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[MasterFancyPants]

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.

"One the coolest points of New Vegas is the addition of iron sights" -New Vegas

"Need to use a weapons real sights is just stupid" -Red Orchestra

X-play is strange like that...

[Sensei]

It's a matter of what's fashionable at the time.

[MrWiggles]

Most reviewers in my opinion have been crap, except for two.

EGM, to me has been a gold standard in Video Game Journalism.

I've been a fan of X-Play for a long while, but the whored out bloated format that G4 done to it, has really turned me off from it in recent years.

[GTM]

The entire premise of game reviewing is flawed.  There is no simple 2D scale to rate games - people are too different.  If I'm looking for a jrpg to buy, I don't care what Halo fans think about it- I care what Chrono Trigger fans think about it.  If I'm buying an FPS, I could give a rat's ass what Madden fans have to say about it.  Some sites are better about having "genre guys" who review similar games, and they should be applauded.  But in the end, screenshots, Let's Plays, friends' feedback, etc are often better.

[Akura]

EGM, to me has been a gold standard in Video Game Journalism.

I remember an issue many years ago, were one of the letters someone wrote actually asked if they pandered to the game companies. They replied that game companies don't influence their review even if they threaten to pull their advertising(and EGM said they had done that).

I'm not sure if that's true now, though...

[MrWiggles]

EGM, to me has been a gold standard in Video Game Journalism.

I remember an issue many years ago, were one of the letters someone wrote actually asked if they pandered to the game companies. They replied that game companies don't influence their review even if they threaten to pull their advertising(and EGM said they had done that).

I'm not sure if that's true now, though...

EGM in my experience doesn't hold their punches. They got in a lot of trouble with their masturbation picture, and their scathing review on the current gen releases.
When the Sony rep said you call any retailer and they would be out of units, and EGM did that, and every store they called had units. The fun they had with the 360 joke of a backward compatibility list.

EGM recently got closed down, and late last year was reopen with a new staff, and the EGM founder coming back to be Editor in Chief. I havent had the change to really check them out again, but I have high hopes they'll keep the same standard.

[Willfor]

A guy I used to help moderate a forum with is currently doing game reviews.

For example. He's currently doing more articles than reviews for various reasons, but he isn't in the back pocket of game companies. And he's fairly unapologetic about it. Though his specialty is arcade style games, and sports games, so it might not be your genre.

[Sergius]

What I do is try to get two or three different reviews. Also, focus on the bad stuff. If they're saying it's the Second Coming, they're probably biased or high on weed or something. Get a feeling of WHAT the reviewer considers good stuff, bad stuff... some reviewers just hate certain gameplay mechanics, others are a bit more objective.

In general GameSpot tends to be a bit better than IGN. I don't know about individual reviewers. But the important part is to read what they are saying about a game and not whether they like it a lot or not. Granted, the game may be a pile of crap, in which case they'll say that the idea was good but execution was poor or somesuch. Unless it's IGN, in which case the level of praise will be directly proportional to the amount of advertising said game producer has been doing on their website.

In other words: all reviews suck, but at least you can average their suckiness and get an actual feel for the game.

[de5me7]

out of 8

http://www.outofeight.info/

i think this guy is reasonable. He is not a professional, and doesnt appear to be 'whoring' to devs. He lists his likes and dislikes well with reasonable balance, and gives a reasonable synopisis of the game. Hes not perfect, and i dont always agree on the final score, but hes better than many,

Also RPS wot i thinks can be quite good. They tend to give their honest opinion more than they do in their real jobs, and often they go for originaliy and inspiration in games over polish. Having said this they slammed New Vegas, with (i havnt played) everyone seems to love.

Both of the above often do indies and more obscure games too.



And i agree IGN suck. If its buy a major dev studio near automatic 7/10 before theyve opened the box.

I would say this forums a pretty good source for review. If your curious about a game, search threads and necro it, or start one and farm opinion. Ive bought distant worlds, star ruler, and victoria 2 based on threads on this forum. The first two were definitly worth it, the third didnt do it for me so much (my feelings of the game are similar to outofeights).

[Graven]

Actually despite the OP stating that Yahtzee is a ranter but he's currently the only single reviewing source I trust nowadays, except for general opinions on forums and stuff. There is one simple reason for that. He will, with a hundred percent certainty, list everything (or nearly everything) that is wrong with the game, and that's the only thing that interests me. I don't care about how the Gamespot dude thinks the game is the second coming because of *insert boring and overused feature*.

There was a freaking good gaming magazine going on for 7 or 8 years around here in Bulgaria, which was, is, and will remain the best and most trustworthy source of information on games - Gamers' Workshop - but it has been discontinued And yeah, some of the people behind it are still writing on the internet, but it doesn't count.

Other than that no, I don't trust reviewers. They tend to get over-boggled in their own perceived self-importance, and besides, it's hard to take Gamespot seriously when the highest rated games are CoD Black Ops, Civilization 5, Battlefield Vietnam and Cataclysm. Not to mention a tendency to give a 9 or 10 to every overhyped game that exists.

[cango]

reviewers only concern is not money but also the "readability". they dont want to write something that people dont like to read (they dont want to point out the many bugs and irritations hardcoded in a game that has been long awaited becouse people dont want to read that). if a game is going to get lots of attention and they write in the first day that it came out about the sucky parts of the game they will get bad reputation (or so they think) and also vice versa.

i would recommend you the turkish website that i once rewieved star wars galaxies at and the other authors were actually just people like me and think thats what you are looking for, but sadly they didnt have english reviews last time i checked.

and the best reviwers of a game is its players. the only reason i wrote a good article about swg was becouse i loved that game and played it for a while. so simply visiting the forums of a game can be helpful (but also misleading, like how they immortalized oblivion in the forums when it first came out and i actually only discovered that i liked morrowind more). but yeah i think demos are also the best reviewers.

[Cthulhu]

Yahtzee is entertaining, but I don't take his reviews into account when looking at games.  I use metacritic.  Like was said earlier, individual views will be wildly variable, but the average is usually a good one to go by.

[Sergius]

I don't use metacritic but I probably should start.

[Detrevni|inverteD]

I only enjoy reviewers who are satirical and entirely for comedic value.

For everything else, I ask my friends or do a full demo.

[nenjin]

By use Metacritic, do you mean you look at the average then go to the reviews the scores were based off of?

I can't go with just looking at Metacritic scores. They're based on the same system that over hypes games and underrates others. Plus, I kind of feel like describing a game's features goes hand-in-hand with judging them on their fun and depth. That's what good reviews tell you. "You can get x, y, z schools of magic, with 20 spells in each. It's fun but in the end it's not that deep, all of them are just % based more damage than others."

That's the kind of interpretation you tend to get from players. When I read reviews like that, it makes it a valuable resource for me. Just comparing disembodied scores......I never feel like I'm getting close to the full picture.