I've always had problems with video game reviews because the reviewers have a tendency to hyper inflate their scores. The reviewers base their technique on the grading scale of high school and so a 7 is a mediocre game and a 5 is very poorly designed game. A 0 is unimaginable. Video games are expensive and I'd like to know if the game is actually as good as its graphics look (which, surprise, is not always the case)
But...
The recent shenanigans at gamespot.com has proven to me that video game reviews that appear on the internet and magazines cannot be unbiased when the money comes from advertising of said video games. CNET owns gamespot.com. They also own metacritic. Now I'm not painting a dire picture of the future of metacritic but I figured the forum of a review website that intends to remove bias by aggregation discuss video game reviews in more detail.
So what do y'all think? Who are your good reviewers? Who do you trust?
Posts: 456 | Location: On the Road | Registered: 20 January 2007
I trust reviews that arent bias, or that just sound stupid. I actually dont go to reviewers on if i should buy a game. If it looks good or my friends say its good, i get it.
I don’t trust any one persons opinion unless I know them personally on some level, be it someone I work with or someone I know here on Metacritic.
If I jump on Metacritic and see that the user reviews for a game that I’ve never played before are fairly high (at least a few months after its release), I take it that there is a good possibility that I will like the game. If I’ve already played a game, I don’t really care what anyone else thinks about it unless it’s in the form of an open discussion of which to share points of view.
At the end of the day, the review that I value most is the review of the general public, they have no reason to lie, and if 9 out of 10 people all agree that something is awesome, it fills me with more confidence.
CLICK!
Posts: 742 | Location: Lots of different places | Registered: 12 October 2007
One of the reasons I like Metacritic so much is that it averages many reviews. That way, even if some reviewers are making their scores artificially high, hopefully the rest of the reviews will balance them out. So far, every game I've tried that was rated highly on Metacritic has been a fun game.
I don't look, or care about the scores. I read what good things are in the game and what faults are in the game, watch gameplay videos, get testimonials from friends and people on other forums and then make my decision on whether I'm going to buy the game or not.
It depends on the type of review. There are three basic kind of reviews: professional reviews, video reviews, and user reviews. Professional reviews are written by people who work for the media. These people have to set aside any bias they may have in order to write to maintain the integrity of their show, website, magazine, or article. They are usually also very good at doing so, but that doesn't necessarily mean that every game they give a high score to will be to your liking. They have to consider things like graphics, bugs (or rather, lack of bugs), voice acting, story telling, and a long list of other things that you may or may not care about. One thing to keep in mind is that if it is a written review, then you just have to take the critic's word on every thing, you must take everything with a grain of salt.
Video reviews are the most helpful to me because they can show visual prof of good or bad mechanics. If the acting is horrible, then you can hear just how bad the acting is. If there are a ton of bugs, then they can show to the bugs.
The user review have mixed results. On one hand, you have people who played through the entire game and can give you a detail account of the ups and downs of the game, but on the other hand, there are childish reviews that seem to just want to insult the people that do like the game. With user reviews, you just have read through the whole thing and looks for insults, filler, illogical scores, and fandom whining. If you find any of those things, then you should just skip the review and mark it as "unhelpful" if given the option.
Posts: 4 | Location: Illinois | Registered: 11 July 2009
Originally posted by Joshua G: It depends on the type of review. There are three basic kind of reviews: professional reviews, video reviews, and user reviews. Professional reviews are written by people who work for the media. These people have to set aside any bias they may have in order to write to maintain the integrity of their show, website, magazine, or article. They are usually also very good at doing so, but that doesn't necessarily mean that every game they give a high score to will be to your liking. They have to consider things like graphics, bugs (or rather, lack of bugs), voice acting, story telling, and a long list of other things that you may or may not care about. One thing to keep in mind is that if it is a written review, then you just have to take the critic's word on every thing, you must take everything with a grain of salt.
Video reviews are the most helpful to me because they can show visual prof of good or bad mechanics. If the acting is horrible, then you can hear just how bad the acting is. If there are a ton of bugs, then they can show to the bugs.
The user review have mixed results. On one hand, you have people who played through the entire game and can give you a detail account of the ups and downs of the game, but on the other hand, there are childish reviews that seem to just want to insult the people that do like the game. With user reviews, you just have read through the whole thing and looks for insults, filler, illogical scores, and fandom whining. If you find any of those things, then you should just skip the review and mark it as "unhelpful" if given the option.
*claps hands*
Awesome.
Mon docteur a déclaré que tu es mauvais pour ma santé! - Glass Joe
Posts: 798 | Location: Unknown | Registered: 23 July 2008
I thought I'd mention that I pre ordered the game and it arrived THE DAY OF RELEASE. My forced registration with Neoqb will prove that. Also, it's an opinion article and I'm free to my opinion. You are free to have yours and I thank you for posting. _____________________ Play Free Games | Free Online Strategy Games
I think video game reviews are fair sometimes. Fan reviewers and actual journalists and game reviewers reviews may differ. Fan reviewers have a month to over 2 months to conduct a review. Journalists or game reviewers for actual websites have a week or two. The depth of the review may differ because of this time given to post reviews. A fan may give the review a 6/10 but a journalists may give the game the a 9/10. The journalists may not experience the glitches n the game for the first week but over a month's playing may give the fan a chance to experience those glitches.
Some video game reviews are fair, I couldn't point too any specific website or magazine at the moment though.The thing is that all reviewers have there own opinions, that you can't change and it seems that the heavy hitters like gamepro and others seem biased too the fact that game advertising is making a huge profit in their business. While I do not base my purchases of video games on the reviews or advertisements, most of our culture does which is somewhat sad but also makes video games more profitable.The great thing too see is that independent video games are getting a fair amount of sales on the networks that the major platforms manage.I say have fun and try as much as you can afford.
Posts: 4 | Location: Canada | Registered: 19 October 2009
I put more faith in magazine reviews than internet sites as they take moretime over them. Alot of sites throw reviews up as quick as possible so they can have an "exclusive" first review so the game is judged on style rather than substance. I'm also wary of any review where the magazine/site/show has had alot of access to the game during developement as they can tend to score the game higher to return the favour to the developer
I am the biggest Halo fan in the world. I've played every halo game to death for years now. Halo 3: ODST was the final proof for me not to trust reviews from major media. There are so many things wrong with that game. Odst was garbage, and to see these "GOTY!" and "BEST HALO EVER!" and 96/100 scores etc etc... It's obvious to me people are getting paid to give good reviews. Odst was total garbage... 96/100 YEAH RIGHT more like $96,100 for a good review :/
Yeah. I have seen some very inflated, overy-high scores on video game reviews. There has to be some bribing going on, because a mindless button-masher like Ninja Gaiden should not be getting 85-90 scores.
Yeah. I have seen some very inflated, overy-high scores on video game reviews. There has to be some bribing going on, because a mindless button-masher like Ninja Gaiden should not be getting 85-90 scores.
"Mindless button masher"? You must have played Ninja Gaiden for five minutes. It takes mad skills to beat these games on Normal, let alone harder difficulties.
I stick to 1up.com for decent game reviews. I don't always agree with everything they publish (Band Hero getting an A-?! WTF?! It's the SAME GAME AS GUITAR HERO!), but for the most part, their reviews are fair and informative.
___________________________
Butterby, it's no good!!!
Posts: 499 | Location: Tucson | Registered: 10 December 2007
Posted 02 December 2007 10:55 PM I've always had problems with video game reviews because the reviewers have a tendency to hyper inflate their scores. The reviewers base their technique on the grading scale of high school and so a 7 is a mediocre game and a 5 is very poorly designed game. A 0 is unimaginable. Video games are expensive and I'd like to know if the game is actually as good as its graphics look (which, surprise, is not always the case)
But...
The recent shenanigans at gamespot.com has proven to me that video game reviews that appear on the internet and magazines cannot be unbiased when the money comes from advertising of said video games. CNET owns gamespot.com. They also own metacritic. Now I'm not painting a dire picture of the future of metacritic but I figured the forum of a review website that intends to remove bias by aggregation discuss video game reviews in more detail.
So what do y'all think? Who are your good reviewers? Who do you trust?
Review's dont bother me, if you want to play the game THEN JUST PLAY IT and don't care what someone else think's about it
