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[Farseer]

I've been wondering how other people felt about game reviewers for a long while.

To me, it seems there're two types of game reviewers: The ones that're sycophantic and useless or the ones that're attention whoring and useless.

There doesn't seem to be a middleground where the reviewers actual review a game on it's positives and negatives.

Does anyone know any reasonable reviewers who actually give scores that seem to resonate with the quality of the game? And what's your opinion of the current games reviewer industry?

Spoiler: Reviewers That Don't Count (click to show/hide)

And, no, don't tell me Jim Sterling or Yahtzee. Jim Sterling is a pathetic waste of space who is incapable of objectively examining a game and flips out when people suggest he reviews a game instead of pissing in the drinking water to get attention. Yahtzee is more of a ranter than a reviewer, which is perfectly viable career choice, but definitely not what I'm looking for.

[Ivefan]

I gave up on reviewers long ago.
If anything i look at youtube gameplay videos from the players or read some forum, Or do a full demo.

[inteuniso]

check the player score. That's generally the most reliable.

The big reviewers are too unreliable, only giving reviews based on advertisement money. Small reviewers hold prejudices.

[Eugenitor]

The last of the trusted reviewers is probably Jeff Gerstmann, and that's only because he got canned for that infamous Kane & Lynch review.

Anyway, the problem with reviewers is that they're just guys with opinions. They have no special qualifications and no real insider knowledge. And sometimes they're too stupid to properly play the game they're trying to review. If you want real reviews, wait a few days after the game comes out and google, avoiding anything that looks like it's a plant.

[Tilla]

Reviews are and always will be opinions. As such someone will always disagree.

[Thexor]

Have you ever heard the story about guessing the weight of a cow? Supposedly (I have no sources to reference), this fair brought in a cow, and asked people to guess its weight. Most of the people asked weren't farmers, and so they got wildly different responses, most of which were nowhere close to the right answer. But, when the day was done, all of these crazy responses were averaged, and the result was almost dead on.


Same thing for game reviewers. It's not uncommon for a game to have some >90 reviews and some <60 reviews... but if you take an average, you'll generally get a good result. Aggregate sites can provide one average, but personally I tend to use them as a starting point only; they're great for listing all sites that have reviewed a game, but you'll want to go through each review (or at least a sampling of them), and decide for yourself whether the review is any good. Did so-and-so rate highly because his site is advertising the game? Did so-and-so rate low because he doesn't like the game's genre? By the time you've gone through ~5 reviews (possibly more if it's an expensive game!), you'll probably have managed to distill a pretty good idea of whether you'll like the game, regardless of the quality or bias of individual reviews.

[ductape]

I generally look here in this forum section. Over the years I have gotten to know some of the individuals (you all) and I understand how their opinion relates to mine. For the most part, many people who frequent this forum share similar opinions about games such as gameplay over graphics, etc. Of course, it's not 100% but for me, the Other Games section of Bay 12 is most reliable.

An example is something I am finally playing after getting a new computer, BioShock. Some people here liked it, others didnt. But whats important is that I got to read about why from people who usually like similar games. Personally I like BioShock and I am having lots of fun with the atmosphere. Sure, it isnt the true successor to System Shock2 but I'm not playing it in that light, I am just enjoying it for what it is. While there is no actual thread on BioShock, it has come up in context of other games many times and I can find it by doing a search. If I really must know about a game, I could make a thread about it.

Another example is Elemental. From that thread I know I will not buy that game until I either read some amazing stuff in the next year, or it hits some bargain basement sale someday.

To sum up, thanks Bay 12 for being my #1 game review site. #2 is Metacritic because I can compare pros and amateurs and try to glean something sensible out of that.

[nenjin]

To me, game reviews are not there to tell you whether or not a game is good. That's only something a gamer can decide for themselves.

I use game reviews to get an idea of the general structure of the game without having to bust out a Youtube video. Are there unlockables? What variety is there? How many hours did it take them to do x? Did they have performance problems?

I seek details out of reviews, and to me, most of them do that pretty well. (Except Yahtzee.)

By and large, I find reviewers most useful before a game comes out. That's when they're focused on getting information and delivering it, as close to real journalism as they can get.

Once a game releases, most are too concerned with trying to give the "final word", which is what most gamers end up reading I think, to make the reviews really helpful to a prospective buyer. In fact, it probably hurts it, since they either give a) a ridiculously inflated "must buy" take on something like MW2 and the gamer smells marketing BS, or b) give it an average to low grade, and the gamer is back where they started: needing to take the plunge themselves to really know.

[freeformschooler]

I hate reading reviews online.

I never learn anything. All of the games I've liked have had a large amount of 1/10 type reviews and a large amount of 10/10 reviews. What do I believe? When I'm wanting to get a new game, I don't know which ones to trust. The 7/10 reviewers seem to be attention whoring, the 10/10 reviewers are gushing, and the 1/10 reviewers are generally flaming because the game wasn't what they expected it to be. Most reviews I've actually learn something from rate around the 5/10 to 6/10 range, because they tend to point out the flaws and note the benefits.

I don't like reading reviews from major game websites ala IGN, Gamespot etc. Who's to say they're honest? Who's to say they're not paid by the publishers for a hit review? For example, that time the reviewer got fired because Kane&Lynch 2 (I believe it was that) wasn't rated well, he ranted on his blog that the publishers had paid his employers big bucks for sponsorship and he himself was nudged to make a good review. Pathetic.

Honestly, if I want to know about a game, I'll ask my friend because generally they've gotten it too. If a game is so popular that it's achieved memetic status ala Minecraft, I'll probably take a leap of faith either way. I've stopped buying games for the most part, though, as I have a job and a busy life most of the time, and wasting money on shoddy entertainment is a no-go.

[SeaBee]

I use these forums and, when I can see the games section, Something Awful for game reviews and info. I used to check the official forums for games that had them, but the "no criticism here" policy of many of them prevent me from doing that in recent years.

For more traditional reviews, I look to James Allen at outofeight.info -- I don't always agree with him (opinions being what they are), but I tend to find his reviews grounded in reality more than most bigger sites. Yes, it's all text. No, there are no screenshots.

Metacritic is the last spot I check, though I tend to ignore most of the major reviews and focus on the more reasonable positive and negative player reviews, along with parsing the differences between aggregate scores from both.

[nenjin]

I don't like reading reviews from major game websites ala IGN, Gamespot etc. Who's to say they're honest? Who's to say they're not paid by the publishers for a hit review? For example, that time the reviewer got fired because Kane&Lynch 2 (I believe it was that) wasn't rated well, he ranted on his blog that the publishers had paid his employers big bucks for sponsorship and he himself was nudged to make a good review. Pathetic.

That's why I do my reading before a game releases. It's not a guarantee of real information, but the reviewers have no grounds to start something-out-of-10'ing it yet. So they have to provide details. The release review is ALL about marketing, one way or another. If you need information to make decisions about what you'll buy or not, release reviews don't provide that. They assume you trust the author enough to agree with their opinion, then they sprinkle in some actual examples to (maybe) back up their overall score.

The best time to pay attention to the media on a game is 6 months before, and 6 months after release. Prior to, you'll get actual game play information. Afterward, you'll get reviews that have actually played the game and have a much smaller commercial incentive to blather in the positive or negative about it.

That and it's all about where you choose to read. RPS and Kotaku aren't the *best*, simply because all gaming journalism acts as though they can be as goofy and unprofessional as they want because they're writing to the internet crowd. But they're leagues better than a lot of full-time "professional" game reviewers, because they get more freedom to actually talk about the game than the other sites do.

(As a total aside, that's the main reason I'm starting to forgo reviewers. There's so much fucking trash humor and BS-fap-fap-top-100-something-something-whatever lists that they do in lieu of their actual fucking job. These assclowns get paid to essentially troll the internet, go to cons and press reveals, then screw around writing pointless humor articles and yukking it up on their webcasts. The only reason I still even enjoy reading Gamespy is because of "Objection!", a bastion of information in a wasteland of stupid fucking memes and spam bots. Even though he occasionally says something real about a game, I really blame Yahtzee for this. G4 and that stuff sucked, but it was out of the "nerd-stream" for the most part. Yahtzee has brought that brand of "infotainment" to gaming news, and really, I don't want to be fucking entertained. I want to be informed. If you can be funny while informing, awesome. If your "funny" gets in the way of the information, shut your fucking mouth and do some reporting.)

[Levi]

I only ever check reviews to see if something is completely garbage, and not often even then. 

Although I sometimes do pay attention to metascores.

There are too many games I really enjoyed but got lousy reviews, and too many horrible games that got insanely good reviews.

[Krelian]

When I want to know about a game, I go to youtube, search "gamename gameplay" and watch.

I think most reviews have to much money behind them to be objetive.

[Zai]

I just buy [1] games that I have had my eye on for a while or are part of an existing series I like or are made by a developer I like (ex. Etrian Odyssey 3 a few months back and games developed by (and a lot of games published by) Paradox), [2] games I hear are good from people who share similar tastes with me (ex. The Orange Box; I finally bought it about 2 years ago because of posts here), and [3] games I hear are good from pretty much everybody (ex. Deus Ex, Minecraft). [4] Also, I buy the occasional demo/Steam-free-weekend game that I like enough to buy (Audiosurf/Killing Floor).

The main reviews I take seriously are word-of-mouth reviews from people I know. Otherwise I just check several reviews (from places that look like they aren't in bed with publishers' money) with various general-scores (a 9/10 and a 5/10 and a 7/10 usually) to read the good and the bad parts of games I'm thinking about buying. Reviews with a general-score lower than a 5/10 when there are many more reviews in a higher range are typically people who are rating the game for being a genre they don't like rather than rating the game's merits.

[nenjin]

Reviews with a general-score lower than a 5/10 when there are many more reviews in a higher range are typically people who are rating the game for being a genre they don't like rather than rating the game's merits.

Which is a huge problem.

Ex: Red Orchestra got reviewed by G4. It did very, very poorly. The problem? They judged it against the current modern warfare offerings, rather than judging how fun it was as a realism shooter. So they complained about stuff like "No cross hairs" and "needing to use the iron sights to shoot stuff at range."

On the flip side though, the common defense against a lot of review scores is "you just don't understand the game." Reviewers tend to claim they review for the every gamer, and rate based on the overall fun of the experience. Of course, when you reduce every review down to a flavorless, generic numeric score...you start to question the need for reviewers at all.