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[wolgoen]

TL: DR -

What is a 'review' in your opinion and why are they so important from an industry perspective?

The full rambling -

I picked up Days Gone last week and have been playing it a lot the past few days. I have always been a 'self reviewer' - I buy a game if it looks like my kind of thing based upon gameplay footage, simple. I have never bought or not bought a game based upon reviews and this got me thinking. Days Gone in my opinion is a fantastic game so I was shocked when I was skimming review headlines to find it was not being celebrated as a huge success, I found the reception quite negative and I cannot understand why. Without starting down the road of debating the pro's and con's of Days Gone, the topic here is why are reviews anything to go by and its almost criminal that many games do not get the praise they deserve just because the reviewer(s) say so. All I seem to hear about these days is Metacritic.

To give an example: I love the movie Alien, it is one of my favourite movies of all time. So naturally, I would review it well. That is because I love sci-fi and horror. On the flip side, I hate the movie Mamma Mia, I have never liked musical movies so whilst I can appreciate the music from ABBA, I could not sit and watch Mamma Mia ever again so I would review it poorly.

So with the above example in mind, if a reviewer loves the first person shooter series but hates third person zombie survival, they will have a natural prejudice both good and bad towards each title. Thats because it is their opinion so...WHY DO WE CARE? Why does the industry care? Why does ANYONE care?

You like Marmite, I do not.
You hate the colour red, I love red.
I hate Volvo's, you love them.
Etc, etc...

I just struggle to understand how one persons review - as a representative from an outlet (IGN, Eurogamer etc) or an individual can have so much impact over someone elses work and almost dictate its public legacy.

Discuss?

 

[shark sandwich]

Review scores are the closest thing to an objective measure of how good a game is. Their usefulness is self-evident.

....


Serious answer: because I don’t have the time or inclination to play every single game for myself. I’m smart enough to read a review and judge whether the stuff the reviewer liked sounds like stuff I’d like. And to decide whether the stuff that bothered the reviewer would bother me.

It’s not the gospel truth but it absolutely is useful.

 

[EverydayBeast]

Reviews are sillyness that makes fanboys heads roll

 

[NickFire]

I have vague memories about performance bonuses tied to review scores at times. Unless that was all bs, that means the masses can be denied enjoyable content because of the political leanings of the handful of rags that metacritic gives preference too when aggregating.

 

[Saber]

Reviews are supposed to be a base point to collect some info about the game before buying, as well states the good and the bad points the game has(which varies from viewer to viewer).

But nowadays its just utterly, silly and mediocre motives attached to them. Not to mention the famous "my opinion" as a shield.

Wish I could get paid to write shit about a game.

Must be the easiest job in the world.

 

[Husky]

Regarding the bit about bias, most people don't review genres that they hate, so once a consumer finds a reviewer whose input they value, bias towards genres isn't something they really have to consider. I think film critics are some of the dumbest writers around, but professional critics still won't say they hated Mamma Mia because it was a musical and they don't like musicals.
A good review also spells out what the reviewer liked and disliked about the piece, so regardless of any potential bias, the reader should still be able to interpret what may have been done well or done poorly.

That said, the critics that the industry supports are utter shit at their job and their word should never be taken seriously. And really, you don't need a critic to tell you what games to play. It's good to hear a warning that a game might not be worth your money, and to see the bugs and design flaws on display, and it might be great to be informed of top-tier titles that might've passed you by, but in the end we all buy based on personal appeal.

If you wanna hear a critical analyses of a recent game, find an intelligent fellow on YouTube and stay off IGN lmao
kotaku shoulda died with gawker

 

[Meowzers]

All fairness for games sometimes, but I wouldn't want to spend £1,000 on a TV that most people think is crap.

 

[ThatStupidLion]

well a corporate review is a shilling marketing/PR advertisement and a personal review is nothing more than a critique/praise opinion piece

as to why you care...probably because people look to more experienced/respected figureheads to give their opinion and advice. also people are lazy and just want to be told if they should buy something or not

 

[hunthunt]

Scores are dumb and useless, reviews should be just "recommended" and"not recommended"

 

[MC Safety]

A review is an argument for or against a piece of work’s quality. It uses specific examples from the work itself to make the argument.

A good review is smart and well written. It articulates its points clearly. You may not agree with the assessment, but you can see the steps the writer took to get to his conclusion.

On neogaf most posters consider a review to be good only if it agrees completely with their views.

 

[NickFire]

Regarding the bit about bias, most people don't review genres that they hate, so once a consumer finds a reviewer whose input they value, bias towards genres isn't something they really have to consider. I think film critics are some of the dumbest writers around, but professional critics still won't say they hated Mamma Mia because it was a musical and they don't like musicals.
A good review also spells out what the reviewer liked and disliked about the piece, so regardless of any potential bias, the reader should still be able to interpret what may have been done well or done poorly.

That said, the critics that the industry supports are utter shit at their job and their word should never be taken seriously. And really, you don't need a critic to tell you what games to play. It's good to hear a warning that a game might not be worth your money, and to see the bugs and design flaws on display, and it might be great to be informed of top-tier titles that might've passed you by, but in the end we all buy based on personal appeal.

If you wanna hear a critical analyses of a recent game, find an intelligent fellow on YouTube and stay off IGN lmao
kotaku shoulda died with gawker

Sometimes it feels like certain gaming outlets specifically pick people to review games because they know they will hate it. Like when they review a game about bikers and get upset about cheezy sex references.

 

[Roni]

A review should be an account, a testimony of your experience playing the game. I think the concept of review scores are self-defeating in any scope other than aggregation. In other words, I think a review score by itself is meaningless.

Review scores only make sense once you aggregate them using something like Metacritic or Opencritic.

 

[Stuart360]

Reviews only matter when its an average review for an Xbox game!.
In all sriousness, reviews are just a guidline and i dont read too much into a game that falls into the 6-8 range. Having said that, if a game scores 2/10 from 50 reviews, chances are that game blows.

 

[spawn]

I don't think the review score is important. It's more so the opinions that are written in the review that are more important. I also read user reviews and I look at gameplay to decide if it's worth it to me to buy the game

 

[Nymphae]

They are an evaluation of a product. They became a huge deal

If you wanna hear a critical analyses of a recent game, find an intelligent fellow on YouTube and stay off IGN lmao

Honestly, the past few years this has held true for me. I see interesting stuff like Matthewmatosis's God of War video on Youtube, or Core A Gaming's incredibly thoughtful and interesting looks at various topics, but whenever I watch an IGN reveiw or something, it has this gross corporate slickness to it, I feel like nuance is not being explored in any topic, in favour of giving me bright, slick visuals with publisher copy being recited to me alongside a few notes that were rushed out by the author during the review period, which funnily enough echo everything else being said by other outlets.

 

[Bryank75]

Reviews back when I was a young teen we’re pretty good from what I remember, not just an arbitrary numbers with a few random points in the pros and cons but a long discussion broken down into graphics, story, sound, gameplay etc.

Then at the bottom you’d get the bottom line on each area and the score which would be an approximation but made much more sense than today.....

Today everything is subjective and politically influenced, everything is a target to attack or manipulate to spread the writers ideology.

Free press is important but with so many offering so little in terms of originality or differing points of view, it’s hard to see how there is a place for so many outlets.

I’d love for there to be a large ‘razzies’ or ‘Darwin awards’ type of show for bad journalism and reviews.... maybe that would make these idiots think twice before pushing their vapid ideology.

 

[synchronicity]

Creators should create for themselves - with zero concern for the opinion of others, for how it will be received.

If they create something genuine, from the heart, it will absolutely find an audience because there will be some truth there. (Whether or not the size of the audience pleases all publishers is another matter, and would vary on a case by case basis.)

 

[DonF]

My process for buying a game tends to be the following.

I like the general premise of the game, so I investigate a little bit about it, like whos the dev.
Then ill look for gameplay videos. If im still interested ill go to opencritic to see whats up.
Then I look if some of the guys I trust from youtube have anything BAD to say about the game. I like ACG and SkillUp.
Then, if there are no red flags, ill get the game.

Frankly, the score its just a quick snippet for me. If its a 70+ its must be in the realm of good. But the final buying decision to me is more about gameplay videos and youtube reviewers. I don't trust big sites anymore.

 

[belteshazzar]

I don't think any one review by itself is going to be indicative of the quality of a particular game, but I do believe that review aggregators provide a better indicator about the general quality of a game. I think that using an average score across all the reviews is not good because there are always ridiculous outliers, so I think using a median would be a much better way of assessing if a game is good or not (except maybe because of review bombing), but that is a topic for another discussion. Even though the reviewer's likes and dislikes might not align with your own, they might still take into consideration key elements about the game that have nothing to do with particular genres or mechanics (such as the writing, pacing, performance, graphics, etc). If the game is in a genre you like, then this general indicator will be relevant to you; if you don't then it probably won't (ie. I hate MOBAs so I don't care even if some MOBA gets a perfect 10 score). However, this might still not align with the "score" you would personally give to any game. For example, SUDA51 games generally have average to good reviews, but to me they are some of my favorites games ever (Killer 7, No More Heroes). Sometimes just looking at reviews/gameplay on youtube and perusing review aggregators is enough for me to know if I will like a game and if I can look beyond the flaws that are highlighted on my research. I think going blindly into the games you purchase is gonna end up with a lot of disappointment and regret.

 

[Hendrick's]

Mostly fanboy fodder, but still useful to get an idea if a game is broken or incomplete.

 

[Northeastmonk]

Reviews try to explain why humanity invented video games and why one video game is not like the other video game. In the 90's I never read a review. I browsed the gaming section and picked out a game. At the video rental store I picked out a game that looked good. If it sucked, I didn't play it anymore. I use to read a lot of gaming magazines in the 90's/early 2000's when there were articles about games coming out. When Ocarina of Time was on the cover or Final Fantasy VIII. Then when technology got better, so did the gaming personalities egos. You had people come out left and right to say something about the next AAA game.

Now a days its just a number. That number is attached to someone somewhere, who happened to get a copy early. I use to care about Famitsu's 40/40, X-Play's 5/5, and everyone else's 10/10. You see a number and that's suppose to dictate if you like it?

I believe in word of mouth and that gamers can decide if a game is bad or not. I do not feel like gamers need journalists. I think gamers need the video game early. How many of us wrote reviews over 10 years ago? Its pretty straight forward. If you have the money and an early copy, who cares what everyone's hard ethical opinion is of a video game? There is no coffee shop discussion over why Far Cry 4 is related to riots in America. Games don't need to have some emotional point to them or show their true colors during a press event.

 

[llien]

The problem is, figuring which of the myriad of games on the market are worth playing.
You can learn only so much by watching a gameplay.

 

[Hinedorf]

Here's an example - I thought Anthem looked really cool. After reading reviews it was clear the game being demo'd was not the game given at launch. Not only that it was bricking consoles.

Thankfully I did a little research prior to jumping in blindly. There seems to be a massive hate towards Kotaku but they don't rate games on a numbering system and more or less just give you opinions. I prefer that to being told how great a game is based by a number.

In contrast to your opinion on Days Gone. It features zombies which is an absolute deal breaker to me. It could be the greatest game but I will never touch it. Opinions are like assholes and we all got one

 

[Danjin44]

There is nothing wrong with reviews if people read the actual review instead of focusing on the score. Even the game gets really high score it’s not grantee you are going enjoy the game, the game might have elements that reviewer liked but you personally won’t like.

 

[johntown]

I really only use reviews for games that I am on the fence about. Games that I like I will buy regardless or any review. For instance, I am a sucker for horror games related to HP Lovecraft. Regardless of the reviews I will most likely get the games as long as they at least look interesting.

MK 11 got high scores and I really just don't understand how. I like the MK series but everything I have seen with this one just does not seem to warrant a high score IMO.

I tend to look and wait for user reviews to get a more accurate feel for games nowadays as I don't trust big reviewers anymore as I feel some of them are getting paid to give better reviews.

 

[NipplesOfSteel]

Honestly, if I'm on the fence about buying a game, I'll check a review to see of it's worth getting, or possibly waiting til a sale/price drop.

One thing I miss is IGN's pros and cons part at the end of the review.

 

[Vader1]

A review is just an opinion. Unfortunately they have more weight than they should due to being put on Metacritic, which can influence a game’s perception and consequently sales.

 

[Deleted member 740922]

I couldn't care less about reviews. If I did then I would have ignored Crackdown 3, yet I loved it.

 

[zenspider]

I think there's another layer to reviews, namely that we have a stake in the success of a game for what it means for the franchise, genre, developer, or industry going forward.

Other media industries have this to an extent, but there is such a low entry fee money-wise, and such a high cost time-wise (only comparable to books which usually are much cheaper), that the stakes are very high for the consumer/player.

Thusly, we act as potential shareholders in the potential future of our own entertainment.

 

[Daymos]

Reviews are a score given to game developers to decide their fate. It has nothing to do with me.

Earthlock was 'remade' to increase their review score, it mattered that much to them:

 

[Heimdall_Xtreme]

I used to consider reviews as a trustworthy and respectable way of knowing what the videogame was like, I remember that in my time of the 80s and 90s there was no qualification and they always gave you the positive points of the videogame.

As I live in Mexico, my turning point to not trust the reviews was in a popular magazine called "Club Nintendo" especially in the era when the N64 competed with Playstation, the editor of the magazine and protagonist of a tv program called " Nintendo-Mania " of Gus Rodriguez, said that the N64 did not deserve it nor God, we already know part of the story, from there I have taken the credibility of the analysts with tweezers, my point of loss of belief occurred in NIER, Haunting ground and Rule of Rose , who rated it with 6 and from there never believed in the reviews anymore, it is like in Gravity rush 2 that give 8 of qualification but I know that it is through the ignorance of journalists.

Another thing to me is a lack of respect and more for the lazy video game analysts who do not even play the titles, but they make copy paste from other websites or pay lots of money to speak well of a title that is a crap like Overwatch or the best example Days Gone, here we talk about the ignorance of video game analysts, is even they afraid to talk about that Fortnite is a crap because they know they have their fan group and it does not suit them tell the truths.


But unfortunately between the ignorance and the stupidity of the Journalist gamers and in the worst case the mediocre people and the lack of intelligence that i call "YouTubers", have been destroy the gaming industry.

 

[John Day]

I was about to make a thread asking something similar: why is the industry so reliant on Metacritic as a measure of success of their own products? Sometimes it seems money numbers ain’t enough.

Then again, most industries are the same. Film and cars for example.

 

[GAMETA]

A miserable little pile of opinions

 

[PhilipDoesMatter]

Reviews are a bar. Just that.

 

[ULTROS!]

I read critics reviews but I have to weigh in if they're actually talking about the game and the gameplay rather than putting an agenda on things (why is there no X representation, game has a lot of representation so it's good). I play games if they're fun and the story is fun.

 

[Coolio McAwesome]

A review is basically a time-saving mechanism. If you can find a critic with similar tastes as you have, a review can provide insight into whether or not it's worth your time. Sadly, most gaming journalists are ideologues who have fallen into the dumpster fire of identity politics. Many of them actively hate video games, so nobody should take their opinions seriously.

 

[wzy]

You just proved what reviews are and why they matter. They validate your prejudices, which is why you notice when you like a bad game and no one else does.

 

[A.Romero]

The point of reviews, in my opinion, is get to know what other people think of the game. The only thing I expect from a reviewer is to explore most of the game and it's mechanics and describe them. Is combat good? Is there a lot of exploration? Stuff that cannot be totally understood from trailers.

I don't particularly care for reviews from news outlets. I rather come here and read what other members think of the game and maybe look at Metacritic and see what the general opinion of the game is.

That said, a review rarely affects my game purchase decisions. One kind of recent example where they pushed me to get something was God of War. I was planning to get it but stellar reviews pushed me to pre-order and play on day one.

This year I only picked Ace Combat 7 on day one. Not because of the reviews but because I'm a fan of the series and really wanted to play classic AC on modern hardware. I would have waited but getting AC5 as a pre-order bonus was enough to push me over the edge.

To this day, the only reviews I kind of care about are Steam reviews. If the person reviewing has a decent amount of hours invested and can articulate it's thoughts, I give them credibility.

I guess I'm old because I don't like watching youtube videos. I rather see the least amount of footage possible before playing a game.

 

[Sqorin Hammerfarf]

A miserable little pile of opinions

I think you mean a miserable pile of secretions.

 

[TLZ]

I agree with you W wolgoen

I don't understand it at all. I've always been my own reviewer as well. I don't care one bit what others think nor say. As an example, Just Cause 3 is one of my favorite games, yet it has a 73 metacritic score, and I think a 64 user score.

Another issue is, these days "reviewers" hardly play much of the games I think. So full judgement of them is not proper. Add to that some of them play games from genres they don't care for and dislike, so their take on them is biased against them already. Then you add to that the fact some of them have political agendas and possibly not even into games to begin with. It's a shit show.

 

[Red Crayon Aristocrat]

Reviews simply used to be a good way to gauge what games were worth your time and money.

You've always had to take them with a grain of salt though even in the good old days, one of my all time favorite games, Haunting Ground, got middling reviews yet the theme intrigued me so much I gave it a try regardless and absolutely loved it.

There were in fact plenty of games that got middling reviews I wound up really enjoying, it was just a general guide, not something you had to follow strictly.

 

[JSoup]

Depends on what the goal of the review is.
Is it just giving me general information about the game, how certain aspects are new or otherwise work? Ok, probably a useful review, although I always got more about how a game worked and if it was for me from the old method of just providing a starting area guide.

Is it delving into the politics, representation or whatever buzzwords people are addicted to today? Useless, nine times out of ten it's just clickbait bullshit providing a particular audience the confirmation bias they already had.

Reviews are a score given to game developers to decide their fate. It has nothing to do with me.

Earthlock was 'remade' to increase their review score, it mattered that much to them:

Fun fact, it didn't work on the PSN, at all, since they didn't realize that pulling a game on the PSN and then resubmitting it as a different version of the same game:
A. Allows for anyone who had the first version to keep it as a separate game.
B. Gives anyone who had version one a free copy of version two.

This allowed for people to play both back to back and actually see what is or is not better.

 

[Graciaus]

Fan reviews both positive and negative give a much more clear picture then professional ones. I find a lot of them just echo each other and never really say what is wrong with a game. The score games are given are more important then the text to most. That's why I like reading steam reviews.

 

[Majukun]

people identify with what they like because that too is part of what they are,or at least its felt like so.

you offend or not appreciate enough what they like, you offend and not appreciate enough them too

so they rage

it's the same thing about being fan of a sport team...what happens to it matters very little in your actual life..yet you care, care enough to get violent, depressed, like if those defeats are inflicted upon you

 

[tassletine]

The best critics are able to put aside personal prejudice and review the thing on it's own merits. Sadly this sort of critic is quite rare nowadays.

The best example of this was probably Roger Ebert who always seemed to review films on their own merits, regardless of technical quality.

Nowadays everyone seems to review things on their expectations and this means that games/ films are never reviewed accurately.
If you can get someone addicted to your franchise it won't even matter if the material is quality or not, because their expectations of what their social group says is more important than the quality of the product.

 

[cireza]

Don't read professional reviews. People that write professional reviews don't play games for the same reasons as you, so why would they have a significant opinion for you, a player ?

I have not read any professional reviews for many many years. They are useless.

I get my information from people like me : players. Simply read feedback in forums from people that have the same tastes as you in gaming. And also fan reviews.

Don't care about whatever stupid shit a game might be taken into on the internet, like political or SJW stuff. Forget about all the context. It is about you and a game : do you want to play it ? Give yourself an honest answer.

People that are wasting time debating about this kind of stuff are not players in my opinion.

 

[Acidizer]

They were fun in the pre-internet magazine days.

Now they are loaded the shite and can't be trusted half the time - and aren't even fun. They are often now written by people who aren't even gamers and just journalists looking to further their career.

They could be useful to glean objective information from, but that could be gotten elsewhere easier these days.

 

[Gaternator]

I feel that reviews are only partly useful, a review does not cover personal experience.
I played a game which got bad reviews 'Spiderman Web of Shadows' and I still enjoyed it.

 

[Golgo 13]

Sorry, but reviews are extremely useful. Particularly when you look at averages on sites like Metacritic — they’re invaluable time savers. I personally don’t have time to play every game that looks interesting to me — I have a wife, kids, a busy career, friends, tons of social engagements. If I taste tested every game that looked mildly interesting, I’d be a 500-lb loser in my moms basement. But “yay”, I guess I’d be cool and above those stupid critics, right?

I don’t agree with every critical consensus but the majority of the time, games that score above 90 usually deserve to and are special games and games that score below a 75 are mostly games that aren’t worth my time.

You basically find out what works for you and go with it.

 

[Jigsaah]

A review is like nuclear power.

It can be very useful in the right hands...

In the wrong hands it most certainly means catastrophe.

Im glad reviews are not nuclear power...we'd all be dead.