I can state with 100% confidence that for reviews there is no consideration or correlation between advertising and reviews. The reviews are written by a core staff that have no ties to the advertising space or even considerations to how our reviews *might* effect advertiser decisions. I've never once been asked to change a review, edit text, or rethink a score. So when I gave one product a 65% and I saw it was advertised in the same issue I sort of grinned. I can honestly say there is plenty of distance and zero pressure on reviewers to positively spin something.

I tend to be hard on developers for not including good documentation. It doesn't have to be a printed manual, but if you are going to give me a PDF then it had better be well formatted, professional, and thorough. Recent products that would have scored higher (Carenado) didn't get the extra 5 or 10 points because of lack of good documentation.

Again - not knowing anything about CoD - an 80% score isn't a very good one. It certainly isn't the 95% that DCS: A-10C got (dynamic campaign would have eeked out a 100% in my book!).. I'm going to have to pick up CoD to see what it is all about though... I can't really make any informed opinions without having installed and flown it.

(I assume there are no laser guided bombs?)

BeachAV8R

Totally agree on A-10 score. With a DC it would be 100%. It was worthy of the Platinum Award for sure.

You will see a whole different story with CoD if you get it. One a polished masterpiece, the other a work in progress. And no laser guided bombs LOL.

If you pick up CloD i would be imterested in your take on it Chris , i think you would be hard pressed to find an 80 % myself.And no to LGB's

As a reviewer would you include game editors, inbuilt mission builders ? or just the actual flying side and consider builders a bonus type deal not afffecting the score of the game ?

Relax Beach. I don't plan on unsubscribing because I don't have a subscription. I've been buying whenever I happen to find an issue at Barnes & Noble. Although I found the last issue on a street corner stand in Rome, Italy of all places. And none of the criticism is about you. You didn't review COD. In all fairness, I've never disagreed with any of your reviews. But the dude who reviewed CLOD, man, come on. Either he doesn't know as much about hardcore flight sims as your magazine probably expects readers to believe, or he's a total fanboy. That's my guess. I don't know which is correct. Maybe you could talk to the guy, since you work for the same mag. His credibility with the hardcore types is a bit shaky right now. Even a sim-lite guy like me has to wonder about a reviewer who dismisses a broken feature because it's not one that he cares about anyway. Is that a joke? I reviewed games for 10 years for an Internet mag out of Australia. I never, ever dismissed clearly broken features just because I didn't typically use them myself. A reviewer is writing for a community of users. He has to respect the magazine's readers. The readers may be very interested in certain features and expect them to work properly. A game review isn't a personal diary that no one else is going to read. You know that; he doesn't seem to know it. Talk to your compadre.

By the way, as a former reviewer, in my opinion an 80% score IS a good score. 8 out of 10 is a B. The greatest shooters in basketball, the greatest NFL quarterbacks, the greatest hitters in major league baseball, don't come close to 80%. It's not GREAT score, but it is GOOD score. A solid score. CLOD doesn't deserve such a score. Period.

I posted a poll over at the 1C forums and CLOD got a average score of 56%, which is about spot on for how the sim stands right now for me.

"............ Corei7 920 over-clocked @4GHz, Radeon HD6870, 12GB RAM at 1920x1280 ......."

they had proplems ?!?!?!

PC Pilot also gave FSX a 95% and a gee-whiz award when it was released. FSX was an absolute dog before SP1 and 2 were released. 95%??? No friggin way.

PC Pilot is a "pretty" magazine full of fluff. Great for the non-hardcore sim customer to look at while perusing the magazine aisle at Barnes & Noble.

Wow this was the niche they were looking for too, infact they even have the above quote emblazened on the cover of their magazine