game reviews

[Don]

Sometimes I wonder if professional (whatever that means now) game reviews are even useful. I think in the last 5 years the only review that I've read that I couldn't have figured out without playing the game was FF14 and DOTP 15, and that's probably because both games are so bad people felt compelled to put things like 'DON'T BUY THIS GAME' instead of the usual blurb. Otherwise, I bet you can write something that scans a message board and pick out some random points and then write a review about a game you've never played, as long as you've a reference guide of what a game like this historically gets in rating.

And while I know reviews never have been that reliable for anything, it seems like people write these professional review in such generic terms to avoid upsetting devs that they're literally meaningless. For example I bought Advanced Tactics Gold earlier, and it'd have helped if any of the reviews mentioned the fact that selecting your unit is a painful process which kind of matters a lot in a strategy game. There should at least be some Wildstar reviews that say 'The tutorial sucks so don't buy this game', because the tutorial in Wildstar is unbelievably bad and if you're a reviewer you should let people know this. If you're reviewing a spreadsheet strategy game you should let people know that unless you like playing with spreadsheet you shouldn't get this game. It doesn't matter if you, the reviewer, don't mind these things. I'm finding it more useful to read random message boards rants because at least based on what people like/dislike you can get an idea of what the game's strong/weak points are, instead of a generic blurb that just glosses over key things.

[Shrinweck]

I've been getting PC Gamer in magazine form since.. I wanna say 1998 or 1999 and I read it from cover to cover most months (bathroom reading). While for major games I would say I haven't been swayed by a review in something like a decade, every once in a while they review an indie or low to medium budget title that I had no idea existed until I read the review.

If I'm nervous about buying a game these days (and it has been out for more than a couple months), I'll usually mosey my way down to the Steam forums for the particular game. Broken games are VERY evident. If most of the threads months down the line still are about bugs and balance difficulties then I just pass on the game. I often don't even feel the need to open the threads.


And what about the tutorial in Wildstar is bad other than it's mind numbingly boring and can't be skipped? And the tutorial doesn't even comprise a tenth of a percent of the content in that game is probably why it doesn't get mentioned in reviews. No one really cares about something that takes 10-20 minutes and potentially only needs to be done once when you're potentially dropping several hundred hours into a game. It explains how to play the game well enough that I've never really seen anyone complain about how well it... tutorials? Teaches basics.

[Don]

I'm not talking about whether you think the game is good or not. As a reviewer you should have some obligation to point out stuff that may matter to someone who potentially may make a decision based on what you said. For example all the recent Nobunaga's Ambition games require a hyper aggressive strategy when playing against AI even on the lowest difficulty unless you already know the game like the back of your hand (though in that case you should be hyper aggressive to begin with). In terms of the timeframe you pretty much have to do the equivalent of a SCV rush to have any chance of winning with the weaker leaders, even though the outcome of what you did in the first hour isn't obvious until 50 hours later. It is impossible to play the game at your own pace like say, Starcraft against the AI because you will get crushed by the AI's ultra expansionist tactics if you didn't keep up in the first hour or so. I don't think I've ever seen any review that mentioned that. I guess it's possible that whoever played never even finished a game (since they take 20-50 hours per game) and just didn't know enough, but even then I see a lot of generic blurb like "Game starts off slow but gets surprisingly deep blah blah blah".

As another example I don't think I've ever seen a published Diablo 3 review that mentions the fact that the item drops suck to account for the RMAH and therefore you shouldn't play the game if you're expecting to actually find upgrades from playing the game. Even though this is a huge point to Diablo (being to find upgrades via playing) you'll always see a Diablo 3 review have some generic stuff like 'AH is integrated into the game blah blah blah'. The professional reviews seems to assume nobody ever ragequits even though this happens all the time. FF14 (the original one, not ARB) was practically unplayable with the input lag (everything you input takes at least one second to register) and even as bad as the game is, most reviews of FF14 tends to gloss over the fact that the input delay is so bad that it'll make you want to uninstall the game right away. The rest of the game's problems is actually relatively tame compared to the 1s delay on every possible input you do in the game.

[Julius Seeker]

Professional game reviewers are not useful, because even the very top sources always come off as being rather amateurish with their heavy biases, inconsistencies, and lack of focus on actual important topics in the discussion of the game.

A minor peeve of mine is when a reviewer takes a brilliantly done game like Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, and slams it because it has no action. This is the equivalent of someone bashing a movie like American Beauty because it was devoid of action and not very funny.

A major peeve of mine would be when the review community sells me on a game that is filled with critical flaws. A great recent example is Child of Light. The only reason for the high praise is that it is a faux-indie game with flashy art; the reviewers treat it like an indie game, even though it was developed by the largest game development studio in the world.

[Don]

I think a lot of reviewer sounds like an advertisement for the game, even for reviewers who are clearly not affiliated in anyway. For example FF14 ARR review should read like: "This game is about 10 years behind everything and the lag sucks incredibly bad but if you don't want to play WoW anymore it's not any worse than any of the other failed WoW clones because at least this game looks better than all the other failures". But you won't see any review mention that incredibly bad lag is built into the game (not a hardware problem, it's intended to lag this bad) or that the game is 10 years behind in terms of concept (when you die you go back to your bind point with no option to rez anywhere closeby). And if you ask someone don't they think using an antiquiated concept like this sucks but they'll always say like 'gameplay is the most important' or something generic. That's okay if you feel this way but you shouldn't assume other people are willing to put up with this and should mention it as a reviewer. You can't select units easily in Advanced Tactics Gold. That to me would've been a deal breaker for any strategy game and I'd have never bought the game had I known that, and yes I did read reviews on it ahead of time but of course none of them mentioned that the game's UI somehow fails to let you select units in a non painful process. I don't care if the game is deep or customizeable or whatever if it's missing basic functions like this, and as a reviewer you should have an obligation to point this out.

[Eric]

I think a lot of reviewer sounds like an advertisement for the game

That's all major review outlets are really, they create hype for the game by talking about them, and if they rate the game highly they rarely talk about what's bad about it.

The industry is basically about keeping those big publishers happy or they'll blacklist your ass and not give you previews/early review copies, making you less competitive. This is also the reason you rarely get scathing reviews about games, too risky to burn that bridge.

It's gotten better over time, but then the people who get blacklisted aren't as vocal about it because with time all things are forgiven, no point in making a stink about it.

[Don]

Obviously the professional guys are likely influenced but even the individual guys often read like advertisement. I guess this is because if you think you'll eventually get somewhere in the industry you can't sound too much. But honestly a lot of games are so bad a review should read like "I played this for an hour and then uninstalled because it totally sucks". As long as the reason is valid that's a perfectly good review and probably more useful to me assuming the appropriate reasons are given. It feels like even guys not affiliated with the industry feel they've to play a game fully to give a review, but if it's really bad you shouldn't have to do that to get some kind of credability. It shouldn't be like "this game totally sucked but I was forced to play it all so you should too", it should be "this game totally sucked and I was forced to play it all so don't do it!"

[Zeus]

Kane and Lynch 2.....'Nuff said

[SineSwiper]

Shit, GamerGate, Nuff said.

I've been getting my game leads from YouTube personalities nowadays and sites like Escapist. Oh, and just watching the sales on Steam. If the user reviews are good and the trailer looks like something I would like, I'll pick it up. Twitch is also a decent source, if you already know the game name, but that might be a bit spoilerific for story-based games.

[kali o.]

I havent read a game review in a long while. I watch escapist (for entertainment) and browse youtube for video reviews.

[Zeus]

I havent read a game review in a long while. I watch escapist (for entertainment) and browse youtube for video reviews.

Just read the review to get an idea of the gameplay and features. The scores really mean nothing

[Don]

So I tried putting up a review for Nobunaga's Ambition: Souzou and nobody thought it was useful probably because I put the thumbs down on it. So I decided to look at the existing 5 reports and are all thumbs up and read this like:

This game is awesome! But I wouldn't buy it because you can't read anything that's in it. There seems to be great strategic depth in this game!
This game is awesome!
This game is awesome!
I can't read anything in this game but I think it has awesome gameplay.

In fact, I seriously doubt if anyone else who reviewed this game on Steam can even read the game content, and this is absolutely not a game you can play without being able to read the commands. I cannot find any mention of gameplay element in any of the other reviews.

It seems like even for player reviews people are only interested in someone who is a Youtube celebrity as opposed to having any knowledge on the game. I'm not saying my viewpoint is the only correct one, but so far I haven't even seen a review that mentions how the game plays in any way. The weird thing is if you go to Steam's forum there's a whole bunch of complaint like "WHY IS THIS GAME ONLY IN CHINESE?" which is quite valid but the reviews seem overwhelmingly positive as well as people who like the positive reports. Why would you support a game whose content you cannot read and, by extension, cannot play? Then again I can tell at least one of the reviewer is trying to play the game without being able to read it which will simply lead you getting wiped out by the AI on anything but the most trivial scenario/difficulty setting.