Have you ever avoided something you wanted due to critical response?

[tippy2k2]

I couldn't think of a good way to Title this so hopefully once I explain it, it will make sense.

My name is tippy2k2 and I love Dexter (Hi tippy2k2)

I don't have cable so I always get them on DVD the day it comes out. When this occurs, you would be lucky to see me in the next 24 hours unless you happen to wander into the darkness that is my apartment during the Dexter marathon. Dexter is awesome and one of my favorite shows...

...and I've had the Final Season in my possession for two weeks now. I'm afraid though...I'm afraid to watch it. EVERYONE it seems hated the ending. The internet despised it. The highest rating from someone in real life I could get was "It was a'ight". A'ight? A'IGHT!?!?!

...fuck

So I've finally decided to man up and start watching the last season. It did make me wonder how common this is? This is the first time I've ever had reviews affect me so badly. Usually if I think something looks good but it got hammered by critics, I'll still go for it. Sometimes I win and sometimes I lose but critical/mass opinion usually means nothing to me if it's something I'm really interested in.

Has the opinions of others affected you in this same way? If so, what was it and did you win (it was great) or did you lose (they were right...)?

 

[Dark Knifer]

The silent hill hd collection for me. I don't posses the games and it seemed like a great opportunity but they seemed to have ruined that so I haven't touched that.

Also people give the halo series a lot of crap but it's still one of my favourite collection of games apart from 4 but including halo wars funnily enough.

 

[shrekfan246]

Well, I was flip-flopping around about purchasing Alpha Protocol for a while because, while it wasn't lambasted or anything, it's had a largely mixed reaction from most critics and communities. I've been enjoying it so far, though, and the first few hours have had a minimal number of bugs if it still suffers from them.

I suppose I've been avoiding Batman: Arkham Origins largely due to the reception it's gotten as well, though I imagine I would still mostly enjoy it whenever I get around to buying it.

I mean, I guess if I want to really scrape the bottom of the barrel I could say I've bought in to most of the modern Sonic games and still love them. I don't think there are too many games that received scathing reviews that I've been conflicted on and then bought on a whim anyway. Maybe Lollipop Chainsaw? That was pretty fun, if rather simplistic.

EDIT: For the sake of disclosure, I focused on games because I don't follow much in the way of shows or films, and if something really catches my eye then I don't really care what the general opinion of it is unless it's being universally panned.

 

[FPLOON]

So I've finally decided to man up and start watching the last season. It did make me wonder how common this is? This is the first time I've ever had reviews affect me so badly. Usually if I think something looks good but it got hammered by critics, I'll still go for it. Sometimes I win and sometimes I lose but critical/mass opinion usually means nothing to me if it's something I'm really interested in.

Well, in my opinion, this finale didn't really "feel" like a series finale, per se... Just a regular finale that, if done a bit differently, could have lead to another season... if that makes sense without "spoiling" anything...

OT: Continuing to watch the show Vikings after watching it for the first time with my aunt after watching Game of Thrones... I mean, Vikings had everything you wanted in a more accessible Game of Thrones-like series and then some and I had a hard time wrapping around that this show's on the History channel of all places...

Another thing I avoid is buying just a section of a show instead of owning the complete season or series of anything... usually because it boils down to a compilation of episodes out of order (like Adventure Time and MLP:FiM) or part of a something that I would have to buy the next section just to marathon the series properly... (That goes double for series that get concluded in movie form, like Eden of the East or Blood-C, recently...)

Lastly, recommending anything I've watched over the years... It always seem like anything I recommend would not be to their overall taste in entertainment... (I can't explain why I feel that way, but it probably has something to do with my early childhood somehow...)

captcha: Ready When You Need It
Like I was going to ask for therapy in the first place, captcha...

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

I avoided LA Noire because of critical response to it.

It seemed like an interesting game, and I was digging the aesthetic of 1950s LA, but when it turned out it was buggy as hell and poorly optimized for the PC I decided to ignore it. It just didn't seem worth the headache to play.

 

[Rose and Thorn]

Yeah you know this just happened to me too actually, and usually reviews and other peoples opinions don't turn me off seeing something I like.

I really like J.J. Abrams films. I loved Cloverfield and Super 8, and really enjoyed his Star Trek film. I knew he was going to make more Star Trek films, and while I would have prefered him to make more stuff like Super 8, there was no doubt in my mind I would be excited to see the second Star Trek when it was announced.

Now I rarely see films in cinema so I see them when they release to the public. My family however loves Star Trek and they also love the cinema. After my mother saw 'Into Darkness' she called me up and said she thought it was crap. I also started hearing what people on the internet were saying about it and I just lost my interest in seeing the film.

Now that I think about it the same kind of thing happened to Man of Steel. I love Zack Snyder, but I heard a lot of bad things about the film so now I am not in a hurry to see the it. I am really not into either Star Trek or Superman, so I wonder if that could have anything to do with it, I don't know.

Pacific Rim kind of had the opposite happen to it. I kept hearing how amazing it was, so when I saw it I guess I expected too much and was underwhelmed. Sure I loved the film, but...ahh this is depressing.

I just have to learn to stop reading about films until I see them first I guess. Ain't nobody gonna ruin Godzilla 2014 for me.

 

[Bonk4licious]

Call me a hipster, but I hate playing games at the same time as other people. Especially Skyrim. Dear Lord, I get that you sunk 100 hours into this game week 1 and got everything, but I worked 40 hours a week and am still full time in school. Please let me find this stuff on my own, and stop ruining the game. Mass Effect 2 was the same thing because mine came in the mail almost a week late.

Pacific Rim kind of had the opposite happen to it. I kept hearing how amazing it was, so when I saw it I guess I expected too much and was underwhelmed. Sure I loved the film, but...ahh this is depressing.

I know exactly what you mean. That movie was supposed to be so cool, but it was a lot of robots with literally no arsenal other than fisticuffs getting offed left and right by Kaiju I've already seen in Godzilla and King Kong. Almost every Godzilla movie had more fighting content than PR did, and it left a pretty empty hole in my heart for it.

 

[Phrozenflame500]

All the time.

Seriously, the first impulse I have when I see something I want is "well, I'd better make sure it's not complete shit". Plenty of times due to limited budget I've passed up on games/movies due to reviews and videos.

 

[SanguiniusMagnificum]

Assassin's Creed 3.

After the wet fart that was called AC:Revelations I was really waiting for a new breeze into the franchise. When I first saw the trailers, gameplay footage yadda yadda.... I got extremely hyped for AssCreed III. No, seriously. I just liked everything about it, from the brutal combat (tomahawks yay!!!) to the setting, the hunting, the completely reworked gameplay....

Then the reviews came in.... Oh god, the reviews...

Suffice to say, I haven't bought it yet. I just might pick it up for Christmas together (I mean, 20 euro isn't that much) with AC4, but yeah, I'm still skeptical.

 

[Foolery]

Nah, not really. I tend to make my own opinions about things. The only time I will avoid a product I'm interested in, is if I learn it has a serious flaw that hinders it's functionality. Like a bug or glitch, hardware failures, etc. I've enjoyed plenty of games, books and movies that people consider terrible.

 

[FalloutJack]

My opinions are my own. So are yours, as they should be.

 

[The Wykydtron]

I finished Mass Effect 3 about a month after everyone else. I was looking at the endless ending threads like "it can't be that bad surely" well, it was terrible but not as bad as people were claiming at the time. I was scared to finish the last bits on Earth just to avoid this apparently shit ending.

I did that with Skyrim though and i'm not letting that happen to Mass Effect, a story I actually like. I literally walked into the final hall before the final boss, saved and never came back. I have no concrete reason, I just didn't care anymore.

 

[Zhukov]

Anyone remember that indie zombie game Amy? I remember being kinda interested in it.

Then suddenly, reviews.

Nope. Nope nope nope.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

There's only so much time in one life to experience things. If those things turn out to be shit, then your time was wasted.

I have no idea why ANYONE wouldn't at least take critical consensus into account when making decisions on what to watch, or play, or read, or listen to, or eat, etc, etc, etc. Taking available information into account when making decisions is something organisms do.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

I do certainly listen to and read what critics have to say and write. After all, that's what they are there for. They provide their thoughts and opinions on the very thing I'm interested in and let me make a more informed choice.

The most recent example was with The Bureau: XCom Declassified. It was on a 75% sale on Steam this past weekend and I was sorely tempted to buy it. I figured $15 (for the game and 3 DLCs) was reasonable for a game that looks interesting and might be worthwhile. But after (re)watching Yahtzee's review on this site and reading a small handful of other critics reviews it sounded like a waste of money and so I didn't purchase it. Maybe if it's $7.50-$10 in a Winter sale sometime I'll pick it up for a flutter but otherwise I think I did well avoiding it.

I don't always listen...I still went and got Hitman: Absolution (albeit very cheap)...though in hindsight it was a stupid thing to do and I should have listened. It was so bad I had to stop playing and uninstall it. But yeah, I do like to get a general idea of critical reception from a few different sources. Between multiple reviews, shortcomings and issues, mechanics and what have you are covered and it's easy to see if there's something that many people mention, or if something is good, that so many people like it.

On the flip side, I have bought games solely because they were reviewed well. Yahtzee's reviews of Spec Ops: The Line and Papers Please! were enough to make me buy them on Steam. Both are games I would never have picked up otherwise.

 

[Pinkamena]

My opinions are my own. So are yours, as they should be.

Of course. That doesn't mean you shouldn't listen to people who know what they are talking about, though.
If there's a movie I want to watch on the cinema, I will read a few reviews and check out imdb to decide if I should go or not. If it gets generally bad reviews due to things I know I would notice on my own without reading them, I'll normally not watch it unless I really want to. Of course, if it gets bad reviews because "I didn't like the theme/I disagree with the movies view on things" then that doesn't factor into my decision, because as you say, people have different opinions.

It's better to save some money instead of watching a movie I know I wouldn't care for. It's like buying a car which is reported to have flaws, but buying it anyways because "you should make your own opinion of things".

 

[mrjoe94]

I whole heartedly agree with the opinion that "Everyone should make their own point of view". But often times I have a limited income. I follow rotten tomatoes quite a bit for movies, because I don't like watching a lot of them to begin with. So I try to watch good ones.

 

[Antendo]

Not sure if I'm just broken or what, but if a game or a movie gets crushing reviews and for a while all the hate in the universe is going towards it, that makes me want to try it. This is exactly the reason why I'm currently in possession of Deadly Premonition and why I've seen The Tomb [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1039646/] and Dungeon Girl [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1173486/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1].

When something thats getting a lot of hype and praise catches my interest, I can usually tell from a few video reviews (mainly from escapist and gametrailers) if it looks like a game I'd like or not. Or if it's a part of a series I already have experience in I'll probably know already if I want the new installation or not. Aside from series like Final Fantasy that change things up from game to game.

Captcha: WHO YOU GONNA CALL?
Gee NSA, some discretion please.

 

[MrBaskerville]

If i'm interested in something i'm going to watch/play it regardless of critics opinions. But if i'm just curious a bad review could kill my curiosity, though mostly with movies as i have very little respect for game reviewers and their opinions. But i'd say that bad reviews are often makes me more curious as with movies like Cosmopolis (Loved it!) or The Councellor (Have yet to see it) where a select few loved the movies while everyone hated them with a passion. And very positive reviews can also get me interested in stuff i would have normally avoided, like Looper (crap) and Dredd (Pretty cool).

But to be honest, most of the reviews i read are read afer i watched a given movie, i rarely go in depth beforehand, unless it gets universally panned or if a shtty looking movie gets universal praise. I might watch a couple of weekly Kermode reviews, but mostly to hear about the smaller movies that usually goes unnoticed (imo. that's the primary function of a good critic, show us the good stuff).