than positive reviews of Heavy Rain. Focusing on two French publications in particular, Cage expresses his frustration and disagreement over his fellow country-men’s lack of critical analysis and objective critique of his latest game.

A lot has been made of jeuxvideo.com and gamekult.com’s reaction to one of the PS3’s biggest games of the year so far, including suggestions that the sites will be black-listed by Sony from now on. This is, of course, all speculation, and it’s hard to tell what really happened in this particular murky tale of low review scores and disintegrating PR relations.

The text in question has been translated from Cage’s native French so it’s quite - qu’est-ce vous dit – fragmented. Here’s the gist of it. Cage complains that the “unpleasant items” mentioned in the reviews can be counted on one hand. His largest issue, however, is the fact that the sites provided no “reflection or analysis” and appear to be “just the text of a boy of fourteen in a playground.”

The producer also has some words for notoriously hard-to-please EDGE magazine. Commenting how the avant-garde magazine is “not what it was,” Cage was not surprised by the score (7/10) the UK mag gave his latest game. After three months of “unpleasant items on Heavy Rain” featured in the publication before the review was published (and two negative articles before the preview was even accessible), Cage states the review was “predictable.” He also claims the magazine was more focused on reviewing him as a creator rather than what he has actually created. Regardless of the review’s focus, Cage laments that, once again, there is no analysis or recoil; just “pseudo-intellectual verbiage with no content whatsoever.” As a fan of pseudo-intellectual verbiage, I have to take umbrage with that last comment Mr. Cage.

Despite such view-points which Cage has trouble comprehending, he admits that there were positive reviews published on other sites that also lacked sufficient analysis. Ultimately, however, his belief is that the industry is “hungry for change,” and that the vestiges of conservatism and a resistance against innovation is actually only “marginally more than expected.”

Finally, TheSixthAxis doesn’t get a mention. Probably because we gave the game a positive review. Yes, before you claim otherwise, 7/10 is positive in my book.