How much do reviews impact your purchases?

[Something Amyss]

I'm just curious because they almost never impact mine these days. If I want to know about a game, I look primarily to YouTube. I don't put much stock in video reviews, either, as they're often clip packages and you can run into the same sort of issues you get from an advertisement or trailer. A review might specifically impact me if it mentions technical issues I might not see in a gameplay vid (say, for example, the second half of the game just crashes for no good reason), but the importance is fairly low overall. I still do read reviews, because I think it's better to be prepared than not, but a lot of the deciding factor is more than likely going to be video or a demo.

But with all the fuss over reviews it seems someone must be taking them much more seriously.

So how much do reviews impact you and why?

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

Not much these days, I tend to go off of let's play videos where I can see the game in action and if the people on the escapist and other forums seem to be saying good things. Can't always trust reviews when there's businesses holding review embargoes and hands on previews as a way to extort good scores from a reviewer.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Not at all. For example, I want to play Catherine, Resident Evil 6 (treasured offline co-op!), Watch_Dogs and The Evil Within, even if I've heard nothing but bad things about them. And I bought Resident Evil 5 and Dead Island when I'd heard nothing but bad things about them, too.

 

[shrekfan246]

The only reviews I regularly read are those written by Jim Sterling...

I guess it's safe to say "not very much"?

I'll take the average review score into account when I'm looking into something, but individual reviews don't often impact my decisions one way or the other. It's very rare that I'll buy a game without first looking up actual gameplay.

That having been said, I did buy Valkyria Chronicles without knowing too much about the gameplay itself based on the port report put out on PCGamer. But I'd heard a lot of positive opinions about the game previously, so.

 

[R4ptur3]

I read them, but only as a guideline. Really, to me, there's only one way I'm going to know if I like a game or not and that's to play it. Sounds a bit dumb I know, but it surprises me how many people won't get a game just because of reviews.

 

[Baron Tanks]

If it is not a sequel to something I already played, a review can help me decide whether or not I want something. But since I got a pc and been mostly on steam last year, I tend to not buy things close to when they release. At that point sales and other people's experiences become a lot bigger deciding factors. I'd then just read a review to see how other people experienced it or if I missed a certain thing/theme/message.

 

[Morgoth780]

My purchases are effected a lot by Totalbiscuit's WTF is series. If he doesn't like a game, there's a decent chance I won't buy it - although there are exceptions. Spec Ops: The Line, for example.

I also will pay attention to Jim Sterling's reviews as well.

Other than that... well, gameplay videos if I'm still not sure. But usually those are the only two I will listen to when it comes to purchases.

Well, and I'll browse through steam reviews to see if there are any glaring problems.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

I watch all sorts of reviews if I find them amusing or I like the person doing them. X-Play used to just do reviews, and even when it was for games that I had zero interest in, I still watched it because Morgan and Adam were hilarious. I will also read/watch reviews of games that I've already bought and I am currently enjoying because I like to see if my opinion matches that reviewer's.

But as for having any impact on my purchase? Only if I'm going in blind. As in, "Huh. I wonder what this game is like," and I go home and look it up on several different sites.

 

[Maximum Bert]

I tend to use as many reviews as possible for a guideline if I am not sure on a game I also try and find videos of it if available and basically get as much data as possible before purchasing. If its a triple A release and there is little data available on it nearing release I almost always steer well clear of it.

I never judge my buying off of only one or two reviews or pieces of information unless I was 99% certain I was going to buy it anyway generally if 97% of the reviews both professional and otherwise are positive and its a genre or type of game I like or one that looks interesting to me then I will feel much more confident in my purchase and ofc if all reviews are negative I know to avoid for mixed (i.e most of them) I just use them as guidelines along with every other piece of information I get.

There are some publications and sites that I put zero faith in though and never trust their reviews based on repeated past experiences, some I just end up constantly disagreeing with due to a different taste in games and/or perspective or I think they are paid off (this seems to happen a lot with the really big games imo) or simply I have found their reviews poorly researched and in some cases flat out wrong i.e I read one review of a game where they mentioned a character who wasnt even in the game (but was in the last one in the series) and then they went on to say the mechanics had not changed (which they had) which just led me to believe either they never even played the game or put in only the tiniest amount of time before submitting the review.

 

[Genocidicles]

I tend to go by meta-critic scores. I don't give a shit about the details, I just want to know whether a game is worth my time and money.

The only thing I really watch out for is when a supposedly good game has an abysmal user score on there. I'll trust the users over reviewers any day of the week.

 

[LookingGlass]

It's hard to get me to buy games at full price these days. After watching TotalBiscuit's "WTF is...", reading Jim Sterling's review, and checking out the Steam User reviews, I'll usually find a good reason to hold off or not even bother. I'll also glance around at reviews at places like PC Gamer, IGN, and a few others sometimes, though I don't put much stock in any of those on their own. Mostly I'm looking for "if you liked games X, Y, Z, you should enjoy this."

TotalBiscuit's great for letting you know how good a PC port is, and showing you exactly how a game plays (rather than a clip show in a review).

Jim's always good for an honest opinion.

Steam's reviews are helpful for letting you know about major port problems, DRM issues, if the developers are actively patching out bugs, etc.

 

[st0pnsw0p]

Not at all. I decide whether I'll buy a game or not based on gameplay videos, my experience with the dev's other games and what I hear about it in the forums I visit.

 

[stroopwafel]

Not at all either. I've found that whether a game is critically well-received or not is in no way indicative of me personally enjoying it. For example I had way more fun playing Evil Within and Watch Dogs than Alien Isolaton and GTA5(not that I didn't really enjoy Alien either), despite understanding the arguments why some would favor the latter. 'Fun' is subjective and can't really be objectively quantified unless a game is technically unplayable, which, for all modern gaming's faults, happens way less than in the past(despite the games themselves being infinitely more complex).

When I'm interested in a game I usually only watch some no-commentary gameplay on Youtube, and that's usually enough for me to determine whether I will (probably) like it or not. Sure, sometimes a game isn't what I expected but you need to try new things right? I would have missed out on some of my most favorite games if I only went by reviews and message boards.

 

[Zhukov]

A bit?

If a game is utterly panned then I'll generally stay away from it. For example, I was going to buy that zombie game Amy, but then it ended up with a 20 on Metacritic. Considering that 60 is considered a bad score for games, I wasn't touching a 20.

These days if I'm on the fence I usually just watch some "Let's PLay" footage.

 

[DementedSheep]

There was a game recently where I went to steam page, saw a metacritc score of 45, quickly checked to see it wasn't from review bombing and didn't bother looking at the game any further. If I'm browsing through games and the score is that low I probably won't bother looking at it all.
Very low metacritc score aside, I mostly just watch youtube videos of the game and check to see how long it is and if it has any glaring technical issues. I tend not to read/watch a whole review, I just skim though some to get general feel of it. reviews can effect whether I buy a game or not but unless the reviews are very bad I don't think they make too much of a difference.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

Not much these days, I tend to go off of let's play videos where I can see the game in action and if the people on the escapist and other forums seem to be saying good things. Can't always trust reviews when there's businesses holding review embargoes and hands on previews as a way to extort good scores from a reviewer.

exactly. they tend to use nice buzz words and tend to favor stuff I don't give a crap about most of the time. I sometimes read quick reviews done by users, usually they are more open about what they liked in a game, and why, and if any of the reasons line up with something that I find cool in a game, I tend to go confirm it with a video of it from youtube and such, and I'll decide from there.

 

[Smooth Operator]

An informative review + legit gameplay + price point are absolutely the deciding factors.
Not always easy to find the best resource of information but I just take that as a sign to wait until more is known, I got more games then I need so jumping on that day one bandwagon is not a pressing desire.

 

[tilmoph]

ZP sometimes leads me to trying out a game I might not have heard of (it's how I found Alpha Protocol and got me interested in Valkyria chronicles). Sometimes TVTropes, with it's trope descriptions actually tips me off to something cool I might not have found (like Game Dev Tycoon, and ZP for that matter). Watching Markiplier's Alien: Isolation playthrough has kind of gotten me interested in playing it myself.

I sometimes get curious about a game if I hear about it on the forums a lot (Wolf Among Us and Walking Dead Season 1).

Actual score based reviews never did much for me either way. Even before the current thing, I didn't really bother with Kotaku or RPS or IGN (the Gertsmann thing pretty much cemented for me the "everything these people say is worthless" theory).

 

[Zaeseled]

The personal opinion type reviews don't affect me at all, because I can't trust anyone else's tastes but my own.
The technical reviews affect me quite a bit, buggy/crashy/really bad DRM? I'll just bookmark the game and have a looksie a couple weeks after. Same goes with interesting early access games, I'll add it to my wishlist and wait.

 

[Something Amyss]

My purchases are effected a lot by Totalbiscuit's WTF is series. If he doesn't like a game, there's a decent chance I won't buy it - although there are exceptions. Spec Ops: The Line, for example.

WTF is really isn't a review series, though.

There was a game recently where I went to steam page, saw a metacritc score of 45, quickly checked to see it wasn't from review bombing and didn't bother looking at the game any further. If I'm browsing through games and the score is that low I probably won't bother looking at it all.
Very low metacritc score aside, I mostly just watch youtube videos of the game and check to see how long it is and if it has any glaring technical issues. I tend not to read/watch a whole review, I just skim though some to get general feel of it. reviews can effect whether I buy a game or not but unless the reviews are very bad I don't think they make too much of a difference.

A metascore rank on Steam only means the critic score, right? I mean, that is review bombing won't impact it, will it?

I tend to pay even less attention to user scores, because of how frequently people pass out 0s or 10s. At that point, something like Steam's "recommended/not recommended" setup is probably at least more honest.

I do sort of like Metacritic in that it allows me to eyeball an overall response (which is what I think the best use of aggregator sites is), but even that doesn't usually factor much into a purchase for me personally.

Though occasionally, a very low score makes me wonder why and do more research. Like, I don't doubt there are bad games, but one wonders what it takes to get a metascore of 20 in an industry where an almost perfectly broken game can get a score in the 70s.