Soviet Heavy said:
Gralian said:
Soviet Heavy said:
I honestly wouldn't care if they did. That's their choice, and if they don't want to play a game because they feel it is shit, then more power to them. Am I going to suddenly start attacking you because you don't like Halo while I do? No, because I don't have any more right to tell you what to like than the person I was quoting.
Stating you don't like Halo casually on a public forum is vastly different to claiming your opinion is professional and critical.
But if I gave reasons for why I didn't enjoy a game, such as a clunky interface or unoptimized controls, would me stating those reasons be met with the same reaction?
If I said that Halo felt too floaty and loose in the controls department, would I still be ignored by merit of me not being a professional critic? This review stated that he had troubles with the interface, and that he did not find the controls intuitive. Yet like the Halo example, it is purely subjective. Whereas some might find the controls just right, others might not feel the same way.
The difference is that Tito's opinions are worth money. So yes, your opinion would not carry as much weight as a 'professional critic'.
Someone is paying him to give those opinions, and honestly, there are some things that you can be objective about regardless of whether or not you
personally enjoy it. For example, you might complain about the 'floaty' controls in Halo, but if the sensitivity was ridiculously high or low, you would recognise that regardless of personal opinion. See the Perfect Dark XBLA debacle.
Grey_Focks said:
Gralian said:
Without objectivity professional reviews here will be no different from the user reviews, and at that point i have to question the validity of said professional reviews and whether they are even necessary in the first place and what qualifies them to be regarded as professional.
Hmm, something to ponder over indeed. Personally, I think that a professional reviewer SHOULD keep their personal bias in their review. Not everyone is going to see eye-to-eye with the general opinion on most things, and games like DA2 and TW2 are perfect examples of this.
Every review really shouldn't just be a copy-pasta of all the others for everything out there, which is really what they would be if everyone were to just remove their feelings from said reviews.
Having someone actually put their personal opinions and preferences for a game into their review, I think, is really quite important, because undoubtedly there will be some people who like the same types of games as that reviewer, and some who don't share their preferences at all.
Parts bolded for emphasis on what i want to examine. Actually, when dealing with looking at legitimate criticism of the shortcomings of something - whether technical, in delivery, or in interaction - is something that should be looked at objectively, and if reviewers are doing their job right, SHOULD come across in the majority of reviews. See the above example about if sensitivity was too high. We rely on professional reviews to look at somthing professionally, looking for things the developer have done right or wrong, regardless of whether or not it is in line with their personal tastes. Honestly, professional reviews should be conducted by a team of individuals, not just one person, so they can compare and contrast their views and points. Maybe someone on the team missed something that others found. If a game was to truly be put under objective scrutiny, it wouldn't be given the once over. This is why i tend to find GameTrailers to be the most objective review site (personally), because in the video reviews the guy says "we", implying that it's not just one guy who played it for a while - they likely had several people on staff going through it to add their thoughts and opinions to make it as well rounded as possible. (i will concede that this is just my own guesswork and that may not be the case at all)
On top of that, why do you think people tend to say "oh i visit gamespot / ign / kotaku / whatever over any other site" and "the criticisms of this site don't hold up against this site, making me question which one is more valid". It's because people are trying to look for the most objective opinion. People ***** about IGN because they think IGN is full of COD-lovers and is slightly more biased towards the more action oriented side of the medium. That might well be their subjective opinion, but it still earns them the ire of the community. People use metacritic and look at many reviews not because they're hoping it will be in line with their own opinions, but because they're looking for the most objective review they can find.
Of course reviewers can put their personal opinions into their review, but it should be as an editorial, not something that impacts the final score. Something like "While i recognise this is a technically proficient and solid , it's not something that holds appeal with me. Still, i can see that fans of..." would be suitable. You have to understand that when a generally much-scorned game like DA2 earns 5 / 5 and W2 earns a 3.5 / 5, it's a rather large discrepancy and people will pick up on that. Even GameTrailers and other sites noted that DA2 had the error of copy-pasting levels and other faults that are signs of a rushed game. I haven't played either game so i'm not going to give my opinion on that, i'm just saying that it's a bit odd to give it a perfect mark when, from what i can tell from both 'professional' and 'user' reviews, it's far from that. If the professional reviewer can't recognise that, it makes me question the validity of his reviews.
"That's the point of user reviews! Professional reviews should be just that, professional!"
Indeed they should, but being professional doesn't mean keeping your own opinions out of the review, if anything, it should mean the opposite, just doing it well. It should mean being able to criticize something without just bashing it or insulting it, but instead pointing out individual problems, and what they should've done instead. It means being able to point out what the game does right, without just mindlessly praising it.
So... what qualifies such opinions as being professional? The problem is not critcising something to the point of bashing it, or mindlessly praising it. It's marking something down for the arbitrary reason of "it's not for me". That doesn't sound like legitimate criticism to me. If it is, i again ask what separates professional reviews from user reviews apart from a pay check. Is it that it's a coherent, grammatically correct review? Well, i'm studying English Literature at the moment at Uni, so if i sat down to type up something i could make it just as well written, but that wouldn't qualify me to label myself as professional.
Every critic just giving one uniform score across the board really doesn't help anyone, since we all have varying tastes...
That's the thing though, uniform criticism should be able to inform the user about the positives and negatives of something and provide enough information for them to make their own decision about whether it is for them or "in line with their tastes". I was told DA:O was a golden example of an RPG, but it wasn't for me. Like Tito, i loved the world and lore and characters etc, but the gameplay just didn't agree with me. I didn't blame the reviews for not telling me "beware: It might not be in your tastes!". I knew what i was getting into and i decided to give it a shot. You can't account for everybody and people should be able to make their own decisions based on the information available. If you can't provide enough information for somebody to make a personal decision, something's wrong.
