Do You Give Much Weight To Video Game Reviews?

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LoneKiller

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As far I'm concerned, reviews in magazines and on television mean nothing. They have given horrible reviews on some games that I thought were awesome.


God Bless.
LK
 
Reviews are all about people's individual opinions about a product and how well they received it. I see how they might be helpful to someone about to buy a product (e.g. a video game), though I never cared for reading a jumble of opinions on something I personally like or may potentially be interested in buying and it's because of this that I never read Metal magazines and such. Sometimes it really puzzles me when I see people from sites such as AllMusic giving very poor reviews of albums I thought were fantastic.
 
I generally don't go by official reviewers alone. IGN might serve as preliminary check into the title, but I generally check what the people are saying. Generally view reviewers to be on the take, outright propaganda machines (Playstation magazine, anyone?) or the 'critics' just having a quick look into the games themselves, without seeing the entire game and determining stuff like replayability and bugs and whatnot.
 
Like what bread said, reviews mostly serve the purpose of getting a general sense of the game and how people generally respond to it. If I read the reviews user's give though, I do end up having a little bit of bias before playing the game but that all gets cleared up in the end.

Oh, but what I hate the most is when the reviews contain spoilers without hiding them! T__T
 
meekthoughts said:
Like what bread said, reviews mostly serve the purpose of getting a general sense of the game and how people generally respond to it. If I read the reviews user's give though, I do end up having a little bit of bias before playing the game but that all gets cleared up in the end.

Oh, but what I hate the most is when the reviews contain spoilers without hiding them! T__T
Yeah, I'm with you on that one.

 
Zero punctuation and total biscuit help me a lot as does Rock Paper Shotgun (doesn't give a score, just a quick play-through and then they tell you what they think)
 
I've seen that sometimes they are generally true. Although off by a few points (my personal opinion). :D
 
Nope, I rarely read reviews for their opinions but I get information out of them, especially reading from multiple reviewers. Some reviewers have no idea and would give a really well designed/fun game a low score just because he couldn't get over the learning curve, or they simply suck at it, some doesn't even finish it and write it off as a joke, some are unprofessional, and opinions are always subjective, if they don't "get" the game, they just don't and remain ignorant, and that's when you read someone else's review, or players' feedback.

Some "journalist" doesn't really care to take the time and some just don't have enough time to play through a game and explore its depth. So one should never only based a game's quality on 1 person's opinion, what one might find fun might be shallow and mindless to you, and what one might find shitty could be a fun game that they couldn't get over the challenge and was unable to progress through it.
 
Here is my game purchasing process.

1) Is it on Steam?
2) Is it cheap or on sale?
3) Does it have a decent metacritic score?
4) Do the gameplay videos look fun?
5) If yes to the above then I might buy it if I have the money.

OR

1) Do I have friends playing this game?
2) Do they like it?
3) Is it cheap/free?
4) If yes to the above then I will probably play it.
 
kamya said:
Here is my game purchasing process.

1) Is it on Steam?
2) Is it cheap or on sale?
3) Does it have a decent metacritic score?
4) Do the gameplay videos look fun?
5) If yes to the above then I might buy it if I have the money.

OR

1) Do I have friends playing this game?
2) Do they like it?
3) Is it cheap/free?
4) If yes to the above then I will probably play it.

Seem like perfect processes to me. Except I almost never "buy" games... *looks away*

Anyway, I forgot to add that I immediately have a "it's got to be awesome!" bias with all games blizzard. To the degree by which when I searched up blizzard on Google and on wiki the first line was "A blizzard is a severe snowstorm characterized by strong winds," I thought it was a metaphor. :p
 
I don't read reviews before or after I buy a game. I watch the trailers and decide for myself. Now if I end up not liking a game I'll look up the reviews then think, **** wish I did that first before I wasted money on it. LOL
 
I love AVGN reviews... funny and informative.

The answer to your question is: no... I don't watch many others, plus I don't really buy games anymore.
 
Not really because I liked most games by the following developers in the 90s:

LucasArts-FPS
id Software-FPS
3D Realms-FPS
Parallax Software-FPS
Epic Games-FPS
Valve Software-FPS
Raven Software-FPS
Dreamworks Games-FPS
Volition-FPS
Gray Matter-FPS
Croteam-FPS
Sir-Tech-RPG
Blizzard Entertainment-RPG
Black Isle Studios-RPG
Bethesda Softworks-RPG
BioWare-RPG
Piranha Bytes-RPG

For the ones I was not sure about, I would read the review and enjoyed the following even though some did not get great scores:

Delphine Soft-Darkstone-RPG
Westwood Studios-Nox-RPG
Gas Powered Games-Dungeon Siege-RPG
Larian Studios-Divine Divinity-RPG
Troika Games-The Temple of Elemental Evil-RPG
Ascaron-Sacred-RPG
Lionhead Studios-Fable-RPG
Stormfront Studios-Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor (horrible score, but i liked it)-RPG
 
No, because they're just opinions of other who've played the game (and probably didn't play a whole lot of it or, are being biased.)

I watch trailers and Gameplay on Youtube. I've never bought or played a game based on a review.
 
I think the best way to treat reviewers is to look out for someone who's got similar taste to yourself - someone who likes the things you liked in the past. If they've got similar tastes to yourself you're more likely to agree with any recommendation...

I'm not much of a gamer, but I like Mark Kermode, a BBC film reviewer. Generally he's got a similar taste in films to me, so anything he likes I'd also enjoy.

I have came across a few idiotic reviews - one reviewer of Invincible, a Michael Jackson album, gave it 1 star out of 5. It wasn't his best album, but some decent songs - 10,000 watts and the one with Chris Tucker, whose name i forget.
Reviewer went on about how it was a massive disappointment, he should have done better in all the time he took to make it, etc.
Totally idiotic logic - okay it wasn't History, and only a few of the tracks were in the same league as his best stuff...but it was still a better album than what many musicians will ever produce.

Sorry, bit of a rant!
 
I usually look at what I am buying a bit before I buy. I realize that peoples opinions are not perfect, but many times a terribly scored item is crap. However, things that are simply not a reviewers favorite might be good to someone else.
 

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