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Khuutra on 14 June 2012
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fillet said:


So basically you're saying reviews are worthless and we'd be better off without them. You're creative utopia where everyone can discern a person's opinion (the reviewer) and transfer that information into useful personal information (what that exactly is, would be a mystery to me) all the while treating that information as being simply one persons's view and using it successfully to make a decision on a purchase, does not exist.

Quite honestly, I'm sick and tired of reading people's points of view that sound like yours. In the "old days" when we bought magazines like "Sega Power" in the 90s we read a review and bought a game based on the review, 9 times out of 10 the review was spot on. It gave a clear buy this or don't buy this.

Your view basically makes reviews next to useless.

I'll pin you on this and ask what exactly is a review for then?

I realise my tone's a little aggresive but hey this needs resolving, your someone who has been on vgchartz a fair old while, you have a very neutral fair post histroy and you're definately not an insane fanboy so I'm very curious to hear your view on "the old days" of reviews, vs the reviews of today, which I appreciate are a load of rubbish.

But that's MY point, they are rubbish because they have become "subjective opinion", instead of a damn good indicator on a if a game is worth buying. Something that you seem to support!?

dodece makes a very clear and correct argument imo. I fully agree and always have done with that opinion. People these days keep seeing games as some kind of subjective art form. Absolute rubbish, games have artistic content but their overall purpose isn't to tantalise the senses, it's to provide entertainment. Entertainment as in FUN or not FUN.

There's nothing subjective there, except it you don't like a particular type of fun, i.e - GENRE, in which case that would be clear from the review and a prospective purchaser would be well aware if the review they were reading was for a J-RPG or an FPS.

No, see, I thought reviews in the 90's were primarily horrible. Christ, have you ever read the old EarthBound reviews? A non-stop travesty.

Fun is subjective.

Back in the mid-to-late 90's I read a lot of IGN reviews, and I became familiar with a few of the reviewers in particular. Some of them I disagreed with - a lot! One of them, I think Peer Schneider, I thought his stuff was pretty on-the-ball. I did better by listening to his reviews.

No single review is going to be perfect. Even in a review where I disagree with the writer, I can usually pick out elements of a game that I think will be good for me or not.

The purpose of a review is to lay out what a reviewer liked or did not like about a game and why. That's it. Proper communications of a reviewer's values will let the reader know if those values will appeal to them or not.