THQ Exec: Red Faction: Battlegrounds Reception Is A “Disappointment”

THQ Business Development Director Lenny Brown has sounded off at critics for their reception of the latest Red Faction game, Battlegrounds. The top-down, download-only vehicle shooter is a far cry from previous Red Faction titles and seems like a weak attempt at expanding a stable franchise.

That’s probably why it hasn’t gotten favorable reviews from multiple outlets and is currently sitting at 49 out of 100 on Metacritic. Speaking with Joystiq at a recent promo event for SyFy’s Red Faction: Origins movie, Brown expressed his feelings toward the poor reviews and how the situation could have been better.

“I think it’s a little bit of a disappointment,” he said. “I think what’s most disappointing for me is how sometimes the prose of the reviews don’t match the final score. Someone will say something not necessarily glowing, but you think you’re tracking along a 7, and then you get a 4.

“That’s not talking about the fairness of the score of this game in particular,” Brown continued. “It’s not the best game in the world, but it’s not a 5. It’s a satisfactory experience that leads into the bigger game. And I think just because of what we’re trying to do, that’s innovative, and I think that alone deserves a 7.”

Brown also feels that aggregate score sites such as Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes have “no bearing,” as they “don’t really affect studio prices or gross at the box office,” and they impact the video game industry in a “weird way.”

GameZone’s review of Red Faction: Battlegrounds ultimately contributed to the game’s poor Metacritic rating (we gave it 5 out of 10). One of the standout lines from our impression takes a jab at Battlegrounds’ ferociously random camera, which continually disrupts completion of an objective. “The vehicles aren’t the only thing with a mind of their own. The camera is worse,” we said. Now it’s a quote stamped on noticeboards around the globe.