The Quality of games reviews

[Captain Bland]

I was watching this quite(In my opinion)insightful view on the general quality of games reviews;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR4NvsotcEE&feature=user

And I just wanted to know your general opinion on the isssue-I know you're going to make reference to the ZP and Yahtzee, but I try not to take his reviews too seriously-he does make good points,yes, but I find some of the stuff he picks on are for the sake of comedy and whatnot. Besides its updated once a week, and theres a very small chance the game you've got your sights set on will be reviewed anyway. But back to the point-do you agree that the general standard of reviews have gone down?, and is there still an unbiased, reliable source out there?

P.S Yes, I know, but you'd be suprised at how many names have been taken

 

[nightfish]

Yea you can't get an unbiased review anymore. What happened with a particular website the other month proved that games companies are buying good reviews

And the only way you can find out a game is good is by trying it yourself through a demo.

 

[Gigantor]

Dude needs an Edge subscription. They gave Halo 3 a 10, but then I remember them giving some damn fine reasons why...

I'd never just watch Yahtzee to decide whether or not to get a game- he's more of an added bonus than anything else. I still have a fondness for PC Gamer (the UK one, anyway) as far as honesty, accuracy and mild amusement goes.

I really think he's wrong that there'd barely be such a thing as video reviews without the AVGN- the video review format, talking into a camera, some footage of the game, some homemade special effects and artwork- these are a logical extension, not an earth-shattering innovation.

All in all, I don't think he's right: he's just not looking in the right place.

P.S. I really don't want to watch this chap playing with himself over the internet...

 

[Sniper_Zegai]

I one of this guys subscribers I like BigAl, hes pretty funny and he makes some good points.

 

[propertyofcobra]

With the widespread internet useage nowadays, reviews need not be as unbiased. With thousands of opinions on your fingertips, as well as a playable chunk of the game in many cases, there is no REAL need for professional reviewers any longer, so they have to be funny (or "funny") to survive, and the best way to be funny? Be mean.

 

[L.B. Jeffries]

That guy is fantasizing about an era that never existed. Video game reviews were always biased.

This is a great article by the Penny Arcade guys here...http://www.penny-arcade.com/2006/09/06

And the Escapist did some amazing explanations for the industry here...http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_106/1290-To-Hear-Ourselves-Review

It helps if you're reading a source that doesn't depend on its income. The New York Times may be unflattering, but you can bet they don't take crap from game publishers. Same for other magazines that don't cater to gamers.

 

[Cousin_IT]

Im not sure if the general quality has gone down. A good game gets a good review (even if it seems blown out of all proportion) & if a game really is bad itl be reviewed as such, even if theres percieved negative consequences to doing so (see Gamespots Kane & Lynch debacle). Even when games are given a perhaps undeservedly high review, the reviewer will often explain why.

So personally I dont think the general quality has gone down with regards to their overall content. What I will say though, is that as the medium has expanded to an ever growing & vocal community, the divisions in said community with regards to games have become more stark & as a consequence their responses to reviews they dislike more "agressive."

For example, by PC standards the Halo franchise isnt paticularly exceptional, but when reviewed as a PC game its score often reflects that (PCGamer UK gave Halo2 60% for example). By Console, more specifically Xbox (since it isnt cross console platform) standards, however, it is a pretty damn good FPS, more deserving of the praise it gets. I think alot of gamers, atleast the ones who like to make their opinions known, are too quick to view gaming as one big blob, ignoring the various glaring differences between different gaming platforms which affect how a game should be recieved within the context of each seperate console. A PC Gamer shooting down a game review based on a game for an Xbox or vice versa is, imo, not giving due consideration to the many differences between the two platforms.

 

[sammyfreak]

Do people realy need reviews to tell them what to think about games? When i ready a review i focus on the description of the game; what makes this game special, does it work, is it fun, are there any major issues with the game ect ect.

Also, for the record i would like to state that i unlike quite a few of the people here consider Gamespot to provide rather acurate reviews.

 

[Irrok the Wide]

It's worse than bad, it's through. I'll never buy a game magazine for the reviews ever again. I feel so bad for all those companies that'll never make money off they're hard work b/c reviewers gave their game a 7/10. Gun is my example, an open-world-gunfighter, one of my favorite games. Gun was crushed by the media. BTW saying a game is average is a deathnail.

 

[i_am_undead]

I've always been skeptical that the reviewers from more mainstream gaming sources (think ign, egm, gameinformer) haven't been getting paid or receiving benefits for good reviews from certain publishers. I would think that the big game publishers would be very aggressive in efforts to win a reviewer over with gifts/passes/money/etc.

With that being said, I believe game reviews have gotten more lax over the years, and often times only pay a fan service by giving high ratings (like Halo 3 with many 9's and 10's, come on...). I definitely agree with Irrok the Wilde - the best way to know if a game is good is to play it yourself! Everyone has different tastes, so that's the only fair way.

 

[wilsonscrazybed]

Did Nintendo power mutate from a giant game advertisement after I grew up and stopped reading it? Seemed pretty biased when I think about it. I never remember seeing an article called "This game sucks, don't buy it."

My real question is how old is he anyway? I really don't get the sense that I could sit down with him and reminisce about Ikari warriors. (A+B+B+A+START FOOLS!)

Either way, reviews if anything are getting more balanced as more people review them. Since reviewing is one-half opinion and one-half fact, there will always be an editorial feel to them. The important thing is, is that more people are taking interest in games and are starting to develop a sense of what makes a good game, and what is junk. In the end this will force game-journalists to be more fair and balanced with reviews. Remember that the movie reviewers have had a century to mature. Games and game journalism is still in their infancy.

 

[neems]

saying a game is average is a deathknell.

Agreed.

It's a shame, but it highlights the flaw with score based reviews. People often lament IGN's 3 point scoring system (7, 8 or 9) but what else can they do? People do not see a game that scores 6 as being slightly above average. They see it as being bad. I do it myself; it's one of the reasons I just try to ignore the score and just read the review. Several times I've read a review and thought "Cool, I think I'll buy that, sounds like just my cup of tea," only to discover that the final score is 63% or whatever.

As a side note, I tend to be distrustful of any magazine that regards itself as 'Official'. PC mags don't have this issue as far as I'm aware, instead we have such wonderfully informative tomes as 'Nvidia News Monthly' or whatever their free magazine is called ("play Unreal Tournament 3, it's shiny. Unless you have a radeon, in which case it looks shit.")

 

[GloatingSwine]

Do people realy need reviews to tell them what to think about games?

No. The point of a review is to enable people to decide whether a given game is worth spending hard earned money on.

Knowing whether it is any good or not is quite important in making that decision.

 

[ChrisP.Lettuce]

I think that part of the problems reviews are becoming biased is because more and more people are reviewing them. And it seems that the more individuals that review, more individual opinions surface. Another problem is public perception. Neems was right when he says, if IGN rates anything lower than 7, no one will buy it. As people grow up they stop playing whatever their parents give them, they start wading through the seas of garbage trying to look for the diamond, and they need help.

I dream of the day that a magazine or website or whatever takes a group of people, All ranging from hardcore FPS lovers to casual peggle players, and gets them to review the same game so we get information from all corners of the gaming psyche.

 

[Chalee]

Isn't PC Gamer UK like the ultimate compendium of review awesomeness?

 

[Gigantor]

Isn't PC Gamer UK like the ultimate compendium of review awesomeness?

I think so, although they have painted themselves into a corner a bit as far as the upper limits of their scores go. 96% is the highest they've ever given to a game, so it means if they want to give anything more than that they're basically painting a massive 'ABSOLUTELY THE BEST GAME EVER' sign, which can be problematic. It would certainly make top 100 lists a bit predictable.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

"I remember when there was only one gaming magazine out there. Nintendo Power."

Uhhhh......Nintendo Power...1998... An IN-HOUSE Nintendo magazine..so totally unbiased then.

So Crash(84), ZZap(85), Micro User(81..I think), ZX Computing(82) weren't before that? but perhaps that's just being facetious.

There's a lot of money to be made in reviews. I'm sure that signing on Yahtzee has increased The Escapist's hits. So...is the situation where lots of people are reviewing things (with some of them very biased) better than when one person reviewed them?

Surprisingly, yes. IF you take the time out to look round and not just look at IGN's paid for advertisements.

 

[GloatingSwine]

Isn't PC Gamer UK like the ultimate compendium of review awesomeness?

Edge is generally a bit better. Though they're often many of the same reviewers. Eurogamer is good as well. It's a bit like Edge, but with the stick taken out of it's arse.

 

[Kompi]

I feel so bad for all those companies that'll never make money off they're hard work b/c reviewers gave their game a 7/10. Gun is my example, an open-world-gunfighter, one of my favorite games. Gun was crushed by the media. BTW saying a game is average is a deathnail.

I'd say this is far more one of the core issues of the problem rather than a symptom of it. In my mind it makes perfect sense that the average game is only average, just like the average movie is only average or the average TV show is only average. If people watch the average movie and the average TV show but refuse to try the average game, how is this really the fault of reviewers?

It seems to me like there's a great deal of pressure on game reviews nowadays to promote all games regardless of quality, in turn resulting in rebel cases who disagree for the sake of disagreeing. This is far from the whole picture, and I do think there's plenty of honest (to their opinion, not to being objective) reviewers out there following neither path. That said, there seems to be a growing movement for dismissing any review we disagree with for being either a sheep or a rebel. I recall this controversy surrounding a review for Supreme Commander that gave it a very average (5/10 according to Wiki) score and as a result was decried and dismissed like it was some ignorant hate speech. Reading the explaination for this score, to me it sounded like they'd wanted to love the game but it had a fatal flaw where performance steadilly decreased down to an unplayable state on some machines for no apparent reason, and they felt they couldn't honestly give a game that was good but might be unplayable for half their readers a high score. To me this made perfect sense (especially as my trying the game suffered the same problem), but the general response to the review suggested that I was rather alone in that mindset.

I don't think there's ever been some kind of mythical period where there was no bias in reviews - reviewers are biased by default because they are essentially condenced opinions. To me, Nintendo Power was far more a PR vehicle for Nintendo and its new toys rather than any kind of "honest" game magazine. Also, guy in that video also would've had a more steady point in my mind if his slamming of Halo 3 hadn't exhibited several of the flaws he attributed to reviewers nowadays.

While I acknowledge that there appears to be far more pressure on some reviewers in particular as to what they can and can't say now, I think the general issue is more that we expect far too much out of them. Reviews are opinions and should be taken as such, they are not (and never have been) ultimate truth and it's really up to the reader to find a magazine, site or reviewer that they feel mostly agrees with them. After all, newspapers have had their bias and affiliations since the very start, to me it sounds kindof absurd that gaming magazines would not.