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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Respectable Reviwers?

griffinA on 03 February 2010
MontanaHatchet said:
Millennium said:
If you want respectable reviews, skip directly to the User Reviews section of any site, toss out the ones with obvious bias, and draw conclusions from the rest. Do not trust ANY professional reviewer this generation: every last one of them has fallen to bias, one way or another, and that makes them all worthless.

This is the kind of attitude that has completely ruined the review system. Not even the reviews themselves (although they're a big part). Of course reviewers are going to be biased. Everyone is. Even those people writing those precious user reviews. Reviewers may be bad sometimes, but I actually trust them more than consumers much of the time.

A lot of "I don't trust this or that" is because gamers no longer want to accept review scores. They don't want a site to tell them that the game they've wanted to play for months or even years is average. So, they just say that the site is unreliable. It's the spoiled attitude gamers have gotten this generation, and it gets more severe all the time. 

That said, my most trusted review source is Vgchartz. It's the only one where I actually bother to remember any of the reviewer's names or what they say.

Not many people on the internet have much consistency. People are just reaping what they sew when they said things like "Wii Sports sucks because it got a bad Metacritic score." If that is your justification for judging a game's quality then you have no right to argue with the system when a particular game you like gets a bad score.

I agree with you that the people whining about the low scores are just whiners but I disagree about trusting "professional" video game reviewers more than user reviews. If everyone has their own bias, then you should trust the guy that just dropped $60 of his hard earned money to buy the game.



"Pier was a chef, a gifted and respected chef who made millions selling his dishes to the residents of New York City and Boston, he even had a famous jingle playing in those cities that everyone knew by heart. He also had a restaurant in Los Angeles, but not expecting LA to have such a massive population he only used his name on that restaurant and left it to his least capable and cheapest chefs. While his New York restaurant sold kobe beef for $100 and his Boston restaurant sold lobster for $50, his LA restaurant sold cheap hotdogs for $30. Initially these hot dogs sold fairly well because residents of los angeles were starving for good food and hoped that the famous name would denote a high quality, but most were disappointed with what they ate. Seeing the success of his cheap hot dogs in LA, Pier thought "why bother giving Los Angeles quality meats when I can oversell them on cheap hotdogs forever, and since I don't care about the product anyways, why bother advertising them? So Pier continued to only sell cheap hotdogs in LA and was surprised to see that they no longer sold. Pier's conclusion? Residents of Los Angeles don't like food."

"The so-called "hardcore" gamer is a marketing brainwashed, innovation shunting, self-righteous idiot who pays videogame makers far too much money than what is delivered."

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Barozi on 03 February 2010
MontanaHatchet said:
Millennium said:
If you want respectable reviews, skip directly to the User Reviews section of any site, toss out the ones with obvious bias, and draw conclusions from the rest. Do not trust ANY professional reviewer this generation: every last one of them has fallen to bias, one way or another, and that makes them all worthless.

This is the kind of attitude that has completely ruined the review system. Not even the reviews themselves (although they're a big part). Of course reviewers are going to be biased. Everyone is. Even those people writing those precious user reviews. Reviewers may be bad sometimes, but I actually trust them more than consumers much of the time.

A lot of "I don't trust this or that" is because gamers no longer want to accept review scores. They don't want a site to tell them that the game they've wanted to play for months or even years is average. So, they just say that the site is unreliable. It's the spoiled attitude gamers have gotten this generation, and it gets more severe all the time. 

That said, my most trusted review source is Vgchartz. It's the only one where I actually bother to remember any of the reviewer's names or what they say.

pretty much this except for the last part.

 

I think Gametrailers is the most unbiased source for reviews.

I also like IGN, although they are most likely too high with every of their scores. But that's not too bad.

VGC is fair for the most parts, but when I see GOTYs getting a score well below 9.0 I'm in doubt.....



Moren on 03 February 2010

I "somehow" trust ign..... but my really review site is gametrailers



haxxiy on 03 February 2010

IGN and gametrailers are good enough. Most other reviewers are blatantly biased, but to be fair, whose review isn't. You can't simply judge a game by sheer technical prowess alone, there will be always something more affecting it.



 

 

 

 

 

Barozi on 03 February 2010
griffinA said:
MontanaHatchet said:
Millennium said:
If you want respectable reviews, skip directly to the User Reviews section of any site, toss out the ones with obvious bias, and draw conclusions from the rest. Do not trust ANY professional reviewer this generation: every last one of them has fallen to bias, one way or another, and that makes them all worthless.

This is the kind of attitude that has completely ruined the review system. Not even the reviews themselves (although they're a big part). Of course reviewers are going to be biased. Everyone is. Even those people writing those precious user reviews. Reviewers may be bad sometimes, but I actually trust them more than consumers much of the time.

A lot of "I don't trust this or that" is because gamers no longer want to accept review scores. They don't want a site to tell them that the game they've wanted to play for months or even years is average. So, they just say that the site is unreliable. It's the spoiled attitude gamers have gotten this generation, and it gets more severe all the time. 

That said, my most trusted review source is Vgchartz. It's the only one where I actually bother to remember any of the reviewer's names or what they say.

Not many people on the internet have much consistency. People are just reaping what they sew when they said things like "Wii Sports sucks because it got a bad Metacritic score." If that is your justification for judging a game's quality then you have no right to argue with the system when a particular game you like gets a bad score.

I agree with you that the people whining about the low scores are just whiners but I disagree about trusting "professional" video game reviewers more than user reviews. If everyone has their own bias, then you should trust the guy that just dropped $60 of his hard earned money to buy the game.

If I have the choice I trust the guy who has enough gaming knowledge and can rate games objectively and not some guy who bought the game for $60 and then sells it after 1 hour of gameplay because he doesn't like the beginning. Those people are also extremely biased and either try to justify their purchase by praising the game (although they didn't like it as much) or by smashing the game because they think it wasn't worth their $60 even though the game wasn't half bad, they just expected something different. I'm not sure who suffers more. That guy who bought and then sold the crappy game and wasted some money but gets a refund or the guy who is forced to play it from the beginning to the end even though he hates it.

Either way it's unfair to attack reviewers, because everyone is biased in a certain way as Monti already said.



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CommonMan on 03 February 2010

I agree with a lot of what IGN says in their reviews personally, but their scores can get a little out of hand (see the perfect 10's of this gen, fer realz?)



No one in the world ever gets what they want, and that is beautiful.

red_dragon on 03 February 2010

I think the crew at Giantbomb do a great job (Jeff Gertsmann, Ryan Davis and Brad Shoemaker). They also go into more detail about the games they play on their podcast.



Just want to play good games

griffinA on 03 February 2010
Barozi said:
griffinA said:
MontanaHatchet said:
Millennium said:
If you want respectable reviews, skip directly to the User Reviews section of any site, toss out the ones with obvious bias, and draw conclusions from the rest. Do not trust ANY professional reviewer this generation: every last one of them has fallen to bias, one way or another, and that makes them all worthless.

This is the kind of attitude that has completely ruined the review system. Not even the reviews themselves (although they're a big part). Of course reviewers are going to be biased. Everyone is. Even those people writing those precious user reviews. Reviewers may be bad sometimes, but I actually trust them more than consumers much of the time.

A lot of "I don't trust this or that" is because gamers no longer want to accept review scores. They don't want a site to tell them that the game they've wanted to play for months or even years is average. So, they just say that the site is unreliable. It's the spoiled attitude gamers have gotten this generation, and it gets more severe all the time. 

That said, my most trusted review source is Vgchartz. It's the only one where I actually bother to remember any of the reviewer's names or what they say.

Not many people on the internet have much consistency. People are just reaping what they sew when they said things like "Wii Sports sucks because it got a bad Metacritic score." If that is your justification for judging a game's quality then you have no right to argue with the system when a particular game you like gets a bad score.

I agree with you that the people whining about the low scores are just whiners but I disagree about trusting "professional" video game reviewers more than user reviews. If everyone has their own bias, then you should trust the guy that just dropped $60 of his hard earned money to buy the game.

If I have the choice I trust the guy who has enough gaming knowledge and can rate games objectively and not some guy who bought the game for $60 and then sells it after 1 hour of gameplay because he doesn't like the beginning. Those people are also extremely biased and either try to justify their purchase by praising the game (although they didn't like it as much) or by smashing the game because they think it wasn't worth their $60 even though the game wasn't half bad, they just expected something different. I'm not sure who suffers more. That guy who bought and then sold the crappy game and wasted some money but gets a refund or the guy who is forced to play it from the beginning to the end even though he hates it.

Either way it's unfair to attack reviewers, because everyone is biased in a certain way as Monti already said.

Bolded seems contradictory to me.

 

Look, both a User Reviewer and a "professional" reviewer are just giving their opinion about the game. What's wrong with a customer saying "Hey I actually think Demon Souls didn't deserve the praise it got, I think it was more of an average game"?



"Pier was a chef, a gifted and respected chef who made millions selling his dishes to the residents of New York City and Boston, he even had a famous jingle playing in those cities that everyone knew by heart. He also had a restaurant in Los Angeles, but not expecting LA to have such a massive population he only used his name on that restaurant and left it to his least capable and cheapest chefs. While his New York restaurant sold kobe beef for $100 and his Boston restaurant sold lobster for $50, his LA restaurant sold cheap hotdogs for $30. Initially these hot dogs sold fairly well because residents of los angeles were starving for good food and hoped that the famous name would denote a high quality, but most were disappointed with what they ate. Seeing the success of his cheap hot dogs in LA, Pier thought "why bother giving Los Angeles quality meats when I can oversell them on cheap hotdogs forever, and since I don't care about the product anyways, why bother advertising them? So Pier continued to only sell cheap hotdogs in LA and was surprised to see that they no longer sold. Pier's conclusion? Residents of Los Angeles don't like food."

"The so-called "hardcore" gamer is a marketing brainwashed, innovation shunting, self-righteous idiot who pays videogame makers far too much money than what is delivered."

Boutros on 03 February 2010

I mostly tend to agree a lot more with IGN.

Gamespot is sometimes totally off with some of their reviews and that's why I don't trust them anymore. I used to though some years ago but the Kane and Lynch incident disgusted me.

And there's vgchartz of course which is good.



Twistedpixel on 03 February 2010

If a game has a huge marketing push, subtract some points. If its hardly marketed add some points. I suspect a significant reason for low Wii game scores is a lack of marketing, which makes the Wii games merely reflect a true indication of their quality, whereas the overflated HD games have a lot of marketing and that increases the shill factor.

See there have been a lot of complaints about MAG scores recently. Don't blame the reviewers, blame Sony for not marketing the game significantly and having the score be a truer reflection of the games quality. Don't worry, games like Mass Effect 2, Heavy Rain and God of War 3 will get/have had enough marketing dollars thrown at them to get a high score.

Im not saying that the games suck, im just saying that in a realistic world they would not have been given as high a rating. The movie industry doesn't do this because people don't look to metacritic for movie reviews nearly as much as game reviews and word of mouth/marketing directly to the public rules the day here.

Oh just so I don't appear biased, but given Microsofts intentions to heavily market Alan Wake, Crackdown 2 and co-market Splinter Cell: Conviction, they will all probably be 90+ games unless they have obvious and significant flaws. So between Microsoft and Sony, its not a race for 90+ games based on quality, its all about who can turn the review industry into bigger whores.

 



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