Review of new Pac-Man game also reviews the game review site it's posted on

It's not there anymore, obviously, but here's an archived copy of Ben McCurry's review of Pac-Man 256, into which is cunningly interpolated a review of Brash Games, the non-paying website it is posted on. [via Metafilter]

The idea of Pac-Man 256 is derived from what happens in the original Pac-Man when you clear 256 levels; on level 257, the game becomes a garbled mess that becomes unplayable. A good example of a garbled mess is Brash Games; this very website that strips authors of their writing credits when they leave the site, later attributing them to the sole owner and editor, Paul Ryan, making your work completely pointless, just as Pac-Man is completely pointless after level 256.

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Namco Bandai havent changed too much of the winning formula, and why should they? If it aint broke, dont fix it. Everything that we grew to love in the original iterations is still present; the classic sound effects, the musical stings, and even ghosts. Speaking of ghosts, did you know that Brash Games deliberately ghosted themselves from Metacritic, GameRankings, and OpenCritic (marking themselves as out of business on Meta and GR, which is an outrageous and egregious lie its here right now) to avoid having any sort of public record of reviews available which would have attributed work to the proper authors? Its true! In fact, when reviewers leave, work gets automatically attributed to Brash Games, which is solely operated by Paul Ryan, thus making it seem like he did all the work.

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Complementing the brilliant reimagined gameplay is a fantastic soundtrack. Namco Bandai shy away from the sound of silence, which is, at the time of writing, exactly what I received when I announced my resignation to the editor Paul Ryan and clarified I would leave Brash as soon as possible. No email, no apology, no I wish you the best in your future endeavours, nothing. Pure radio silence; the only acknowledgement I received was that my name was pulled from the contributors list quietly. Some might call that cowardly Ill leave it to your interpretation. Rather, the game exploits low-key techno beats to gracefully update the beloved musical stings and background tracks

The phenomenon of generic-looking game review mills seems tied to Metacritic, the game review aggregation site. Though seemingly loathed by game creators and many readers, its averaged-out scores influence much in the business: most conspicuously dev bonuses, but presumably game site traffic too.

It seems an issue of ethics in game journalism has finally occurred to unite players from across the spectrum of opinion! Don't work but for money or love, kids.

Kotaku's Kate Gray:

Brash Games is not a good site to write for, it seems.

This is because of several reasons, according to the Twitter storm going on currently:

1. They don't pay their writers
2. They don't offer feedback, or seemingly, edit pieces at all
3. They remove writers' bylines from the site if they quit
4. They retcon scores from the writers who have left, changing them to the editor's preference
5. They break embargoes
6. They block anyone who criticises them