reviews...take it serious ?

[Wrestlemaniac]

Hello,

I don't know if this is the right place for this discussion but i'm gonna go ahead anyway since i can't find a better spot....feel free to move it if you want...

I want to talk about reviews, and how serious do you take them ?

Are you one of those people that, if it gets a bad revieuw,won't buy the game,even if you were really looking forward to it before reading the revieuw ?

Or are you one of the peepz that judges for himself and don't care what reviews say ?

I'm definatly in the second range, i judge for myself, always.... because no matter how "good" or " proffesional" a reviewer is, it still is just one mans opinion.
Which isn't to say that i will look out for some of the negative points, or take in mind that it could infact really be a awful game, but i will never not buy a game just because someone else doesn't like it.

The most recent example i got is need for speed most wanted, now i don't have the game yet, but i've read a couple of reviews on it and theres a very big differance in them !

On one hand, i have NGC magazine, which buries the game almost entirely into the ground, and gives it a very weak grade.

Then i have N-gamer, which is a dutch nintendo magazine, and here the game does pretty good, it got 70 or 80% ( out of 100) which is a very good result, and the comments are good too.

So,all those peepz claim to be very proffesional but at the end of the day they have very differant views of games, which is always funny imo....i love to read gaming magazines,even if it's just for the retro section in ngc or just to look at some screenshots from games i look forward too, it's just fun to read.

And i always keep the comments in mind when i go buy the game,but no bad revieuw has ever stopped me from buying a game though.

How 'bout you ?

[jcalder8]

I always read reviews for games that I am wanting to buy. If a game gets bad reviews then it can make me avoid it. I take into account what they have to say about it, mostly gameplay and controls. If they don't like the graphics then normally I throw out most of what they have to say.

[poe]

I head to Game Rankings for a metascore of sorts. Spares me the chance of a skewed or semi-informed view from a biased reviewer or one with a deadline by just averaging a dozen or so reviews together. It also links to the individual reviews, ranks the reviews/sites, and provides user reviews and ratings, so you get multiple impressions. I also try and check gameplay videos to substantiate any claims in any of the reviews.

[pacmanhat]

I don't always agree with reviews, but I do definitely factor them into my purchasing decisions. One review doesn't typically sway me, but if a large amount of reviews come to a relative consensus, that definitely has the potential to convince me to (or not to) pick something up.

[googlefest1]

i dont alow what a reviewer says to influence my choices - i judge for my self

- honestly - i usualy take a look at reviews after i have played a game to see if any reviewers had the same experice as i had, takeing a tally of who i think is being honest and who i feel generates thier reviews based on the quality of thier payola. If i see a glorious review for a piece of garbage then i think the reviewer is an insane fanboy/girl, got a bag of green backs or was sent some serious entertainment.

[exit]

I usually look at reviews as a reference and never really take them seriously. The only exception is when I see several hundred reviews stating how horrible a game is, other than that I go with my own feeling.

[dahveed]

I try to read several reviews from several different sites before making a decision. If one place says a game is good or bad, I don't take it as gospel. If a bunch of people say the same thing about a game however, I tend to take it more seriously.

[shoes23]

I head to Game Rankings for a metascore of sorts. Spares me the chance of a skewed or semi-informed view from a biased reviewer or one with a deadline by just averaging a dozen or so reviews together. It also links to the individual reviews, ranks the reviews/sites, and provides user reviews and ratings, so you get multiple impressions. I also try and check gameplay videos to substantiate any claims in any of the reviews.

Yeah I do the same thing. I'll usually read the the reviews that scored the highest and the lowest, and take the average score into account. If a game interests me however, a bad review score won't deter me from buying the game. Almost every game has at least one redeeming quality to it.

[Towlie2110]

The reason why reviews are different is what makes them special. You have to find a reviewer who has the same tastes in games as you do. So if a dutch reviewer doesn't like a game, it could be that he is completely different from me and in his taste in games. It's Dutch afterall.

I usually go with Gamespot, and won't generally buy a new game, unless it's 9.6 or higher.

[nik]

renting is my review, paragraphs and screenshots won't ever do a game justice... the only ones that are accurate are the "THIS IS TOTAL CRAP, WE GIVE IT A ZERO" ones... all the 6.5 and 7.6 and 8.8's are just fillers, those games are just games that people will enjoy, but require diffrent tastes.

[Richter Belmount]

nope perfect dark zero is not a 9.0 according to gamespot.com

[nik]

nope perfect dark zero is not a 9.0 according to gamespot.com

Perfect example, obviously they enjoyed the game... I did not. I spent 15 minutes on it... some freinds loved it, I just thought it was OK.

[Julio III]

Normally I'm sold on a game before I read the review. Reviews can make me want games I hadn't considered before though. I prefer to go on peoples opinions, either of people I know or people here or at ntsc-uk.

[Snapple]

I read a lot of reviews, but I'm trying to curb that.

Most of my favorite games I bought on impulse. I go to the store, I like the box, and that's usually it.

When I read reviews, I often times talk myself out of games if it doesn't get a perfect review. A game loses its mystique if I read about it, and it mentions things wrong with it. So I've probably passed up a few games that I would enjoy.

So I try not to read that many in-depth reviews. I still watch X-Play all the time though. <_<

[Flack]

Sometimes you are lucky enough to find a reviewer that has the same taste in games that you do. If so, then you can kind of gauge opinions a little better that way.

Also, for me, it's more important to see WHY a game got a particular score. I've seen games get low scores because a reviewer didn't like the background music. I've read several recent reviews for Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter for the Xbox that knock off points because it's "not as good as the 360 version" -- well DUH, it shouldn't be! And I don't even HAVE a 360!

I guess basically I'm saying I read between the lines of most reviews to try and get beneath the words or the scores.

[Slimedog]

I always read the reviews after I've beaten the game. I treat it as sort of a post game wrap up. I collect, so I'm pretty much going to buy everything somewhere down the road. I don't need a review to give me a thumbs up before I play since some of my favorite games haven't really be critical smash hits.

On the Perfect Dark Zero topic, I think that game is one of the best FPS games ever and I found it totally deserving of a 9.0. That being said, most people I know don't agree with me on that. The point is that it pretty much tracks statisticly that a small portion of reviewers thought it was awesome (agreed with me) while most thought it was average (agreed with my buddies). Not every reviewer is going to score a game the same and I'm glad for that.

[lordnikon]

Number scores are so superficial and people should not use them as any basis for purchasing games. Also, often times the text in the review doesn't even correlate to the score given.

Reviews should be used to simply glean factual information. This is what I use them for. I basically try to look for performance problems, how long it took the user to complete the game, or features such as multiplayer support, peripheral support etc etc (although few reviewers bring any of this stuff up).

I can guarantee all of you that if you opt not to buy a game because it gets a "5.4", you are setting yourself up for a huge mistake. I can't count the number of games that I personally enjoyed, but some reviewer gave a low score.

[jdc]

If I want a game that might be iffy, I'll take a quick spin on it in the shop before buying it. Although...these days, even tried and true franchises can turn craptacular. I read reviews only to get the general gist of what the game is about or what it involves gameplay-wise.

Reviews are so fanboy based these days. As a small example....I don't know what kind of shitty TV setup OXM is forced to play on....but since day one they've been bashing Ridge Racer 6 as "last gen graphics" (their official tagline was "yep, 6 just about covers it") and have been lauding Project Gotham 3 as THE racer with the best visual look to it. They need to come over to my house and see both games running on my setup. It's Project Gotham that clearly looks more "last gen" of the two. Ridge 6 kicks the shit out of PGR graphics-wise with it's incredible texturing. They need to throw away the 20" tube TV and start reviewing final release code instead of nearly-finished beta.

[Daniel Thomas]

Well, I take my reviews seriously, but that's because I'm easily seduced by my own prose. Of course, if I was getting paid, I'd take them even more seriously.

[Austin]

I read reviews pretty avidly, but usually from a few different sources. If five or six different sites/magazines say similar things about a game, it usually says a lot.