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Do Reviews Still Serve a Purpose?
Via Voodoo Extreme, a post on the Sony-sponsored ThreeSpeech blog asking if game reviews are a thing of the past. Post author 'Azz Hassan' opines that the proliferation of blogs and easy access to game trailers has made the 'biased views' of reviewers a thing of the past. Responding via the Ars Technica Opposable Thumbs blog, Frank Caron offers a rebuttal to the piece. 'The argument presented in the article seems to come with the very slant that it so viciously protests: one of a negative view towards a medium that the writer feels is inadequate. Yes, there is a ton of available media on the net that can help you get a look at a game as it develops, but the problem with videos and pictures is that often the intangible elements are impossible to understand simply from seeing the game in motion--only the written or verbal communication of a person can adequately capture these details.'
Yes, yes they do. If they didnt people wouldnt read them.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
Because I grew up, got a job and am now gullable enough to buy any crap the games industry throws out. I suffer from obsessive compulsive computer game purchase.
Oh how I miss the days of being dependant on pocket money where every penny had to be spent so wisely.
On who (the actual person) wrote it, and how well you know the reviewer. Personal preference is always a big factor in game/movie/music reviews. It could very well be that I like a game what a reviewer gave a bad review, but I would only know that if I knew the reviewer's preference.
Ofcourse demo'ing the game is always better than reading a review.
The most useless part of a review is the grade, it says absolutely nothing, except what number the reviewer assigned. They might as well use colors for grading instead of numbers or stars. So... I rate the linked article: purple.
Reviews let me know if a game totally sucks. Then I avoid it.
But positive reviews are no guarantee of a good game, as the glowing ratings for such moribund stinkers as FFVII and FFX can attest to.
These days I buy only a few games and to try and spend my money on something I will enjoy, what choice do I have? I can either look at all the pictures or I can read what someone says when they have actually played through the game. It isn't just the final score that I look for, there are certain things I dont want in a game (such as loads and loads of unforgiving stealth in an FPS) and I use reviews to try and see if those elements are present, if they are I wont bother wasting my money. Most reviews I have seen will also talk about the hardware requirements. A game that requires massive power (while the official claims are for a mediocre system) is also out.
Yes, just like movie reviews they are someone elses subjective view, but to get your own view you would have to watch every movie made or judge them by the trailer. Both of which are far worse (in my eyes) than seeing the opinion of a reviewer that generally agrees with you and has themselves seen almost every movie ever made.
Having said that, reviews are less useful than demonstration versions, which I wish game makers would use more.
If this were really happening, what would you think?
It depends - as with reviews for most things, over time you learn whether the reviewer is spouting nonsense of providing a decent insightful review. Some reviewers are humorous, others more technical, some are undoubtedly biased, and so on. For example, I read one restaurant critic because what he writes is fun - the likelihood of me actually eating in one of the recommended restaurants is slim.
I can't say I've ever used a review in purchasing a video game. Ign is famous for giving low scores to great games, and it gives the impression that reviews are worthless on other sites too. Gamespot is a bit better at understanding that games are meant to appeal to a certain audience, and thus need to be judged on that standard, but Gamespot gets it wrong occasionally as well.
These "review" sites are actually nothing more than a marketing tool of the video game industry. It's a form of viral advertising, really.
...but maybe not as individual reviews.
http://www.metacritic.com/ is a fantastic site which does weighted averaging of scores from many reviews. I use it for games in particular - it's useful to check the reviews that give a high score against the reviews that give a low score to see what is good and what is not about a game before buying. The "averaged" score almost always corresponds with my experience of the games too, so the system seems to work.
So reviews do serve a purpose, but, as with many things in life, to get a balanced opinion you need to sample from a set great than 1.
biopowered.co.uk - catalytically cracking triglycerides for home automotive use since 2008. Just say no to big oil!
I want any review to at least start with well formatted and Objective info concerning whatever it is they are reviewing. Then I can just ignore the rest if I wish.
I swear, it should be pretty obvious what info we want from these reviews by now! It shouldn't be too hard to come up with a standard INTRO for any review that will tell us 90% of what we need to know about any new title, even if we've never heard of it before. Anything after that clearly marked section would be an opinion piece, easy to ignore if you don't have the same tastes and goals as the reviewer..
Reviewers are just like political parties, insofar as they help distill a vast amount of information in order to allow us to actually make some decisions. The point of political parties isn't to provide perfect information to the voter, the point is to allow the voter to reduce the complexities of the ballot when necessary.
Before you guys get out of hand in the comments, by that I mean that it is functionally impossible for us as voters (in any country) to vet EVERYONE, from the county clerk to the State Senator (Okay, sorry, I don't have a region agnostic example, deal). We may decide on the president based on our input from non-party sources, but the other 18 names on the ballot don't rise to the same threshold. Parties allow us to make an assumption that a representative will align to the basic ideas that we are interested in.
Reviewers serve the same function. I may decide that I 'trust' a particular game or movie reviewer. As a result, I can presume that his/her views on a game are a good proxy for my own. This allows me to narrow the field of games I might be interested in without covering every demo, every press release, and every industry whisper--not to mention playing the game. In this sense, reviewers are even more necessary, because in order for me to make an adequate decision about a game in the absence of press, I would have to play it (or a demo, but even that isn't perfectly enlightening, see Lost Planet). That, of course, would obviate the need for the review.
In this case, just like political parties, we learn to accept bias in our reviewers. In most cases, the biases are benign--we share them. We like that Rogert Ebert doesn't like M. Night Shyamalan, because we don't (obviously only speaking for some of us). We like that the Onion (and pretty much everyone else) hates Uwe Boll, because we hate him. The same thing with the Democratic and Republican (insert Labour/conservative, etc) parties. We accept their biases (when we do) because we share them to some extent.
The case of bias in favor of a game publisher is a little more insidious, and is something that the game press will have to work out, and I suspect that it won't work itself out by eliminating the review. I suspect that certain reviewers (Ars, to name one) will gain greater acceptance as the rest of them keep shilling for bullshit. The same thing happened to the Democrats in the South. The south changed (beyond racism/segreation, which really only explain the first 10-15 years of that seismic shift), becoming more religious, individualistic and pro-business and the Democrats didn't adapt, so the south moved on to the republicans.
Reviews are meaningless. You can never rely on one man to be unbiased about a game, and one person's opinion doesn't give you anyinformation about your opinion.
Wait, Gamespot gave Twilight Princess less than 10?
KILL GERSTMANN!
There are 10 kinds of people in this world: those who understand binary, and nine other kinds of people.
Excellent commentary. 8/10
This guy's the limit!
At least, not as long as they still get free games, invitations to industry/P.R. parties and the occasional jackpot of free hardware.
What, you think everyone wants to be a reviewer because they have a passion for consumer advocacy?
Previews are not. They are almost universally useless, because usually they offer a lot more praise than the game deserves, so the review site can stay on the developer's or publisher's good side. Honestly, when I read reviews, I don't care too much about the good parts, I pay attention and seek out the things that make the game something I should avoid. If a demo is available, I will ignore all previews and reviews and play it myself. Its what I did with Indigo Prophecy (and I bought it too!) and the King Kong game(didn't buy it). It's what I did with Supreme Commander, Command & Conquer 3, and so on and so forth. Then again, in the absence of demos and presence of a high speed connection, I might actually download the game (yarr) to see if I should bother buying it when a demo is unavailable. If the game is terrible, uninstall and delete, if it's good, buy. Reviews are a great source of information for those who can't or choose not to see how a game is on their own (piracy or demos). They have a lot of life left in them.
So reading the conclusion of a review might indicate a game is worth trying out. BTW, can someone read the article for me and give a summary.
Thanks.
And i'm still waiting for dukenukem forever.
Reviews for games are like movie reviews. If you can find a reviewer(s) who have generally similar tastes, you will be able to judge a game with a fair degree of accuracy before you buy it. In addition without those rewiews, mega hit new games like God of War probably wouldnt be so big. I suspect a significant degree of its popularity came from people going to review sites and seeing the good reviews.
On the other end of the spectrum, how many more Final Fantasy fans would have bought Dirge of Cerebus had the reiwes not told us it was junk?
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
and I usually read multiple reviews of the same game to insure I get a better understanding of what its about, how it works, and how it doesn't work as it should.
So for me reviews are still warranted. If I cannot find a review I will rely on friends and if they don't have it I then wait for a demo. Reading usenet can help as well. Still its great to see pictures and read the reviewers take on gameplay. Sometimes even games I wanted that got decent reviews I ended up not purchasing because the game play was not what I was expecting..
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
No.
Getting the pirated product is easier than reading reviews about it.
'I'd much rather play Wii Sports [for example] then "Ghost Recon: Make Things Go Boom 2037 II Gold silver platnium edition."' [sic]
I would, too. However, I'm already pretty much sick of Wii Sports. If Wii Sports 2 had the same games with better graphics, it wouldn't interest me at all. The people who play GRMTGB2k372SPE and its sequels -are- interested in better, more realistic graphics each year. Why? Because immersion in that world means better graphics. Immersion for a Wii game means using the WiiMote as a object. They're just plain different, and meant for different people.
"Putting Wii games on the same scale as 360 games is just lame."
So you're thinking maybe Wii games should get letter grades or something, instead? Maybe you mean their scale should go to 11?
Wii games are not inherently more fun. I've had a lot more fun playing Samurai Warriors 2 Empires and Crackdown this last week than I had with Wario Ware Smooth Moves and Elebits. Both 360 games have got me wishing I could call in sick to work, where those 2 Wii games have me bored and regretting my purchase, respectively. Don't even get me started on Wii Play.
Don't get me wrong, I love my Wii. WiiSports Excite Truck, and Trauma Center: SO are excellent games. But the 360, PS2, DS, PC, etc, etc, all have good games as well.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
But it's not the one that's presented. Thinking that reviews can be replaced by trailers is just silly. Trailers are nothing more than ads, and don't really tell you much about what's going on. Neither do demos; even if we assumed that every game has one, oftentimes a demo is much worse or much better than the game that it represents. As for blog opinions, those in themselves are basically reviews, though usually not very good ones unless you have a good idea of the taste of whoever's writing them.
What goes a long way towards making reviews pointless is GameFAQs. No, not the reviews on there; they often suck. I mean the FAQs themselves. A good FAQ will tell you most of what you want to know about the game in great detail in the first few sections, often without spoiling the plot in the process. The only problem is that FAQs require time to be written, time that simple reviews don't need.
Rob
I use review quite simply: I'm looking for reviews of games I know and like - and choose people/sites who have rated games I like highly. And then check what else they have rated highly. That way I have found PC's "Rise of Nation", "Heroes of Annihilated Empires" and "City Life World Edition" - IMHO great games I enjoy and play, but most of high profile review sites have given them crappy/misplaced ratings.
E.g. http://wii.ign.com/ fits me perfectly. But on other side http://ds.ign.com/ - is U-turn in the respect: they gave lots of near-perferct marks to IMHO shit games (e.g. Mario, Partners in time) and underrated lots of games I have liked (e.g. Lost Magic). Reviews on ds.ign.com marked as "UK" are pretty O.K. and mostly fit me.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
Perhaps the Wii is less fun by yourself, but from my experience (and from the fact I'm a fat bastard) I'd rather dance around playing Smooth Moves or Wii Sports Bowling/Tennis (my favs) then sitting down with a controller playing an FPS. Wii kinda does need multiple peeps around to keep things interesting. More reason to invite the friends over.
As for the FPS being "realistic," let me explain realism to you. You get shot, you go down go boom. None of this "get a medkit, heal thyself" and carry on bullshit. That's realism. People want FANTASY, but they just want it to look real, not be realistic. And yeah, I know some FPSes are like that [CS for one] but most aren't.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Awesome, glad to see that Sony's PR department has at least changed tactics from "blatantly lieing in press releases to counteract bad reviews" to "trying to convince people that all those bad reviews don't matter."
Hopefully one day, they'll change tactics again to "making a reasonably priced product that people actually want to buy" to avoid all the bad press to begin with. Dodging bullets is a lot easier when there aren't any heading towards you.
Speaking of which despite all the good PR for Tiberium Wars, I will wait for reviews before buying it. I mean it is EA after all, can't be too careful.
I once subscribed on gaming magazines, how I am ashamed of that now.
The gaming scene sucks. Full of dumb kids who only care about how many FPS they get in CS, and always buy the latest hardware, even if they just replaced their graphics card a month ago, they buying a new one next month, even though its more than good enough.
Dumb gamers who buy anything gaming-marketed with the name "Fatal1ty" and some blinking LED lights.
And dumb reviewers who give a rating of 90%+ to most games.
Reviewers never games never get a low score in the magazines.
But they are less or more valuable depending on the person or on what they are about.
I find reviews of RPGs and action games helpful, especially when the reviewer knows their stuff pretty well and starts drawing comparisons with other games, because chances are I'll know at least a few of the other games the reviewer refers to.
But then for something like a fighting game, unless the reviewer is a dedicated fighting game player, I don't find the reviews useful because I know fighting games well and I know specifically what I like about fighting games. The review still has value to the person that just casually plays fighters just like RPG reviews have value for me as a casual RPG player.
1 (short ton / firkin) = 89.1432354 slugs / keg
I'd rather have fun. Wii Tennis is not fun solo, and it is fun multi-player. Wii Bowling is fun solo, and it is not fun multiplayer. I've played both ways on all the Wii Sports games. I'd still rather play Samurai Warriors 2 Empires. It's more fun for me. If they made a version that had the graphics of the 360 and the WiiMote of the Wii, they -might- make it a little more fun. (I'm not convinced the Wii can handle the graphics well enough yet.)
As for 'realistic'... Did you just see that word in my response and ignore everything else I said? My topic was immersion, not realism. Realism is not fun. If I wanted realism, I'd go outside. The only time I said 'realistic' was in 'realistic graphics', which has absolutely nothing to do with medkits and player health.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
trailers and screenshot can't tell you everything about a game, you can see the graphics, hear the music but you'll never know if the gameplay or the story are crappy and if you are concerned about the subjective view of the authors just go to gamestats to find all the review and score of a game.
Anyway what we need now are more videoreviews so you can really understand what they are speaking about
Sorry, i don't buy into the "graphics make the game" bit. The goal is to have fun, not be pixel accurate like RL or something.
Immersion comes from plot, gameplay, and objectives [among other things]. If the plot is linear, it's hard to get wrapped up in deciding what to do in the game. If the gameplay sucks, it's just frustrating and gathers dust. And if the objectives are near impossible (re: prince of persia) the game loses interest when you hit an impass for the 39th time.
Sure the graphics have to make sense, be clear, etc. But you pass a point where more polygons and more texture data don't really make the game any clearer. Remember that people were playing things like Stunts and Testdrive 3 with their glorious flatshade polygons long before graphics became half-way realistic.
I dunno, having played both the 360 and the Wii, I'd say I'd rather have the Wii any day and twice on Sunday. The 360 is just an overgrown xbox. Same games, just shinier. Comparing them on the same scale is just really nonsensical.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Wait are we by chance individually reviewing an article reviewing reviews?
Hmm... yes, I think so, my Ironoscope just exploded.
I never felt the immersion in the old Testdrive games. Part of it was that the controls and feel weren't real enough, but mostly it was looking at the 'flatshade polygons'. I liked games back then, and they were great fun. They just didn't have the immersion. I never felt like I was driving the car or walking where the character was walking. It was always me telling an on-screen object what to do.
Today's 360 and PC games look realistic enough that I often feel like I'm really there. Like watching a movie. Try to get an average adult to watch a movie with 'flatshade polygons' used instead of live actors and scenes. You'd probably have to pay them a fair amount to sit through it.
The Wii gets around the graphics issue by presenting a different kind of immersion. Instead of telling an on-screen character what to do, you simply do it yourself, and the on-screen character mimicks you.
They both create immersion in different ways.
As for the 'scale' issue... You've now said it twice. So I ask, What scale should the Wii be on? If you honestly think the Wii scale should be out of 20 instead of out of 10 or some such, you are simply a fanboy. There is no sense in that, other than to say 'our scale is bigger, nyeh!' If you are saying the scale should not be based on how good/bad the game is, but some other quality... Why? Basing it on anything else is worthless, as the consumer only cares how good the game is. (Good/bad covers a LOT of ground, and you'd have to get pretty far off-base to find a quality that isn't covered by it.)
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
3.5 Clippys out of 5.
A well-written article always has a place. Most Bloggers are not journalists nor can they write. Anything beyond a two-paragraph "I stumbled on this thing and it's cool" reads like a secondary school writing assignement. There are examples, yes. But they don't replace actual journalism and articles written by people who know how to write.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
If the reviewer is Zonk, the review is total unmitigated crap. Most other reviews are at least passable in comparison.
In my experience the quality of reviews is inversely proportional to the number of advertisements in the magazine or on the website. I use reviews as a reference. I think it's a problem that reviewers are sometimes blatantly biased with overly positive reviews because they're so desperate for insider information. It's even worse when some like IGN, like to gloat about having gotten their hands on something weeks before any consumer.
Another problem is that these reviewers are rarely paying themselves for the product they're reviewing. That's important, because if something turns out to not be very good it's not their loss anyway. It makes them more tolerant of problems. The only time they do get critical is when the maker of the product is a relative unknown. It's like those reviews only exist to give the reader a pretense of impartiality.
For this reason I never let my opinion be swayed by any one review. And when it's a more significant item I do extensive research, going to as many sources as possible, including forums.
Games, however, are a relatively minor expense. Normally I've already made my decision about purchasing a game even before I've read a review. I know what I like and that's enough for me. I don't much care for the latest popular releases, the latest over-hyped games from EA and the like. No amount of reviews will change that for me because I already know I wont like the game. And I'm especially skeptical of those reviews anyway.
I do read reviews on a regular basis. They do provide a general sense of what to expect. But ultimately it's important to be able to think for yourself and not get suckered by marketing.
These days I tend to assume that any professionally done game review that appears in a magazine, is just marketing. The reviewers seem preconditioned to write mostly positive reviews about every game they review (with perhaps a negative review of some utterly unimportant and uninteresting title thrown in to make them look like responsible reviewers). Its often hard to find a review that seems to report the facts as they are, rather than as the Sales Dept of the developer would like them to read.
Now, online isn't much better. If the reviewer got paid to do the review, it probably isn't accurate. These people get shipped the game, or a beta of it etc, so that they can do a review. If the reviews start getting too negative - the developer will stop shipping the demos to them and they can't continue to do reviews. This pretty much ensures that most reviews won't be as scathing as they might have deserved.
Now, there are tons of bloggers out there writing their opinions on things. The problem with them is simply that a) most can't write their way out of a paper bag, and b) Most have no intention of being objective (the point of a blog is to get attention right? so you have to be a bit more extreme to garner that attention, or so I assume in a lot of cases). I don't rely on blogs much either.
My reviews tend to come from online forums and from actually playing the demo/beta myself if I can. Now, those are hardly bastions of impartiality either, but I have years of experience in separating the wheat from the chaff on various MMORPG forums, and I can often get a reasonable view of a game's problems and positive points. Forum trolls are hardly reluctant to point out weaknesses in games after all.
Mostly, I just no longer buy PC games. I play a few MMORPGs and thats usually it, and I think a lot of folks might be following the same trend. I think the games industry has brought this on themselves by releasing poorly designed titles and by stifling reviews that are negative.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
You mean they are still making games post-World of Warcraft??? I'm going have to check this out! Oh wait...need to grind out 1000 more gold for my elite mount.
I think game reviews are useful...I just go to multiple sources. I like Game Informer just because I like to know what games are coming out and what they look like. I generally agree with their reviews as well...but it never hurts to look at what other people think.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
Reviews are still a useful tool in considering a purchase, but they should not be the end all decision maker. But what one has to remember is that these guys are reviewing what can be compared to art in some ways. Everybody has different taste, gets different levels of enjoyment from different games. Flame wars often occur over a preference of games, and this often demonstrates the difference of tastes (and lack of spelling) that exists in the gaming realm.
Reviews are very useful for determining frustrating issues, such as sloppy controls, lousy camera angles, and bad story translations and speeling. The best reviews are able to draw similarites to other existing games, thus relating the content or style of a game while not confusing the reader with his or her personal taste. I'm rather stingy with my money, but some reviews (mostly at ign.com) have turned me on to games I might otherwise have never known, but throughly enjoyed (Altier Iris series for example).
PC Games you can often easily demo, but not so frequently with many console games. Thus console game reviews are more useful then PC Games reviews.
-Never trust a skinny cook
Reviews are useful, if they are done properly. The problem today is that they aren't. The second opinion piece made a very insightful point I feel must be quoted.
Today's reviews, or the majority thereof, are not reviews. They are reports, telling us with slightly greater detail and pretty screenshots what the game is. We do not get thorough evaluations, deep inspection of possible flaws, or effective comparisons between similar excursions. You could easily make a checklist containing 95% of the content of reviews, with some tailoring to specific consoles and platforms.
These "reviews" are not useful to anyone. A hardcore gamer will scoff at the lack of detail and simply download the demo or look up user reviews. A casual gamer will only need to know what kind of game it is and a few screenshots, the review itself doesn't affect them. A non-gamer won't likely know a thing about the genre the review is talking about, and the review won't bring them into "the know".
In short, the inherent problem is that we are being presented the opinion of someone we don't know without the details required to properly apply it to our own tastes. We get very vague understandings of the fun the reviewer did or did not have, with statements such as "the controls felt sloppy" or "the art style didn't stick with me" our only morsels of information. These tibdits are open doors ignored by reviewers. How were the controls sticky? Why didn't the art style have enduring value?
There is something to be said for brevity, but that is what "The Good" and "The Bad" sections of some reviews are for. If you're going to write a full bodied review spanning multiple pages, give us something more to glean than those summaries. Tell us that Ninja Gaiden's controls were awesome because you "felt like a ninja", because they were "responsive on a dime, and were easy to manipulate", because "it's difficult to do things right, but once you learn it's ninja time", because "the combat system in combination with the reponsive controls, map to a system that flows as smoothly as possible, although it takes some time to become a master ninja". Don't take all of that and summarize it in "the controls were good". Those ideas may roam free and meander around, but pinning down all of that into an informative piece is what a reviewer must do.
In example: The controls for the Ninja Gaiden Xbox excel in making you feel like an actual ninja. They are highly responsive, and deceptively simple. It's very easy to begin running around and making like a ninja. This belies the complexity of the combat system, which can be somewhat trying to master given the difficulty of the game. However, as the button combinations and tactics become ingrained in the player, the distinct feeling of being a badass master ninja will pervade the experience from then on.
Is it a perfect example? No. Could there be more detail? Yes. Would I want more detail? Probably. However, that there appears to be a systemic problem achieving even that much detail vexes me greatly.
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!
That's why it's important to get to know the reviewers. It's like any other product. I have friends whose opinions I trust, because I know what they like and dis-like. I think there's a good analogy with movie reviews as well. Many people follow the reviews of folks like Ebert & Roeper, because they find that their tastes are similar. On the other hand, I know folks that do the opposite. ("If Ebert hated it, then it MUST be good!") The same should be with game reviews. I actually find that listening to podcasts from the gaming press (such as 1UP and GameSpot) is helpful, since you very quickly get an idea as to what style of game each person likes, and inevitably you will find either attracted or indifferent to certain people's opinions.
-- jchenx
A review, when done properly, is always useful. While most reviews you find in an average magazine are generally either advertising, or inflated, the best reviews are from those who do an in-depth analysis of multiple games (i.e. at least play it to completion, and making notes at the same time.)
Also, an ideal review minimizes the amount of emotion within the review. If you don't like the game, just say you don't like it - otherwise you've just made two pages of filler.
If you have to, try building up a list of known flaws within games (whether it's with graphics, gameplay, the AI, etc.) and see how well a game you are reviewing stacks up against this listing. While this is entirely mechanical reviewing method, it doesn't make it any less effective than what's going around on the market.
The public that I speak is the people who won't read a review, but just look at a score. These are the reason reviews can even be considered "obsolete". The fact that when people say "how is XXX" and you tell them, they are getting a review is lost on them. Instead from a review most times they look for a number and so on.
p gives the average scores for publications, yet most people don't even look at this. There's always someone who claims a 7.0 is a good score because it's above the average score and it just shows how little people think when they read a review.
Personally I choose to read IGN's reviews because they not only have numbers but they're willing to show you where their 9.1 came from, then you can decide if those are factors you care or don't care enough about to get the game.
But because of those people who only care about the 9.1 or the 8.5 or the 5.0 is why reviews seem worthless.
The other problem is people who don't realize 5.0 is NOT an average score. If I give a 9.1 and 8.5 and a 5.0 to three different games the 8.5 is closer to an average score. http://www.gamerankings.com/itemrankings/sites.as
What kind of silly question is this? If you haven't had a chance to play a game for yourself, and you don't know anyone who has it, and you don't want to risk wasting your money on a product you won't enjoy, then you'll turn to a review for some guidance. Even if you completely ignore the reviewers opinion of the game, and the score that it receives, you can still learn a lot about how the game plays just from the content of the review, and that could be enough to tell you if it's the style of game that you're looking for. Why would anyone propose that reviews no longer serve a purpose?
This looks like a cry for publicity.
I find reviews tend to reflect the bias of the reviewer more than the aspects of the game itself. I believe an aggregate site (e.g. Metacritic) that collates a number of scores and provides an average is much more accurate.
You also have the option of reading each closing comment of each site to see if there are consistencies in what each review reports, such as if there are flaws in camera or if they mostly praise a great control setup.
.. is the way the Retro Gamer magazine articles on "Why you must play ..........."
What they do is gve a detailed break down of the what gameplay elements are used in the game, and how those work to enhance the gaming experience and make it an enjoyable experience. Also they give some history of how they game came to be and the situation of the gaming market it was released into.
As the games mentioned are not being sold in retail stores, there is no $$$ coercion factor that you get with current games.
I've tried several of the games and have discovered some worthwhile divertions of my time.
Cheers
See my art -> http://herbevore.deviantart.com
As a future (read: aspiring) videogame reviewer myself, I wanted to thank all current and future comment contributors to this thread. It is the duty of every publication to serve its audience. It's good journalism, and good business sense as well. Every person commenting here who cites a problem with current videogame reviews shows that there is a disconnect between that audience (you) and those publications, and I for one will not let that disconnect go unnoticed. I plan to improve the state of reviews, starting with my own and hopefully inspiring others by example. Therefore, I've saved the current comments to this thread, and will return in one week to do so again, collecting more recent comments. I'll then integrate their ideas into my future reviews, to better serve you all. IMHO, reviews serve an incredibly important purpose, that of informing consumers not as information-savvy as all you /. readers as to which games are worth the money and which should be best avoided. For those who have the time and interest to track new games as they are developed, they are perhaps not as important... but I for one will not purchase a game without reading the review of at least one reviewer I trust.
- Sean Hollister