By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - Website Topics - Game database reviews - how should we do it?

You can go to gamespot and get the critic scores. This one is for Heavenly Sword.
http://www.gamespot.com/ps3/action/heavenlysword/review.html?mode=web&om_act=convert&om_clk=gssummary&tag=summary;theysay



PSN ID: getrdone25

Around the Network
kn said:
There are too many reviewers out there. I think there are a handful or so that everyone can agree generally do a good job. I think the specific ones like OXM, PSM, etc. shouldn't be used... IGN, Gamespot, Edge, Play, Game Informer, and a couple of others. That would be "industry reviews" I would also like a "user reviews" as well.

The problem with user reviews is people just put in random stuff as a fanboy and say Oh Boyz Dis Game is da booooooomb 10+++. Insead of allowing that, create 4 or 5 categories with radio buttons on them. Say Graphics, Gameplay, Story, Sound, Control. 1-5 buttons. Also REQUIRE a short paragraph describing the review -- some minimum number of words to force the person to think about their review and then 2 boxes that must be filled in for both pluses and minuses. That way people won't just jump in head first. Allow the mods to delete obvious flamebait and crap where people just put random rubbish into the database.

I'd be happy to be a mod to help on this one as I have quite a few recent titles for the 360 and have played a bunch. I'd both enter reviews and grab the data from other sites as I enjoy reading other reviews...

Great idea, but you can't have a story category for multiplayer games, I would say these should be the categories

Graphics

Sound

Gameplay

Lasting Appeal

Story adds to the gameplay, and IGN uses presentation, but I am not entirely sure what this really means 



add me

I think this site's value prosition is in the predictions league, games / console sales, sales news, and forums.

The games database is nice, but it is only a "tack on" feature unless you intend on becoming bigger then metacritic and gamerankings. I think user game reviews are fine, but they should be critiqued by mods so that you don't get in some sort of legal battle when, one of the big three sues you because one of the competitors wrote a crappy review on your site and then posted it through N4G or some sort of other aggregator site... Gamespot has a really good user review area with pie charts and review text...

I think more time should be spent on the predictions league and being able to run crazy queries like comparing game sales histories to each other on graphs over time based on hardware consoles available to sell to and such...

The sales related news is pretty limited on this site. It would be great if more effort was given to post news about things that will effect sales and analyst comments and such.

Also, the predictions league is a great interactive feature. It provides people a way to put up or shut up about their thoughts on sales and creates an ongoing visitation requirement if you want to be in the top predictors...

Also, the forums are where you have the best results I think right now... They are strongly enforced and require most people to be polite at the very least. But, it would also be nice to have a better forum structure that allows you to find forums a bit easier. This would reduce the number of threads and redundancy... (I can't tell you how many threads talked about 40 Gb PS lately... Too many... Same with Halo3 when it was releasing... And Metroid Prime 3, And now Ratchet & Clank review and sales threads are out of control.)

And Finally what about RSS feeds to tell you when forums are updated or new sales data is in?

All would probably add more value then trying to out do other review sites...



Just copy the numbers directly from Gamerankings and Metacritic.  There is no need to triplicate the work.

I can't imagine they would have a problem with it, but in case they do, you could link to each one and I'm sure that would be acceptable, as people could go to those sites to see the individual review scores.

 



We don't provide the 'easy to program for' console that they [developers] want, because 'easy to program for' means that anybody will be able to take advantage of pretty much what the hardware can do, so the question is what do you do for the rest of the nine and half years? It's a learning process. - SCEI president Kaz Hirai

It's a virus where you buy it and you play it with your friends and they're like, "Oh my God that's so cool, I'm gonna go buy it." So you stop playing it after two months, but they buy it and they stop playing it after two months but they've showed it to someone else who then go out and buy it and so on. Everyone I know bought one and nobody turns it on. - Epic Games president Mike Capps

We have a real culture of thrift. The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games. - Activision CEO Bobby Kotick

 

I say there are two options. You can reuse the gamerankings data (Easy and boring) or we could be more descriminating. I know that gamerankings weighs scores but I would like a composite of 5 or so sites. No fanboys sites or console specific stuff. Let it be more difficult with lower scores. I think this owuld provide a different function than gamerankings. Posters often quote only a couple sources and it would be valuable to have that data on the site.

Famitsu

Edge

IGN

jeux france

We don't just take any sales data, why should we accept any review?



Final* Word on Game Delays:

The game will not be any better or include more content then planned. Any commnets that say so are just PR hogwash to make you feel better for having to wait.

Delays are due to lack of proper resources, skill, or adequate planning by the developer.

Do be thankful that they have enough respect for you to delay the game and maintain its intended level of quality.

*naznatips is exempt

Around the Network

@dshumm, you need more than that. I would certainly include gamespot, eurogamer and gamespy



add me

Gamingrankings and Metacritics should be the two top ones IMO.



Famitsu is not a valuable review source. They are way too positive in their reviews and shouldn't be counted in an average. I suggest using just Gamerankings. They filter the crap sites better than Metacritic does, and they give relatively accurate reviews.



Whatever is chosen is fine with me. However, if you include only a handful of professional sites/mags, do not include Game Informer. You should only include sources with some integrity, which GI lacks.



"I feel like I could take on the whole Empire myself."

Munkeh said:
@dshumm, you need more than that. I would certainly include gamespot, eurogamer and gamespy
  Oh yeah, more than 4 definitely and your suggestions are all good. Those are just 4 I would like added.    My point was that I ddon't think this site should be as inclusive of all reviews, just as we are decriminating with sales data.

 



Final* Word on Game Delays:

The game will not be any better or include more content then planned. Any commnets that say so are just PR hogwash to make you feel better for having to wait.

Delays are due to lack of proper resources, skill, or adequate planning by the developer.

Do be thankful that they have enough respect for you to delay the game and maintain its intended level of quality.

*naznatips is exempt