Well I dont want to take sides, but we are the consumers. Without us relic nor thq would exist or thrive. And as consumers we expect a product to be to our liking, we especially expect promises to be kept to us by the company we buy our products from. What I am getting at is, we are entitled to a certain degree. We spend our hard earned money (in some cases parents money) on these products. Dont you want that product to be ss good as advertised?? I am a bit dissapointed by coh2 and its condition, however, I still bought an entirely new pc just for coh2 and I eventually will buy the product once my next paycheck hits becusse vcoh brought me lots of joy. I will continue to support this game since I have invested a lot into it. I also hold out hope that coh 2 will get better as time goes on.
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Video games are one of the only segments of entertainment media (that I can think of) that have an organic quality to them after they are released. By that I mean that you can't simply patch a movie after it's been released to theaters and hope to make it better. Kanye can't release a Day 1 new album because his first go was half-assed. Because of this, there is hope that the consumer can somehow convince the developers to mold a game in a manner that creates a joyful gaming experience (in rts games I guess the appropriate term is a balanced experience). It is this hope that makes the player keep coming back and spending 20-30 sometimes 60 minutes a match grinding out games, but it is inherently frustrating to see kinks not worked out after over 7 years of practice and a continued reversion of course from implementation of the Brits until now (as far as fluid gameplay is concerned). I think the reviews coming in are showcasing this general feeling. I trust IGN's 8.4 and that seems fair. FWIW, IGN said it felt like a massive expansion pack to an earlier product that just builds on a winning formula...something like that. They also said the weather was really unforgiving (as were flamethrowers).
No doubt Relic will work to create a more joyful experience for all to be had with coh2, but some updates on what they plan to do would be nice - transparency. I liked the little survey I got in game about the AI...cool technique to gather data I think. If it was helpful or not I don't know.