Do review scores affect your enjoyment of games?

[Sniper Team 4]

The only times review scores affect me in any way is if it's a new title that I've had no experience with. I will check a few reviewers that have the same tastes as I do and see what they have to say. If they enjoy it, then I'll pick it up. Otherwise, I completely ignore reviews and only read/watch them when I'm curious to see what they have to say about the game I'm playing.

Example 1) Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus got rather poor reviews, but I bought the game on release and enjoyed. Dead Space 3, according to every other person on the planet, is a horrible game that deserves to be burned, but again I bought it on release and enjoyed playing it. Reviews had no affect because I love the series those games belong to.

Example 2) Lord of The Rings: War in the North--or whatever that three-player co op game was a while back. I was very interested in it, but I saw a lot of warning signs during interviews, demos, and whatnot that made me check reviews first. And I'm glad I didn't buy it on release day. That's a time when reviews do affect me.

But as for whether they affect my actual enjoyment of the game? No, I can't think of a time where that's happened. I make my own decisions about whether I enjoy the, not whether or not someone else did.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

Generally no, I'm one of those rare Muppets who enjoys Too Human and Final Fantasy 13.

I pay much more attention to the wording of the review to find out if a game is 'for me'. I appreciate scores as a reference point, but do not consider them to be the 'be all and end all' of a games quality. Plus, I don't believe you can truly quantify such a complex experience down to a single digit.

Just wondering, but do you follow Adam Sessler? Or are you secretly him?! Dun dun duuun!

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

I couldn't possibly care less about what reviewers say about games. I only care if I have fun. I have played and enjoyed games that were universally scathed by everyone and hated games that were loved by every reviewer who gazed upon them.

 

[Pifflestick]

Reviews actually affect me in the reverse. If a game (or movie) is given a very high score and reviews filled with glowing praise I'll go in expecting something amazing and be let down when I notice the clichés and flaws, but if the scores are low and the reviews pointing out a myriad of flaws I'll end up enjoying it more because I'll usually ignore the flaws in those cases. This isn't always true though, the glowing praise for the Bioshock games didn't effect my enjoyment of them, and there have been games with terrible scores which deserved every lash they got. For me, constant praise makes the flaws all the more painfully obvious, and constant lashing makes the few good qualities stand out all the more.

 

[Mr C]

Generally no, I'm one of those rare Muppets who enjoys Too Human and Final Fantasy 13.

I pay much more attention to the wording of the review to find out if a game is 'for me'. I appreciate scores as a reference point, but do not consider them to be the 'be all and end all' of a games quality. Plus, I don't believe you can truly quantify such a complex experience down to a single digit.

Just wondering, but do you follow Adam Sessler? Or are you secretly him?! Dun dun duuun!

How did you know??? Are you stalking me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Seriously, I had no idea who Adam Sessler was, but now I do after a little googling. I need to know, what made you ask if I followed him (on twitter etc)? I'm assuming you get the idea my tastes are similar? Now I'm off to youtube to watch some of his video reviews.

Cheers!

 

[BrotherRool]

Review scores themselves don't affect my enjoyment of a game. But the general community impression of a game does and I think it affects every single persons enjoyment of a game whether they realise it or not and whether they say 'how is that even impossible or not?'. It's not necessarily like=like though. I, for example, might have a slightly higher probability of disliking something if everyone else likes it.

We're social animals hardwired to reach consensus and take other people's opinion and weave them into our own. Thats why even though genetically our brains are probably almost identical to Germans in 1933 and Romans watching gladatorial battles to the death, we somehow have completely different perceptions of those events.


On the most basic level, you'll be thinking about stuff that people have pointed out. Maybe they mentioned a flaw or plothole that you wouldn't have noticed but now you know about it it bothers you because they're right, it doesn't make sense.

And then expectation is a huge part of our enjoyment or something. I can enjoy a mod with cruddy animation and voice acting equally as much as I can enjoy a big AAA game if it's good, because I'm more understanding of the limitations of one person working. Whereas if CoD wasn't lipsynched it would probably piss me off because I expect higher standards. In the same way, I can enjoy KotoR with it's ugly graphics, but if it were released today it would really bug me that the game looks so bad.

So if everyone is telling you the game is amazing, maybe you'll be overhyped and overcritical, or maybe you'll get caught up in other people's excitement. If they tell you it sucks maybe you'll be pleasantly surprised, whereas not knowing that beforehand you'd be disappointed that the game wasn't amazing.



And community impressions affect the tone of dialogue. If everyone talks about how good Bioshock Infinite is, then everyone is talking about all it's good qualities, either to prove or disprove them. If a section of people think it's bad then the conversation will be focusing much more on the negative qualities, and this will affect how you enjoy the game.




Their are limits to the extent of this, but humans are not rational processors and your brain will be incorporating every bit of thinking you heard into forming it's thoughts about a game. It's not that if everyone says it's amazing your brain will say the game is amazing, but it will take your personal experience and then weigh that up against popular experience and create an opinion that uses those two facts in some measure

 

[Maximum Bert]

Enjoyment no possible purchase yes. That said I do get annoyed sometimes if everyone is bashing a game I enjoy even if I know its technically a bad game. Competitive games are worse because your game you enjoy playing gets labelled as dead and irrelevant if its not top 3 in the genre of most played and has been out for 2 weeks or longer.

Once I am playing I know what I do enjoy and what I dont I can make my own opinions other peoples opinions wont effect my enjoyment but they can get annoying if they are persistently pushing their opinions on me.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

When I clicked on this it was literally right above the thread "Poorly reviewed games you enjoyed".

Once I've purchased the game, no. Whether I purchase it or not, however, can be influenced by reviews from sites such as this one (read as: sites where they don't consider a failure worth a 7 and an at most ambivalent review).

 

[Edl01]

Well if game gets 10s across the board then yes, my expectations get raised quite high.

If I already have a game though then I don't really care for reviews and public opinion. I don't mind Final Fantasy 13, I don't thnk it's a good game but at the same time I never understood why people seem to deem such an Average game as the antichrist. Heck storywise the characters and narrative aren't nearly as bad as 10 and the gameplay, while boring at times, is better than Final Fantasy 5 where you just had to click the attack button constantly to win, at least you needed to Paradigm shift in 13! I view 13 as more of a 5/10 than a "worst game ever" out of 10.

 

[prophecy2514]

I pay no attention to the score a game gets beacuse I see the score as a reviewers subjective enjoyment of the game.

What I pay more attention to is the description and synopsis the reviewer gives of the game, and the following game mechanics that no doubt follow that description.

 

[sextus the crazy]

Not terribly. The score won't kill my investment or revive my interest. The points themselves might make me notice things about the game that I didn't, but otherwise, nothing.

 

[Zhukov]

Uh... no?

I can't think of any time when a review has noticeably affected my enjoyment, either positively or negatively.

Really, people take review scores to heart way to much. Hence all the bitching about "OMG, they gave this a nine? I, with my supremely refined and superior taste, wouldn't even give it a three!" or "OMG, they gave it 8/10, but it's so perfect! How could they not agree with the infinite wisdom of my gushing praise?!"

 

[Nazulu]

I ignore scores completely because not only do I find I don't agree with what they say, but they always miss something important that effects the whole experience, something that should definitely not be ignored. I always do my own research.

If I can find someone with a very similar view as mine though I just may.

 

[Rariow]

Hell no. I really don't see why they would. I guess some reviews might point out issues with a game I wouldn't notice before, but that's pretty rare and those issues are usually pretty insignificant.

The closest to "affecting" my enjoyment of a game is completely denying me the pleasure (or pain) of playing it. I might've bought "Amy" if it hadn't had such terrible review scores all across the board, for instance, and they made me enjoy GTA IV because the only reason I bought that was to see whether it deserved being the best-reviewed game of all time (Or at least, it was at the time. I don't know if it still is).

Spoiler

Pretty good game, but it really, really doesn't.

Aren't review scores supposed to be a reflection of how enjoyable the game is, anyway? So, in a perfect world where every review somehow manages to adapt to the readers brain, it's pretty much impossible for them to affect enjoyment anyway.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

People bitching on the forums sometimes affects my enjoyment. I avoided this place like the plague when Skyrim came out lol.

As for reviews It effects my purchase of a game but not my enjoyment. like Defiance has a terrible metacritic score. I was like ergh not gonna spend £40 on that then...

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

If it's something I've already played/watched/whatever, not it doesn't affect my enjoyment, although it does leave me puzzled sometimes when everyone is trashing something I loved (hi, Oblivion[footnote]that's the Tom Cruise movie, not the game[/footnote]) or gushing over something I hated (like Braid.)

If it's something I haven't experienced before, reviews can set my expectations going in, and that /can/ affect my enjoyment. If I go in expecting the best thing ever, it will probably never live up to the hype. If I go in expecting the worst thing ever, I'll usually be pleasantly surprised, because it's not often that stuff that crappy actually gets released these days. Aside from Bad Rats and direct to TV movies on the SyFy channel, anyway.

 

[LAGG]

I really doubt pre-selection (one of the most irrational aspects of mankind) is even a thing among gamers. Especially when most reviewer are barely gamers at all, only try the titles in the easiest difficulty, and mostly judge the games on their graphics, story and technical flaws.

 

[Zanderinfal]

Usually no, but sometimes I find that reviews have critizms I didn't notice until reading/watching said review. Otherwise, review scores mean nothing to me. Review scores are simply a way to show an opinion, an opinion that will differ from person to person. If anybody's view on their entertainment is affected by a number I have to question whether they enjoy that game in the first place.

 

[rob_simple]

It might affect how likely I am to buy it, but not how likely I am to enjoy it. You'd have to be very suggestible for that to work.

Usually when I watch a Zero Punctuation of a game I love I still agree with the negative points Yahtzee raises and then repeatedly flogs. Just because I enjoy a game doesn't mean I think it's perfect, so being aware of those faults isn't likely to suddenly make me stop having fun.

Although, that being said, I do occasionally feel like I'm missing something when I play a game that everyone else loves (Skyrim) and have a lousy time, but I usually work out further down the line why that is, assuming it's not just entirely down to hype.

 

[Don't taze me bro]

The thing about review scores, is that the reviewer can be biased towards, or against certain games and genres. I recently picked up Sacred Citadel. It hasn't been receiving great scores (around 6 out of 10), but I picked it up and am enjoying the game immensely so far. BUT, I grew up on those old side scrolling beat-em-ups. Perhaps the reviewers didn't?