Some days I hate the internet

Yes, this is about Lollipop Chainsaw

So I get a lot of my gaming news through News 4 Gamers usually sticking to the Xbox 360 channel and always across the top they have the top five stories. Using some arcane criteria of their own. Usually these are pretty accurate.

Last night I caught this story: Lollipop Chainsaw is 4 hours long with the additional preview line of "Sad but true. You can complete Lollipop Chainsaw just in few hours."

That's pretty short for game. Particularly one as anticipated as this one.

This is where the disgust started. This link takes you to a Polish Playstation gaming site, translated via google. This isn't really the problem other than they are giving a lot of attention to a small website that isn't us.

The problem comes from this gem of news integrity "As reported by my friends who already have the game, you can go in 4 hours!"

"As reported by my friends... Now that is a well sourced news story. He doesn't even have his own copy of Lollipop Chainsaw to check his report!

Yes, this is where my disgust started. I decided to ignore this report and go on with my evening gaming with Graybush. Yes we playing zombies, why do you even ask?

It got worse. This morning that story of Lollipop Chainsaw was number two on N4G's top five stories. When I refreshed it in disbelief the story had jumped to number one.

Number one. A story about what some of this guy's friends had said. Number one.

Sometimes I hate the internet.

This tiny minded, little story had jumped to number one. It has been seen so much that other stories have been posted defending the possible four hour campaign: Lollipop Chainsaw's four-hour runtime is not a problem, guys.

As well many of the Lollipop Chainsaw reviews have mentioned or started out with this reported four hour campaign showing how much of an effect this annoying story has garnered.

Most of the reviews I have seen are positive and suggest a five to six hour campaign with many of them stating that it was a full five to six hour campaign with no filler. Some even suggested that any longer would have dragged on:

The length of the game may also trouble some players. I finished the story in around five hours on the normal difficulty. On the other hand, I felt the story was nicely packaged in its short length, and it could have easily dragged on if it went any longer.

As I said, most reviews have been positive with GameRankings scoring it a 75% – if you look close you will see one really bad review score dragging it down significantly (he really didn't like it).

This is why, sometimes, I hate the internet because some whiney little gamer (who isn't me) and a minor website (who isn't us) can have such a far reaching negative effect on any newly released game — not necessarily just Lollipop Chainsaw. I would hate to be the guys at Grasshopper Manufacture trying to work out how much this story has effected their sales.

Please note that I have not linked directly to the story in question on purpose.

Please, please note that I also do not have a copy of Lollipop Chainsaw and personally have no idea how long it takes to complete the campaign.