“An unparalleled level of control”
“Massively complex controls that you won't use half of”
“Instantly accessible gameplay”
“As interactive and challenging as the process of playing and watching a DVD”
“Epic, involving narrative depth”
“A sh*tload of self-indulgent cut-scenes”
“For players of all ages”
“For players under the age of three”
“We're about putting smiles on faces”
“We have no real direction any more and no actual gameplay to speak of, so we're staying vague on what it is that we actually do these days”
“We're in this for the long haul”
“We hope sales will pick up one day”
“A new era of home entertainment”
“We've made a new dashboard layout with more links to things you can buy”
“A mature script by Hollywood veteran X”
“Full of immature adolescant obsessions like gore and boobies, and written by a guy who did a couple of episodes of Star Trek: TNG and a straight-to-video slasher flick back in the day”
“A colourful host of loveable, wacky characters”
“Every character in this game is so desperately hateful that no court in the land would convict you for beating them to death if they existed in the real world”. Also apply to anyone or anything described using the word "zany".
“A hilarious adventure”
“Playing this game feels like watching a bad stand-up comedian get progressively drunk out of desperation and piss himself on stage, before eventually starting to cry under the spotlight”
"exciting"
“We really have no specific or quantifiable positives to discuss in relation to this game”
“!”
“We have used up our quota of the word "exciting" and have only exclamation marks left with which to try to hold your interest”
NOTE: It's a well-known games journalism fact that a newly announced game can be immediately and accurately reviewed by starting at a perfect 10 and subtracting the number of exclamation marks in the press release to arrive at a final score.
“For more information on the game, please visit [insert URL here]”
“We have run out of things to say about this game. Please leave us alone. We must drink now”
“A community-driven. social gaming experience”
“Here's the basic interface, now bugger off and amuse yourselves, because we're not giving you any content.”
“It will appeal to all fans of series X” / “It's an exciting new adventure in the vein of game X”
“It’s a massively derivative, less fun cash-in of game X and we're too lazy to try to sell it on its own merits. Primarily because it HAS none of its own.”
“A ground-breaking, 3D, online community”
“A chat room with graphics. People still use chatrooms, right? Awesome!”
“A chance for fans to explore previously unseen parts of the much-loved franchise X universe”
"It's a cash-in movie license, but we haven’t actually based it on the movie because either, a) We couldn't afford the actors' likeness rights, b) We’ve already milked the franchise so hard there's nothing left to use, or c) The license is totally inapproriate for a game and we only bought it because the brand name is hot sh*t this year"
“Built from the ground up”
“We’re going to make a few tweaks to our archaic engine and pray no-one notices our lack of effort. Kind of like the Emperor’s New Clothes”
“X-number of new [insert feature/item/clothing]”
“All the shit we didn’t have time to put in last time, delivered in a pleb-dazzle of numbers designed to cover the fact we’ve not got an exciting crux to the game"
“All new [insert absolutely anything here]”
Unless it has a giraffe on a unicycle in it or you can control the game with buttock clenches, it’s not new. Rather, it's tweaked.
We chronicle the embarrassments that the industry would rather you forgot
Bad decisions, bad timing and PR-mageddon
