Against the grain: When do our expectations end?

[Conegamer]

Immortal said:

Conegamer said:

Immortal said:

The gaming industry should do away with reviews, :P. Everybody seems to hate them, xD.

Anyway, I really don't know if gamers can change right now; when you're in a recession without a job, every fifty dollar bill counts. You can't just buy a title that has even the slightest chance of being below par. That would be a complete waste, and considering how long you'll have to wait till you save enough for another video game, experimenting with a <90 Metacritic game isn't worth it, especially since there's always lots of higher rated games left to play.

Not that that's the case with me, :P. I'm definitely not monetarily constrained and I could care less what some silly reviewers who don't even give every Pokemon/DQ game perfect by default have to say about a game, xD.

This is very true. Although I live in the UK, and £50 notes are very rare!

But yeah, reviews are not to blame. I feel as though, maybe, reviews should have no score. Far, far too many people just see the score and think (not buying that) or vice-versa, and then they won't buy the game, or buy a supposedly good game, and not like it, because they didn't read the actual text to se if they'd like it.

My suggestion isn't that we should scrap reviews, but that they should be written, and the best reviews promoted. This way, people won't just read the score at the end, and they can therefore make a more informed decision on what to spend their hard-earned cash on

That's actually a pretty good idea. It would also increase average gamer literacy, xD.

The problem is, though, that the review sites care more about hits than anything else, something that we can't blame them for doing. And hits will increase if many people are offended/excited by the review. Since the writing won't necessarily reflect how good the game is but just its strong and weak points, nothing will be controversial. That means fewer hits for them. No way they'll agree to that.

Yes, but hits don't mean anything. Perhaps being paid a regular sum of money for each reviewed game, be it positive or negative, would get around this issue. This would also mean more shovelware gets reviewed, showing how poor it is, so less people buy them.

Sounds like a plan!