By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
Rainbird on 21 March 2010
Edit Thread
Kantor said:
Rainbird said:
Kantor said:
rocketpig said:
Kantor said:
rocketpig said:

Meh. People may complain about movie reviews but I'd rather see a critic have the balls to say "I didn't like Apocalypse Now and this is why" instead of blindly awarding the movie with a 9 or better because everyone else thinks it's great.

That would require the existence of a critic who didn't like Apocalypse Now. A reviewer isn't going to pretend to hate the game and list all sorts of potential problems when he actually loves it, just for the sake of standing out. That's known as hit-whoring.

EXACTLY.

There were "critics" who hated Pulp Fiction. There were "critics" who hated Blade Runner. There were "critics" who hated Love Story. There were critics who hate everything about different forms of media.

At least they gave their opinions.

So the only way to succeed as a critic is to have a controversial opinion?

No, if you want to be a good critic, you should give your real opinion, and not be afraid of what people might think about it. I'm not a fan of Pulp Fiction, and no amount of praise, fanboy threats and whatnot will ever tell me that I'm wrong, just like no critic should be affected by it. Not for movies and not for games.

So then, shouldn't it work the other way around? For example, I loved the Pink Panther movie. Other people hated it. I don't care. I loved Big Momma's House 2. I loved Yu-Gi-Oh: Duelists of the Roses and Lego: Rock Raiders.

A critic's job is to give an objective description of the game, along with their own opinion on why things work or don't work. When people complain about a great game getting a low score, 9/10 times it's because the review is shit, full of fanboyism, and completely ignoring huge parts of the game.

The written review might be shit, but unless the critic didn't play through the game, then he is still entitled to his opinion, which can frankly be anything he wants it to be. If you don't like the review, disregard it. The reviewer gave you the points they thought were relevant, and if you know that those points are irrelevant to you, then read another review that focuses on other points of interest. 

That's not to say there aren't "corrupt" reviews out there (or bad or console biased or whatever you want to call them), but people blow it out of proportion. If I were to review say MGS2, I would probably give it a 6 or 7 (going by the Eurogamer/EDGE/Boomtown scale), because I didn't like the game, but I still see what it does right and what it does wrong. Would people be crying foul? Many would. Does that make me wrong, even if my written review is shite? Not at all, it just means I made a bad review.