How much do reviews sway your opinion?

[importaku]

Reviews are useless to me as half the time the games i buy have no reviews in mags as they dont review imports fast enough. And on the net unless it's some popular franchise the chances of a review are zip.


I rely on my intuition rather than others opinions to decide weither a game is good or not, it's interesting to read their point of view but thats pretty much it.

[Sane]

Ok, looking at that list I have to say you have a point .

[Shozuki]

I take reviews with a pinch of salt. I generally know what I want and if reviews back it up, then im super happy. Like someone else said you lovely chaps have caused me to make some impulse buys and games I generally wouldnt consider.

Recently though, I have been peering into reviews more and more. Infact if it wasnt for them I wouldnt have brought Dead Space which is proving to be superb. On the flip side if I used them as gospel I wouldnt have brought Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, which im rather enjoying at present...

Wierd...

[charlesr]

I never have time to look at other sites, so unless it's a review here or First Play, I'll just check out a gameplay vid and guess. First Play new thread list on the ntsc-uk.com homepage is dangerous though - I just have to check out the new threads.

[C']

A bad review of a game that I have been looking forward to, won't dissuade me from ignoring it completely and I will look for other impressions for a second perspective.

However, good reviews of games that have not really appeared on my radar will encourage me to check into them in more detail. Fable 2 and Fallout are 2 recent examples of this.

[prinnysquad]

Reviews are a complicated thing.

I'd say that they can definitely whet the appetite. I can't deny that reading the Fable 2 reviews raised the excitement level. On the other hand they can create false hype, or expectations that can't be met. They certainly assist my buying choices but never exclusively.

I try to play demos before making a decision, which can either confirm or question a review. Thanks to a demo, a 6/10 review could turn into a buy. Then again, I don't think demos necessarily give a good indicator of a game's quality, either. It may be one of the best bits of an average game, or be totally unrepresentative of whether or not I'd enjoy a game in the long run.

Just a cursory glance at my gaming shelves proves that neither reviews or demos seem to dictate my buying choices. I've racked many, many hours on Chromehounds, which got largely average reviews. I despised the demo. This brings into play another factor that sways my buying opinions - mates.

My friends pretty much know which games I'd like or wouldn't. They know my likes, dislikes and tolerance levels. They'd often discourage me or encourage me to seek out certain titles. Many of them like different genres to me, which means that I can try games that they've bought, but have no intention of buying myself. It may even change my opinion of a title. Enter Chromehounds. I loved it after playing it online - instant sell.

The score at the bottom of a page can be a strong draw, but it's only one of a whole gamut of factors that impact on my buying decisions. No matter how many 9/10 reviews it got, I wouldn't buy a flight sim, unless a mate showed me it and it rose above the trappings of the genre I don't get on with. And no amount of poxy 5/10 reviews would stop me from getting an EDF game, as long as the text indicated that nothing major had changed.

[Rick]

i use metacritic.

i'll read a few reviews; I choose which reviews to read by the score. A couple from the highest scorers, a couple from the middle and then a couple from the bottom end.

By then i've generally got a good idea of what the game is like, and if i could live with it. And reading a variety of reviews usually is enough to weed out the crap reviews. I know my stupid cousin will usually buy anything with a marketing budget behind it. So its a borrow or buy choice to weigh up.

[Rick]

On the other hand they can create false hype, or expectations that can't be met.

Errr aren't you confusing reviews with previews?

[prinnysquad]

Errr aren't you confusing reviews with previews?

Not at all. I've read loads of reviews where various features are 'sliced bread', but are, in the flesh, totally underwhelming. And who hasn't been taken in by a game that's got hyped to buggery in reviews, but just hasn't got on with the game?

[Papercut]

I find print reviews pretty terrible these days, for the most part. It seems less and less the reviewer is given enough time to properly explore a game. Nintendo's new expanded demographic doesn't help things, expert game reviewers are no longer expert when it comes to a 50 year old wondering if there is anything else worth getting for their balance board. That and the generally poor quality of single format magazines, along with the bias of 'official' magazines, makes the whole enterprise pretty pointless. Every mag's reviews are badly skewed towards their readership. You could argue that's their job, but it makes them completely unreliable.

One of the mags doing a half decent job is gamesTM. You can rely on a review there being the relatively unbiased opinion of one person, but reading them it is often clear they canvas the reaction of forums such as this one to colour their coverage. Hard to begrudge them that, who wants to shower DMC4 with praise, and then find genuine DMC experts bemoaning the lack of audio queues break the game in some way? At that point though, you may as well stick to three or four gaming forums and give up on print for good.

I think print mags realise their days are numbered, given how much more useful a forum community is when judging a new game, and have known that for most of this decade. One way around this is to become more Edge-like, in-depth features and articles you wouldn't normally find on a free website, but no one seems to be taking that route (too expensive). I'd be interested in a magazine that ditches reviews completely, and simply focussed on features instead.

The problem with dedicated review sites is poor revenue streams often means kids are employed cheaply who lack the breadth of knowledge needed to make their reviews reliable in the first place. The weaker single format magazines suffer from this problem too. There is also something about online reviews that permit shoddier copy to go out, because you can always amend it later, and the reaction of your readership can be instantly gauged. Assuming you have a decent mechanism in place for feedback. Online reviews work best as a gateway to discussing the assessment of that game, and even then there aren't many places that get this right.

I also find nearly every review out there is completely unable to discuss the mechanics of actually playing the game, and almost never touch upon the technical aspects of it. If you ignore NGJ and concentrate on the idea that game reviews can provide evaluations of identifiable metrics, along the lines of a DVD review mag that assesses the technical quality of a disk for example, print reviews never deliver on this. I think this is where reviews fail the most, I'm more interested in how a game actually works and much less interested in a reviewer's opinion. If you don't like Space Giraffe then fine, but at least explain to me how the game works so I can get an idea whether I would want to try it out or not. I'm not interested in your humourous insights (they're not funny) or personal frustrations with being crap at it, just tell me how the damned game works.

Lets call this the 'LittleBigPlanet' problem. I've read people here saying they had no idea what the game is about, and I'm in the same boat. No review has been able to convey why it's actually any good. The Edge review has a fair crack at it, but falls down on describing how it actually works, the writer is far more concerned with telling you how impressed they were by it - I don't care!

When it comes down to it the only way to find out if you like a game is to play it. Ignoring bias and opinion, give me a decent explanation of the game mechanics and technical quality so I can then make a more informed decision as to whether I'll bother giving the thing a go in the first place. This is what I want from a review nowadays, and no one provides it. Print mags are too worried about boring the reader and making their reviews faintly humourous to get this right, and the quality of writing is not good enough to make it work either way.

*edit*

There often does not seem to be the same passion in magazines nowadays, and reviews are more concerned with technical issues than good old fun.

Just realised I totally contradicted this. Are they? I never get enough decent info out of a review on this myself. Reviewers generally lack the knowledge to provide any kind of worthwhile technical assessment.

Also I'm arguing opinion is less important than a well written explanation of a game, when some people are saying they just want to get an idea of how a game feels to play. I think I can work that out for myself, given enough decent info in the first place, and the reviewer's opinion isn't very important to me at all. Reviews are obviously conflicted in trying to provide both a buying guide and a personal account of the reviewer's experiences. I'd rather do away with the latter completely, leave that to editorial and features (and hellish self indulgent blogs, if you absolutely have to).

[prinnysquad]

I also find nearly every review out there is completely unable to discuss the mechanics of actually playing the game, and almost never touch upon the technical aspects of it. If you ignore NGJ and concentrate on the idea that game reviews can provide evaluations of identifiable metrics, along the lines of a DVD review mag that assesses the technical quality of a disk for example, print reviews never deliver on this. I think this is where reviews fail the most, I'm more interested in how a game actually works and much less interested in a reviewer's opinion. If you don't like Space Giraffe then fine, but at least explain to me how the game works so I can get an idea whether I would want to try it out or not. I'm not interested in your humourous insights (they're not funny) or personal frustrations with being crap at it, just tell me how the damned game works.

Lets call this the 'LittleBigPlanet' problem. I've read people here saying they had no idea what the game is about, and I'm in the same boat. No review has been able to convey why it's actually any good. The Edge review has a fair crack at it, but falls down on describing how it actually works, the writer is far more concerned with telling you how impressed they were by it - I don't care!

I think this is a good point. I've been in the situation before where I've read reviews but been none the wiser until I'd actually played the game as to how its gameplay works.

[eastyy]

noticed on alot of sites there are embargos on reviews until the launch date which i think sucks

[Dazzyman]

...surely the text is the only part of value?


Say what you like about Edge - their best-written reviews really nail the feeling of playing a game.

A good review will pinpoint the value in the experience, and I nearly always find that interesting... Even for games I have no intention of buying.

Its due to spoilers m8 reviews go way too much into what happens in games now. Fallout 3 Ive read loads on one today by accident just trying to find out what was in the CE.

Its only with games I know sod all about that I check the review scores like Dead space; in general Ive already got em sat their bought by time the reviews come out on the stuff I know about (which is usually pretty much everything apart from the odd one).

Example would be Quantum of Solace. I expect it to be pap and no nowt about it as it didnt intrest me but if all of a sudden 10reviews pop up saying 9/10 I will buy it on that. The games that intrest me Ive never been swayed against.

[Rick]

Not at all. I've read loads of reviews where various features are 'sliced bread', but are, in the flesh, totally underwhelming. And who hasn't been taken in by a game that's got hyped to buggery in reviews, but just hasn't got on with the game?

Thats why i take a sample from the top, middle and bottom of scores.

[egparadigm]

I have to say I feel the complete opposite way to Papercut. I'm interested in hearing interesting prose about the process of playing a game and contextualisation of the achievements of the finished article. I really couldn't give two hoots about "how the game works" unless it's something that needs explaining. In the case of LittleBigPlanet, I know more than enough about that from previews; in fact, this is usually where I would get my understanding from in that area.

I do understand the need to know more on that, though, so there's definitely a place for it. It's years of academic study that have drummed "don't tell the narrative" into me.