Eric Neigher, a freelance contributor to GameSpot, found himself in the midst of controversy when his review for Natural Selection 2 was found to be riddled with inaccuracies. After a considerable amount of backlash, the outlet decided to pull the review, but Metacritic refuses to strike the low score from the record.
More recently, Neigher has issued an apology, which Kotaku has published:
"I apologize to the readers and the fans for the factual errors in the Natural Selection 2 review and in any other reviews that I've done that had factual errors in them… There really is a sacred trust between reviewers and their readers. You have to be confident that a publication and a writer are going to be giving you the facts as they exist, and are gonna be giving you an honest opinion. That's always what I strive to do. Unfortunately, I don't always get there.
Understand that I'm just a human being and sometimes I miss things or get them wrong. It's not my intention to cut the legs out from any game or go after a game because it's not a big triple-A title—I don't do that. I just review games on their merits."
Neigher goes on to state that, with the exception of the aspects that have been proven to be factually wrong, he still stands by what he wrote, and even the final score:
"… Everybody has different opinions. GameSpot reassigned the review to somebody else, and that guy had a different opinion of the game."
As for these factual errors, the first major one was the price; Neigher stated that it was $30, but in reality, it's only $25. Neigher admitted that he simply rounded up the figure by also accounting for sales tax and the like.
Neigher also complained about the game being too hard on new players, and in the process failed to acknowledge that there are dedicated servers for those looking to get their feet wet. His comments regarding long load times were also a point of contention for some, though Neigher states that such technical aspects are always subjective, depending on one's type of hardware.
The overall situation is a complex one. Writers do indeed have a responsibility to present the facts, but inaccuracies can often rear their heads if one is instructed to submit a review under a very strict deadline. One that might alleviated if the publication or even the game's publisher went about business differently.
Video games are increasingly complex, and it is expected that every review to be total master of whatever they're writing, which is both unfair and impractical in some instances. The overall importance of Metacritic scores to being with is also a somewhat curious and at times troubling situation.
