Do you base your opinions on reviews?

[Valanthe]

Reviews by their nature are subjective and biased towards the presenter's opinions. But they still influence my purchases heavily, I try to find reviewers that are themselves, generally well regarded. Then I look back through their archives, particularly looking for games I've already played that they've reviewed.

From that I can generally base an opinion on whether or not this person thinks along the same lines I do, and from there I can piggyback off them to decide whether or not my limited funds are better spent on two obscure indie puzzle games from XBLA/Steam I would never have heard of otherwise and happened to be the scariest and most fun games I've played so far this year (Limbo and Amnesia: Dark Decent, if you were wondering) or "Generic S**t Brown and Gun-metal Grey Action Shooter number 657."

This method works for me mostly, but the occasional bad egg slips through, and occasionally I pick up games that I know scored mediocre reviews and I find I enjoy considerably for one reason or another.

 

[ImpofthePerverse]

It totally depends on who the reviewer is, what I know about them and what I know about my own choices in gaming.

One of my favourite video game reviewers, besides everyone on the Escapist of course , are GameCentral who used to be on Teletext, but are now on the website for the free UK newspaper Metro. GameCentral wither they like or dislike a game, I can almost always tell from the text in their reviews if the game is for me or not, sometimes I have to take into account other opinions, and GC are limited in that they only post 1 or 2 reviews once a day Mon-Fri so they can't cover everything.

If it wasn't for them I'd have probably never tried Global Defence Force on the PS2 a game I must of spent 100+ hours on. Yet they hate one of my favourite franchises, Dynasty Warriors, they very rarely give the series a good score but it's hard for me, even as a fan, to disagree with their criticisms.

The main difference between a reviewer and a critic is a critic is there to analyse a product to see if it's any good overall, a merit to it's medium, a reviewer is there to inform you so you can make up your own mind on if you will like a product and both have to do this regardless of their own personal opinion. Of course critics and reviewers cross over all the time, and sometimes it's hard to figure out which is what, this is why it's important to try and find reviewers/critics you know and trust.

 

[MetalDooley]

Not really.If a game I'm interested in receives a lot of poor to average reviews then I might put off buying it until it drops in price but that's about it

At the end of the day they're just opinions and opinions are never 100% correct.Take Alpha Protocol for example.It received mostly average reviews yet was one of my favourite games of 2010.If I'd listened to the reviews I'd probably never have bought it

GTA4 on the other hand received massive praise from reviewers but I thought it was pretty dull and unenjoyable

 

[Zaik]

User reviews only. I'll generally cut out all the 10/10's(bias), and all of the lowest score reviews(bias and/or technical issues not widely experienced), and then read one from each number in between.

"Professional" game reviews are generally bought, not written. Even if a game is terrible, they've got an arsenal of flashy words that sound really nice but don't actually mean anything at all.

 

[Wapox]

reviews usually decides wether I consider a game or not, if a game gets really low ratings I might not look it up, if it gets good ratings I then look at oficial websites to find everything I can before deciding, unless I see the game at a retailer and just buy it at the clerks recommendation... heh.. I earn too much for my current situation...

 

[Jaime_Wolf]

Why would you feel guilty for reading reviews before buying a game? I could understand if you were actually basing your opinions on reviews AFTER playing the game, but what's wrong with trying to figure out what to buy?

 

[Gluzzbung]

Usually Ill base my opinion about a game on a trailer, that goes for films aswell but if its anything besides that it will be reviews

 

[VanillaBean]

I ussually do base my opnion on what critics say. Most of the time I agree with them, but every now and then you get a game like Dead Rising 2 which isn't as great as the critics made it sound, or a movie like Green Hornet which was alot better then what critics.

 

[Marter]

Not on other people's reviews, but on my own. When reviewing something, that is when I can really figure out my own feelings towards *insert medium here*.

 

[Wharrgarble]

If I was already planning to pick up a game ahead of time, let's say... Dead Space 2, I skipped reading the reviews since I already knew I really wanted it. However, if there's a game I haven't heard much about or I don't know much about, I'll check into the reviews to help me judge whether if it's worth it. It's not the be-all-end-all though.

Magika only has a 71/100 on Steam, mostly because of the terrible bugs it had upon release. But those have been fixed, I bought it for ten bucks on a whim, and I've been having WAY too much fun with it.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Only hands-on experience is reliable or credible.
Reviewers that enter the mass media tend to be highly unreliable, as it's not uncommon for people to slip money under the table, or create conflict-of-interest scenarios with advertising billing.

I use reviews to check if I would like the style of the game, and look specifically for gameplay trailers. Only once has my method failed me.