Is IGN really ignorant?

[arnoldthebird]

I read their review's, because some of them are decent review's. A lot of the time the article will give praise but end up giving it a 7, and then other time's the article will be very meh and end up with a score of 9. The articles are stupid, but they also give some news. I go to IGN, but like every other site you read their content with a grain of salt, and completely ignore some of the other shit that gets written.

 

[00slash00]

scores should just go away completely. they are absolutely meaningless

 

[TehCookie]

I can't say IGN is worse than other sites but things like this piss me off:

Until Arc Rise Fantasia I've never played more than an hour of any Japanese RPG.

Then why is he reviewing a JRPG?

(full review)
http://wii.ign.com/articles/111/1112284p1.html

 

[bullet_sandw1ch]

i fully believe IGN is just plain stupid. i came to realize this with Ninja Gaiden 3 and RE:ORC. they arent the best games, but they didnt deserve the scornful reviews they got, even if the consensus on ORC was it was good if you had friends, crap otherwise.

 

[Dogstile]

I've always thought people hated IGN because they nitpick certain aspects of a game and blow them out of proportion, even if its something that will only bother you for a second or so, or they'll make something up completely. It annoys me when they do that.

 

[SomeBritishDude]

There's no point trusting a site like IGN for reviews.

People say their handed money under the table but personally I don't think it's as blatant as that. You just have to look at how their site functions. IGN get's as much if not more views for their previews and trailers than they do their reviews. If there were give, say, a Bioware game a really low score (6 being low sadly) then Bioware is less lightly to give them and exclusive first look or whatever. So they get less traffic.

It's just in their own best interests to give big games from big companies perfect scores. Plus these guys get no love for giving a big game a bad review score, you know what the interenet is like. They must get pretty bad hate mail as it is.

They're still a crap site with crap reviews but looking at how their site and other sites like it are structured I can see why they are the way they are.

 

[bullet_sandw1ch]

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.

i agree with you, but i think yahtzee is more focused on lambasting the games he plays, instead of talking about what's good in the game. if he was just the a tiny bit more positive, i would agree with him all the time.

 

[Volstag9]

They're ignorant because... "You can't spell IGNorant without IGN!"

LOOOOOOL!

*ahem*

Perhaps they aren't ignorant, but rather just biased. Plus I don't really agree with many of their reviews. They also are probably guilty of changing their review's score based on site traffic and money.

They've gained such a bad reputation now no one seems to take them seriously. Watch a review of CoD game, then look at the comments section. They are full of flame wars and hate.

I think you'll find hate and bias with every reviewer though. It's all just opinion anyway. I watch people like Yahtzee more for the comedy than the actual review.

 

[DirgeNovak]

I think it's the complete opposite. They rate games much too high. They're basically a hype machine. Example:

I really liked Uncharted 3, but once I finished it, I said to myself: "This really didn't deserve the 10 it got from IGN." Controls were much worse than in U1 and U2 - having replayed through both just before U3 came out, I found aiming to be really bad compared to the other games, especially pulling off headshots, storyline didn't quite work since it raised tons of questions the game never answered and two characters get kicked out of the story halfway through for basically no reason, the villains' motivations and true identity are never really revealed, etc. Yet none of those things are mentioned in IGN's review.

Mind you, this might only be Greg Miller's problem, since most of the IGN reviews I have problems with are his. His Dead Space 2 review still makes me laugh and cry at the same time. It looks like a nine year-old wrote it.

At IGN in general, from what I can gather, if a game has good production values, it gets a dithyramb, an insanely high score and free PR for the publisher. If it has subpar production values and/or is a different experience to most mainstream games, it gets shat on and lit on fire.

Personally, I mostly use Destructoid and GameRevolution for reviews, then watch GameTrailers' review to get fresh video footage. Then I typically have a good idea and can make a decision whether or not to buy the game.

 

[XenonZaleo]

While I think that they ARE too close to the devs/publishers in some cases, in gneral they're just people with opinions. Listen to the podcasts and you get a better sense of everything, and while you may not like them, it humanizes the articles a bit. I won't say the writing is top notch, but then, I rarely go to the actual site because I find its design atrocious.

Of course, with that said, what IS IGNorant is this lolworthy "they've been paid off" nonsense. If you honestly think that is just the course of business, well, lulz. The one time it even came close to that started a huge internet firestorm (re: Gerstmann).

 

[XenonZaleo]

Also, some of the arguments here are kinda funny in how contradictory they are.

On the one hand, they just give bad scores to drive up controversy, but they're simultaneously supposed to emphasize the good.

Seriously, NGIII got a 3, and Operation Raccoon City a 4, while niche title Skullgirls gets an 8.5, there's no logic to that if there's a big scheme.

 

[razer17]

I use them for news, since the Escapist is really slow for news. And I also like their App Store update and Free game of the Day features. I also usually read or skim their reviews. I don't put that much emphasis on any review scores, but to be honest most of the major sites rarely differ anyway.

Anyway, I doubt that IGN is really as biased as everyone says.

 

[l3o2828]

Like others have said already. Many of their contributors are unprofessional and they are far too close to the publishers. Plus, most of their articles are flamebait made only to bring in more hits.

So basically a more Trollish Gamespot?

 

[Kahunaburger]

Until Arc Rise Fantasia I've never played more than an hour of any Japanese RPG.

Then why is he reviewing a JRPG?

(full review)
http://wii.ign.com/articles/111/1112284p1.html

This is why people call them IGNorant - they don't bother to have people who are actually familiar with a game's mechanics review a game. Arc Rise Fantasia might be awesome, terrible, or somewhere in between, and that review brings me no closer to knowing which.

My favorite recent review for unintentional comedy is this one: http://ds.ign.com/articles/856/856601p1.html

ChunSoft certainly has managed to get the randomization thing down, but that just makes the entire dungeon experience hit-or-miss. Random does not equal good. Far too often the dungeon's exit would appear in the same room we started (or even in the very next space), thus negating any need to explore that floor, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_tYb0ws66E] unless we wanted some items that may or may not be there.

However, due to the turn-based nature of the game, the entire experience feels stop-and-go. [http://fail.brm.sk/o_rly/no-shit-sherlock.jpg]

The brutal punishment system has a very obvious chilling effect on the player. We quickly lost any motivation to experiment or even do much exploring in the game, for fear of death.

(And they had this guy review a roguelike.)

 

[-Samurai-]

I can't say IGN is worse than other sites but things like this piss me off:

Until Arc Rise Fantasia I've never played more than an hour of any Japanese RPG.

Then why is he reviewing a JRPG?

(full review)
http://wii.ign.com/articles/111/1112284p1.html

Probably because he just played one. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that you don't have to put thousands of hours into a genre to review a game you just played that's within that genre. All you have to do is...ya know...play the game.

OT: I really don't get why people ***** about reviews. The importance placed on the opinion of someone that isn't you is ridiculous. Since when does it matter what someone else thinks of something? Try it for yourself.

 

[Kahunaburger]

Probably because he just played one. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that you don't have to put thousands of hours into a genre to review a game you just played that's within that genre. All you have to do is...ya know...play the game.

If someone who had never played a shooter reviewed Halo: Reach and wrote an article about how they dislike the unintuitive control system and real-time gameplay, would any response other than pointing and laughing be appropriate?

OT: I really don't get why people ***** about reviews. The importance placed on the opinion of someone that isn't you is ridiculous. Since when does it matter what someone else thinks of something? Try it for yourself.

It doesn't matter (to me, at least - can't speak for anyone else) what IGN thinks. It is, however, hilarious when a game completely goes over their reviewer's head, or when they try to play square peg/round hole with their stupid scoring system and something like Crusader Kings 2.

 

[RaikuFA]

I can't say IGN is worse than other sites but things like this piss me off:

Until Arc Rise Fantasia I've never played more than an hour of any Japanese RPG.

Then why is he reviewing a JRPG?

(full review)
http://wii.ign.com/articles/111/1112284p1.html

Thats like 90% of all JRPG reviews. Its gotton so out of hand its sickening.

Just stick with youtube.

 

[chadachada123]

I find the bigger problem being them giving perfect or near perfect scores to games that are clearly and fundamentally flawed, that one cannot even fathom having such a high score.

Oh good lord. They have their own opinion that you don't agree with, get over it. That is the problem with any reviewer, the readers may not agree with the opinion, please read that one word over and over again: OPINION, of the REVIEWER. Here let me review some games: Killzone is a generic shooter, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 was a great shooter, and I despise the warhammer games. Was it a good review? Hell no. Did you agree with it? Maybe, maybe not. Review is just a fancy word for opinion and people need to get the hell over it and stop bitching about, "Oh no! They liked/hated a game/movie/song/book that I hated/liked! Now to bash them for having an OPINION. Surely that sounds stupid to some of you right?

Your "review" isn't misleading hundreds of thousands of people into buying shitty (or average or slightly-above-average) games. That's the difference here.

You aren't saying the mental equivalent of "This game is zomg freaking awesome with almost no faults, at all, none" (let's say, Skyrim). A real reviewer with integrity doesn't mislead people, and will outright say that there are some large goddamn flaws, and THEN they will give their opinion on the subject. IGN does not do this, or will gloss over massive factual issues without more than a sentence blurb. That combined with some obvious damn corporate lobbying makes for some shitty reviewing.

Reviews aren't necessarily opinions. You can review something without any opinions, or you can give an opinion without it being a review. You'd do well to actually read the arguments of other people instead of just building a straw man around them.