Is IGN really ignorant?

[Sarah Frazier]

It's not too hard to believe that games get better scores from IGN after a donation is made, or some other deal is struck. AAA releases that get high scores sometimes fall flat on sales or get some kind of customer backlash later for being trash. Meanwhile games from smaller companies get smaller scores (or no score at all) yet sell near half a million copies and get lots of word-of-mouth recommendations from people who were originally dubious.

Then there's the fact that some reviewers have said they spend more time playing games of a specific genre or company because they prefer those ones. Suddenly they're reviewing something completely different. Common sense says: Of course they'll find it harder to understand and feel either frustrated or unimpressed! On the one hand, it can prevent fanboy gushing over how great something is that really isn't, but on the other hand there's likely to be much more bashing on the bad points.

 

[ElPatron]

perfect example! you don't like MW3 and I/IGN (and allot of other people) do

FFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-

I said that they gave absolutely NO REASON to buy it, they did not give their OPINIONS, they just said "hurr you have this and this, ties up loose ends, durr" and gave it a 10/10.

That is NOT. How. You. Review. Games. That's like reading the first paragraph on wikipedia's page on Citizen Kane, copying everything that it said, and call it a good movie.

I could have written the same review by watching MW3's trailer. "Oh, graphics still have the quality we are used to, you can expect Infinity Ward action sequences, this time you go after Makarov. WHO CARES ABOUT WHAT I THINK ABOUT THE GAME YOU PROBABLY KNOW MORE ABOUT IT THAN ME! Buy it."

And the fact that you could tell my opinion on MW3 in a post where I did not say a single word about it REALLY RUSTLED MY JIMMIES.

 

[webkilla]

This is why I like reviewers like Angry Joe or Yatzee - they don't just say that "its good" - they usually say WHY a game is good. They give context to their opinions.

When I look at some IGN reviews I often wonder if the writers are paid to say 'nothing' - I mean, not to really describe any of the content, only to say its good?

When Angry Joe has to give a low score he languishes! He says in his reviews that he doesn't want to give too low scores, because then he knows that he'll be blacklisted if he's too rough. He especially focused on this when he talked about the first apparently RTS-turned-FPS Xcom trailers.

So ya, if most big game review sites and bought and paid for (and really, I don't think there are that many who aren't) then things like metacritic just do not make sense.

 

[RaikuFA]

Well it's usually the other way around, where they give otherwise bad games amazing review scores.

They fault some titles for being just a repeat of whatever the game before it was, yet gives CoD almost perfect marks every single time.

The Mass Effect review was pretty iffy if you ask me. They have one of their employees star in the game and then happen to give it a perfect score. Coincidence? I honestly can't think of a good reason why Chobot was in ME3, she's a terrible voice actor (I almost cringe) and she's just a distracting presence. Bioware apparently even knew how bad she is because you're allowed to kick her off the ship anytime you want. The only reaon that makes sense is it was some kind of agreement between the two, IGN get's the massive amount of attention and ME3 gets great scores on one of the mega review corps.
Sure, saying IGNorant isnt exactly clever but that doesn't make the critisism any less valid. IGN is all paid off by the giant companies as far as I'm concerned. Which is why I don't watch their stuff.

Oh yeah. See their review for Tales of the Abyss 3D?

"Its just like every JRPG ever made, FF13 was better because it was made by square." was the basics of said review.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

I am not a fan of IGN for reviews but I would call everything they do 100% rubbish. Although, what they do seem to do is to go way out of their way to be abrasive to get a bit of controversy. One video on the video which was made just to be trollish and piss of JRPGs even left an email address for idiots to spam. If that isn't blatant and horribly over the top Devil's Advocate to get a storm coming, I don't know what is.

 

[zehydra]

Nah, IGN is just the overrated establishment. I'm not a part of the camp that really hates them, I just don't go on there.

That being said, I used to go on Gamespot, and I think IGN's actually a little better than Gamespot.

Doesn't matter, I don't buy that many games, and when I do, I generally know what I like in games and figure out whether or not the game I'm looking at has that.

 

[SargentToughie]

The Escapist gave Dragon Age 2 a perfect score. Just saying.

Did it seriously? Where was this?

 

[Kahunaburger]

The Escapist gave Dragon Age 2 a perfect score. Just saying.

Did it seriously? Where was this?

A pinnacle of role-playing games with well-designed mechanics and excellent story-telling, Dragon Age II is what videogames are meant to be.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/reviews/8701-Dragon-Age-II-Review

For extra hilarity, compare it to various other recent RPGs that are better than DA2.

 

[SargentToughie]

A pinnacle of role-playing games with well-designed mechanics and excellent story-telling, Dragon Age II is what videogames are meant to be.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/reviews/8701-Dragon-Age-II-Review

For extra hilarity, compare it to various other recent RPGs that are better than DA2.

Just reading the header is enough to make me laugh. I KNEW there was a reason why I went escapist comatose for about a year or so.

 

[ManOwaRrior]

Things I heard about ign:

- they are biased towards the XBox 360
- they are biased towards the PS3
- they are paid of by all the major publishers
- they give popular games (from said publishers) bad scores to ignite flame wars
- they have bad writing (as clearly, all of us are perfectly capable of differentiating between good and bad writing)

Things I know about ign:
- their video player is still garbage
- I sometimes don't agree with their scores
- sometimes their scores don't match their reviews
- sometimes, they post silly articles

So all in all, there is really nothing especially bad about them in my eyes.
I find it funny how people can't get over Chobot's tongue, or that they think her presence in ME3 biased the games score (if she wasn't in it, people would just say EA payed them off).

 

[ThePenguinKnight]

The majority of the reviewing world is so flawed that it seems rather odd that IGN would be singled out.

 

[CityofTreez]

Not whole. I don't understand how they give game likes MW3 a good score, but w/e.

 

[Sanguinedragon]

They're a bunch of sub-par writers who try to get traffic by stirring up bull shit.

Pretty much this. Their review for "I Am Alive" had me wondering if they had a monkey trying out the game.

The thing about that review which makes me suspicious is that it's an XBLA exclusive and yet they got their reviewer who is a self admitted Sony fanboy to review it. I can't say I disagree with him since I haven't played the game myself and from what I've seen of the game his criticisms seem to have been valid, but that doesn't negate the fact that he had biases and they still got him to do that review.

it isn't xbox live exclusive, i got it on ps3

 

[xplosive59]

Don't like IGN but some of there articles on non-gaming related stuff is good, for example I read an article on prog rock ages ago and was expecting it to be about the obvious eg Rush, Pink Floyd, King Crimson etc but no it was a damn solid list (Caravan, PFM, IQ, UK, Focus and Gentle Giant all mentioned) and I give credit where its due. There reviews are poor though, not as poor as other sites such as gamesradar where almost every game is a 10 unless its mediocre where it gets a 1 or a 2.

 

[Iron Criterion]

They're a bunch of sub-par writers who try to get traffic by stirring up bull shit.

Pretty much this. Their review for "I Am Alive" had me wondering if they had a monkey trying out the game.

The thing about that review which makes me suspicious is that it's an XBLA exclusive and yet they got their reviewer who is a self admitted Sony fanboy to review it. I can't say I disagree with him since I haven't played the game myself and from what I've seen of the game his criticisms seem to have been valid, but that doesn't negate the fact that he had biases and they still got him to do that review.

it isn't xbox live exclusive, i got it on ps3

It was at the time of the review. It was a 360 exclusive for a few months.