On Ride and Review Events

At the time of this writing, there's not a single review for Tony Hawk Ride to be found anywhere. That's because, to the best of our knowledge, Activision didn't send finished copies of the game to anyone prior to release. We haven't received a copy in this morning's mail either, so it looks like we'll be making a trip to a local video games emporium this afternoon so that we can start work on a review.

In fairness, Activision did organize a "review event" for the game last weekend, but it's our policy not to review games in controlled conditions, so just as we have for a number of big game review events in recent memory (Grand Theft Auto IV, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and Halo 3: ODST spring to mind), we politely declined to attend. I imagine a lot of other reviewers declined on this occasion as well because while most review events appear to involve overnight stays in hotels and afford ample time to both play the games in optimal conditions and mingle with representatives of the company that's paying for your accommodation, this particular event was nothing of the sort.

The Tony Hawk: Ride review event was originally pitched simply as a "Family Fun Event" and then later, when the full invitation arrived, as a "Family Fun/Review Event." Apparently, we were expected to review the game based on just three hours of "activities, music, and gaming" in the company of Tony Hawk and, if we wished to bring them along, our families. Yeah, not gonna happen.

We'll bring you our review just as soon as we can track down copies of the game and play them the same way that we do all games we review--on our own terms.

Going off-topic for a second, you might have noticed that our video reviews for both Modern Warfare 2 and Assassin's Creed II have spoiler warnings at the start. Going forward, we'll be including this at the start of all our video reviews because, depending on how sensitive you are to spoilers and how much you know about the game already, we figure that every video review we do could potentially spoil something for you. We always try to make our video reviews as free of spoiler as possible, and we'll continue to do so.