In my last update of Carbon-izer, I added three new "reviews" to my increasingly growing list of game pages, all ones I had played in the last 12 months. One was good, one was average, and one bad. The first was Batman: Arkham Asylum, which I loved, Retro City Rampage which was average due to the fact that there were a lot of good ideas mixed in with a lot of bad ones, and one I hated Home, which I mercilessly ripped into while describing its flaws. But a funny thing happened, as I had posted the Home review to Steam about the same time as I published the website, and guess what happened? Home got its first update in a year with a minor patch coming very soon afterward. There were some things that I mentioned that got covered, including the following: "screenshots now work consistently", "fixed a couple of instances where the story got confused about something you'd seen", and the most intriguing entry that I have yet to see for myself, "changed one of the opening titles to mention speakers as well as headphones". That was one of the things I specifically lambasted.
So what does this mean? Well, it means my "hack" to get the "walk away" achievement no longer works. But the more important thing is that even though the "story" is still a mess, I actually feel like Benjamin Rivers read my review and took it to heart, though he'd probably never admit it. Very few active game developers have done that, especially one as old as Home is (it was made five years ago). Does this mean that Home is a better game than I gave it credit for? No. It's still got major flaws, and my review still largely stands as-is. But now, I feel like despite all that, I feel like I may have been overly hard on Benjamin Rivers and my opinion has been raised slightly. I believe that if he did fix all the things I pointed out, then he probably read the rest too and can use that to improve other games. I will link to this blog post when Carbon-izer 22 is posted.
So what does this mean? Well, it means my "hack" to get the "walk away" achievement no longer works. But the more important thing is that even though the "story" is still a mess, I actually feel like Benjamin Rivers read my review and took it to heart, though he'd probably never admit it. Very few active game developers have done that, especially one as old as Home is (it was made five years ago). Does this mean that Home is a better game than I gave it credit for? No. It's still got major flaws, and my review still largely stands as-is. But now, I feel like despite all that, I feel like I may have been overly hard on Benjamin Rivers and my opinion has been raised slightly. I believe that if he did fix all the things I pointed out, then he probably read the rest too and can use that to improve other games. I will link to this blog post when Carbon-izer 22 is posted.
