How do you read game reviews?

[Anton P. Nym]

What I'd like to see, and all too often don't, is reviews that respect that users' tastes may differ from each others'. (Including the reviewer's.) I'd be far happier if more reviewers concentrated on letting readers know if the game would be of value to the reader ("This game is for people who enjoy..." "Avoid this game if you're looking for...") and less on trying to create some sort of an objective standard into which all games must be squeezed.

And yeah, numerical scores don't fit into that scheme at all. I wish I was better at ignoring them... and I definitely wouldn't use A+/98% in any review I'd write.

-- Steve

 

[Hengst2404]

Again, only having my experiences of a few years to go by, I always trued to include in my reviews, even if only in the summary, that the game was recommended for gamers who like whatever type of game it was I was reviewing. For instance, our scoring was set up so that a 7 out of 10 meant that the game a a good game, but strongly recommended only for serious fans of that particular genre. I also always tried to mention what type of gamer I thought a game was best suited for.

 

[Russ Pitts]

Final question, does your search function goes for the forum as well? I didn't see the option. Thx for reading.

I don't think it does, actually. Perhaps we should look into that.

 

[Russ Pitts]

Hey, I never got a bloody card.

I'll send you one for Christmas.

 

[hooliganyouth]

Personally I think that my reviews are the best...or not really. Hey if I don't shamelessly plug who will?


Reading reviews is one of my favorite things to do even if I have no interest in the game. Reading the poorer reviews is even better - nothing beats a good mean review. Game purchases usually fall into three categories for me:

1 - The games I'm gonna buy no matter what based on designers (Io, Rockstar, Ubisoft) and subject matter and if the series is worth a damn to me ("Hitman").

2 - A combination of demos & reviews. "Clive Barker's Jericho" is a good example. I enjoyed the demo but I'm gonna wait until the reviews are in before I spend good money.

3 - If reviews are cropping up for an off-the-beaten path game ("Katamari Damacy") then I'll track down the game and give it a shot.


The best reviews - IMHO - are the ones that are honest and fairly straight to the point. If I wanted pseudo-intellectual academic nonsense in my game reviews I'd ask for it. On the other hand I need something intelligently written and not review that consists of "This game is the suckiest suck that ever sucked a suck. Suxxzorz! 10 out of 10 on the Sux scale!"

 

[Hengst2404]

I think anymore I find myself mostly just looking at the trends in the game review scores. Metacritic and Gamerankings help provide a base score that gives me at least an idea of how good the game may be. Where I tend to look carefully are the games that draw like 7 out of 10 or 70% out of 100%. This level seems to be where you find the games that appeal to only a certain type of gamer and sometimes those games can be gems.

 

[Joe]

I've never been a fan of number scales, so when I write I typically avoid them. Instead, I go for buy/rent/don't touch somewhere in the review. Cost-benefit analyses, whut whut.

As far as reading goes, for movies I hit up Rotten Tomatoes and weigh the aggregate against Ebert's review, since I tend to align with him on taste in movies. For games, I like our reviews (duh), as well as Eurogamer [http://www.eurogamer.net/], but some of their reviewers appear in both our publication and on their site, so there's that.