VeryOblivious said:
I disagree. I haven't seen a professional reviewer yet. Mainly because the people with some objective perspective about game design will be busy... DEVELOPING GAMES. And yet, some of these lads will be biased towards the complexity of the game's programming.
In conclusion, Yahtzee's reviews are as valid as the reviews of IGN' reviewer, for example.
thats not quite what i was getting at, thou shalt not quote out of context.
my point is that yahtzee NOT being a 'professional' games reviewer is his selling point.
notice the quotes around professional? what i mean is that yahtzee doesnt try and pontificate on meaningless details as if they were importiant. read a 'professional' games review for instiance and you get a paragraph or two about how you can customize your toons face in a game like mass effect. where yahtzee make a toung in cheek joke of this a 'professional' review would actualy spend time telling you how great they think it actualy is. when i reality it is (or should be now days) a common place thing.
or when he makes a comment about driving sections being in every 'action/adventure game' and being about as great a selling point as saying it comes in a box.
what im saying is that a 'professional' reviwer will spend pages of text telling you every little nitpicking detail that cought their eye and not making much if any effort to point out whats a REAL drawing point to a given game and whats just filler text so that their reviews dont end up being something like , "well its another clone of C&C, only with larger maps and a different skin" when they review pretty much any RTS game on the market.
its like the difference between your buddys when your talking car's, there is allways a bunch of psudo gear-heads that want to tell you how many killmega RPMs your 6 bazillion HP dual torque turbo quad 6000mbx engine can produce, or your other buddy that says 'dude that car is the shit, and the chicks LOVE it' yahtzee is the chick buddy. giveing you information that you really want/need to know without spending ages talking about crap that doesnt matter to anyone anyhow.
i find most 'professional' reviews read like a spread sheet, or a game pitch, dull and full of usless detail, and when you read them you can almost SEE what parts were grafted on to the review to appease either the editors or the company that the game belongs too. once in a total blue moon you get an honist review of a game because its generaly made by an indo developer with no budget for advertisment and cant afford to bribe the major review sights for a good review (example http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/spaceforcecaptains/review.html?sid=6187655&om_act=convert&om_clk=multimodule&tag=multimodule;picks;title;1)
now i dont know if that review is accurate or not, ive not played the game, but it certianly got hammered by gamespot for some reason, while they give a game like the Witcher an 8.5 when if it earned a solid 5 it was doing something imo. i expect the difference is that ive never seen 'captians' advertise on game spot while the witcher was spread all over the sight for the week or so during its launch.
anyhow, i think you just misunderstood what i was saying, im all for yahtzees reviews simply because he DOESNT try and turn them into something they arent. he makes no pretext of being a 'real' reviewer, hes just a guy that plays games like the rest of us, and is willing to say what he ACTUALY thinks about a game without plunking us neck deep in bullshit information that we dont want or even need while hes doing it.
truth is ill make up my own mind about the details of a given game if i choose to buy it, what i look for in a review is an over all feel of a game to see if i should waste my cash on it in the first place. if found over the years that one mans 'problem' is something i really LIKED about a game, or another man's selling point is something i hate. so a general overview like yahtzees is about perfect for what i want and look for in a review. his reviews are like asking a pal about a game, you know your gunna get an honist answer and as long as you know his tastes in games you can judge for yourself if you should buy it or not.
