Petty & puerile, cheap shot.

Since when did Gamespot become the place to take reviews from?

Somehow I doubt that gamespot would be garnering such scorn if the review was an 8 or a 9...

Guess it all depends where it is received.

Nah, I would have been fine with a 6 or 7.

Gamespot puts a VERY heavy emphasis on multiplayer. Not having MP not still turned on probably cost them at least one full point. Easily.

6 or a 7?  I'm sure you would have been fine with that, but I would have felt betrayed by gamespot and felt they were giving this a huge pass.  A 6 or a 7 is a 'decent' game.  This game is broken and feature incomplete. 'Decent' is VERY forgiving.  

It's a turn-based strategy game without the words "Sid Meier's" in its title, even if it was perfect in every way and included a free pony on the box it'd still only get a 8.0 at best, and then only if the reviewer in question happened to be partial to ponies.

So, unsurprising. Nothing more than yet another game taken by Gamespot to be made an example of how they totally do not inflate scores, honest, just so they still have some credibility left when they give the latest console-oriented, GFWL-infested trainwreck a 9.0 just because its got "GTA" in its title.

That's kind of ironic considering they gave Dread Lords and Dark Avatar a 9 or above...  I'm sensing a bit of confirmation bias here...

Can you dispute any of the reviewers main concerns?

Do you think the reviewer was wrong on many of the points?

I think a 4 is fair.

This is 2010, and they charged full whack for the game.

But on every level it simply screams 'incomplete'. If they has asked for $20 in a pot to help them complete this game - perhaps in return for some 'pioneer' goodies.. you know, plaques, lands named after players what have you - that would have been one thing. But they didn't. They released into a market of many utterly magnificent games. It was simply not ready for that, and 4 is about what they deserved.

I find a 4.0 to be a bit harsh, but I've also never had a single OOM issue or in-game crash.  I think the reviewer made a lot of valid points (although he really focused on the negative imo) and a 4.0 score in and of itself is fine because he justified.

What I take issue with is the fact that gamespot has no consistency at all with their ratings.  Elemental gets a 4.0, Farcry 2 (which was total rubbish, worst game I ever bought, and one of the main reasons I almost NEVER buy games on release anymore) got an 8.5, and Fallout 2 got an 8.8.  Are you going to tell me that Farcry 2 is a full 4.5 points "better" than elemental, and only .3 points "worse" than FO2?  Give me a break.  Everything on that site needs to be taken with a big grain of salt these days.

Gamespot also really like shooters. Multiplayer-shooters => 10.0 on Gamespot, honestly.

Yeah 4 is quite fair considering how the game is with its kinda broken gameplay mechanics.

Spot-on. Gamespot may have gotten heat for giving some crap games high scores, but if one actually reads the review there is no hint of vendetta against Stardock. Just disappointment and frustration.

Four sounds about right, maybe five when multiplayer is out. But at least I have GalCiv to play!

Gamespot frequently gives niche type games 6 or 7, and these are games that work well and are fairly clean but cater to such a small population most players aren't going to like it, including the reviewer.There are several series this happens to, Settlers is an example which often got penalized for things fans actually like about the series, very slow gameplay.Other niche games, Rollercoaster original, get high because they are niche AND they are outstanding. So Elemental is a niche game that is far from stellar, broken and missing advertised features.

4.0 is generous from Gamespot for this title.

Review reads like a 4, and the reviewer makes great points supporting his opinion of 4.

4 or 5 is exactly what this game deserves, even at 1.7.  It's a completely and utterly embarrassing mess, and they even did Stardock a favor in not reviewing 1.0 (which is what every review site says they review -- the gold master).  The game is poorly designed, poorly programmed, and poorly executed.  

Really, it's in such a poor state that a recall is warranted... at the retail channel at least.  Make the game disappear gracefully before it gets laughed off the shelves when Civ5 rolls up, then quietly re-release in February as a gold-ish version with a new SKU so you can get a new wave of reviews.  You'll need to continue layoffs in order to hire an outside consultant to actually objectively look at your game, since you've admitted you're incapable of doing it yourself, but maybe you'll be able to scrape up this disaster to an 8 or so average in that time, which might mean Stardock won't completely tank due to the smoldering crater of fail and disappointment that was this game's Challenger-(like, the space ship)-esque launch.

Your flagship sank at retail (and funny to mention the word flagship, considering how much this is like Hellgate London).  Don't expect to slowly raise it out of the muck and expect it to proudly sail along with barnacles, seaweed, and patched holes all over the hull.  Cover it up, leave it at the bottom, and build a new one.  Ideally with real testing this time.

Why should people do this? The game is a trainwreck. Even Brad think so. A bad game is a bad game. Going to a website to vote and get the score up isn't going to change anything. At this point only Stardock can do that. I still have my doubts though. I think the game systems are broken or just don't work well together. Patching won't fix that. Only a major overhaul could fix it. It's already been pointed out that the game keeps changing practically every week without extensive testing. So I seriously doubt anything is really fixable.

It will probably be a good idea not to fill your testing with Stardock fans who, till this day, refuse to admit that pretty important mistakes were made with this game. I know from this forum beta testers did bring up strong objections to some decisions that were ignored, so it's not as if the beta testers failed in any way, but the kid gloves did not come off and this is what the result of that is. You can't rely on loyalty to Stardock for life customers to keep it real for you.

Guess it's a good time for you to give up then;)

4.0 was the right score.

Yes, I agree - the review points are all valid.

Mind you, the crashes are a lot less now, but that's from 1.06 onwards.

And... um, er... I apologize in advance, but... the score of 4.0 is correct. 

Hey, hey, relax, put down that knife. I always find that reviewers simply don't understand these numbers. They go from 1.0 to 10.0. Thus, an average, okay, game should be 5.0. A really good game would be in the 9 area. Many games should be in 3 or 4.

And, currently, Elemental shows a huge potential. And I am quite sure (no, really!) that it'll reach there. However, currently it hasn't. And thus deserves a 4.

I'd give it a 5.

This begs a number of questions, chief among them is "why?"

Is the review in any way biased or incorrect?  As others have pointed out, other Stardock games have received scores of 9.0 (namely the Dark Avatar expansion of GalCiv2) from Gamespot.  Obviously they don't have a sitewide bias against SD games.

Given the huge number of remaining bugs and UI oddities still present in 1.06 (aka the version that appears to have been reviewed), would it be fair to give it anything more than a 4.0?  Once you factor in MP being completely disabled at launch, the various broken systems (AI, diplomacy, magic, shard, squad calculations, etc) and the many inconsistencies or bugged UI issues I don't see a 4.0 as being out of the realm of possibilities.

Reviewers are not required to rates games based on potential or community goodwill towards an "indie underdog".  In fact, this would make for a BAD review/site.  I want games to be ranked on a a limit set of criteria...  stability or lack there of, features and graphics.

Hopefully this is biggest single lesson taken from the Elemental release debacle.

If you want to let friends and early purchasers into alpha stages, that's fine.

But once you get into "feature complete" betas, a much higher level of objectivity and great spread of voices is key.

I sadly have to say the review is rather spot on, though the situation with the games bugginess has definitely improved since the latest patch.

I'm a big fan of Stardock and especially Galactic Civilisations II so I've been somewhat disappointed by Elemental. A friend hyped the series saying he spent many, many hours on an early incarnation, so I decided to give it a go.

It's fun, there's no doubting that, but it doesn't seem to go anywhere. The other races just build, build, build with no regard for what it will do to their resources and they appear immune to diplomacy no matter what I do technology-wise. The only civ I have ever managed to get any treaties or trades with was the Snathi and that was only a non-aggression. When I tried for a trade treaty there was no chance and no point when I weighed up the cost versus the reward. There was certainly no point in them accepting. They would, though, just like their leader sits in their home cities boundaries and does nothing but sell his daughters off to be married to my sons.

Combat is better but the tactical combat is dull and not at all challenging. I have found, after a few hundred turns, that I can send a small army of my sovereign, a few children (casters), some heroes and soldiers and summoned beings to trounce anything and everything I see on the map. That army is easily gained and doesn't zap my resources at all. I rarely see my cities attacked, even my another race who has declared war on me. They're probably on the other side of the map.

Speaking of declaring war, they do it so easily. They'll be demanding money within 10 turns of meeting me and then will declare war on my first refusal. I don't even believe I'm all that underpowered.

If this game was anything like Gal Civ II then it'd be great, so I hope Stardock can get it to that standard. I do enjoy it currently so improvements and overall menaing to the gameplay will make it a fun game. Currently I don't feel as if I'm making any progress, like I'm just on a treadmill of research and city building. It's almost a city sim with a world to explore.