P3n1s or pro

[Da_Elf]

thought this was an interesting article id share

http://www.destructoid.com/why-video-game-reviews-suck-part-two-30412.phtml

[ildu]

Sounds very much like an unsubstantiated, illogical, emotional rant by someone who's making something out of nothing.

[Da_Elf]

actually alot of what he says does make sence. rating games is very much a subjective thing. alot of people say they prefer MI1 and 2 but i loved 3 the best. and we all remember the whole al emmo controversy hehehe

[ManicMatt]

The art of a good reviewer is to be non-biased. I don't like many racing games, but I can easily tell you which ones are good or not. Which ones have good handling, and good AI.

From this website you refer to:

"many reviewers -- and this also ties into the whole “hype” thing -- are terrified at the prospect of negatively reviewing a game in a popular franchise. Even if it's flawed to the point of mediocrity (a la MGS2, which I enjoyed but would not rate higher than a 6)"

First of all MGS2 was a fantastic game, with incredible attention to detail. I wonder why they'd give it such a low score.

Second of all, I only read PSM3 magazine, and I can tell they're not "pussies". For example, EA's new Def Jam game was reviewed this month, and received around 47%. They liked the last PS2 one, giving it around the 80% mark. Clearly not pressured by EA there. Official playstation 2 magazine gave Tomb Raider: Angel of Death (?) a massive score saying how great it is. They later regretted rating it so highly when it was clear to everyone it was crap. I do wonder...

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

First of all MGS2 was a fantastic game, with incredible attention to detail. I wonder why they'd give it such a low score.

Hell, I'd give it an even lower score.  Can you say worst plot development ever?  Say it with me, kids: worst plot development ever.  Seriously, I felt myself wanting to puke as the story mutated into this ridiculous collage of utter preposterousness.  The first bit with Snake was good, though -_-.

[ManicMatt]

Yeah, sure the plot went really strange, but OVERALL the game was a hell of a lot of fun.

You can't give a game a score lower than 6/10 for having a shit storyline, you need more justification than that. Tell me where the game fails in gameplay mechanics and design, in presentation and ideas.

You're so far proving my point about being biast. To you personally, the storyline seems to be the key element of the game, and if that fails then it all fails. This is not a fair review. It's not an adventure game!

[Vince Twelve]

And that pretty much exemplifies why reviewers can't be unbiased.  Different people value different parts of the game.  Review scores are pretty much just people assigning a number to a subjective experience which they approached with subjective expectations.  Reading a review can be informative, but a number rarely tells me if I'm going to enjoy the game or not.  Look back at your favorite games on GameRankings.com and see if they all scored in the upper 8's or 9's.

However, this Destructoid article is full of a lot of conjectures that need some citations to back them up.  It really comes across as rambling in some points.

[Mr Flibble]

That was always the problem I had with reviews really. They're just an opinion. They can influence your experience of a game too; it can colour your perception because your brain wants to fit the experience around existing information.

Example? I'm playing Star Trek Tactical Assault on the DS, because I saw it for a low low price and I decided to bag it. Reviews give it a 6 or so out of 10, but personally, I find it incredibly enjoyable. It's hardly ground breaking but it is fun for me. There are different ways you can approach each level for instance but, its very subtle, no branching paths or anything.

If I'd read the review first, I probably wouldn't even have bought it.

[MrColossal]

Mr Flibble, what you just wrote is the problem.

You say that the reviewer gave the game a 6/10 [which is not a bad score, which is the point of the linked article] and you said if you read that review you'd not have bought the game.

Do you mean if you saw the score you'd not have bought the game? What in the review were the reasons for giving the score that it got?

[Redwall]

The art of a good reviewer is to be non-biased.

Games aren't spreadsheets. They're not a laundry list to be checked off one by one. They're GAMES for fuck's sake -- entertainment, or occasionally art. There's no such thing as objectivity and trying to make some kind of objective criteria just because it seems "professional" is moronic.

[blueskirt]

The thing is gamers have different tastes, and different way to judge and rate games, it is simply impossible to have an universal rating system for games on a scale from 1 to 100. Some may like good graphics and a big part of their score is to rate the graphics, while, for others, graphics do not count for anything in the balance, a complex scenario does. For some open ended gameplay is an awesome feature, there can't never have enough freedom and liberty in games and they judge badly games that are linear, for other people, open ended gameplay is a flaw...

What they'd need instead is long list of negative and positive aspect of the game, and simply let people make up their own opinion rather than force feed people a generic number and a bunch of "Game of the year!" award that can mean absolutly anything to everyone. Additionally that if all bad aspects are listed, you simply know what to expect and whether you should lower or increase your expectation when you will play the game.

Secondly, most of the time you have no idea who the heck is the guy who write the review. You have no idea if he's a fan of a specific genre and judge the game critically, if he's simply caught in the hype and miss a lot of the game's flaw, or if he's not a fan of it and judge it by his own experience. You also have no idea if the reviewers played the games that are must play in some genre, or what aspects interest the reviewer and what are their weight in the balance.

I simply find it better to have friends which I know the tastes, who know my taste, friends with which we discussed the good aspects and, mostly, the flaws of the games we loved or hated, and suggest each other games according to the aspects we loved in games. "If you loved/hated X in that game, then you'll probably love/hate this game.", it's simply better than people who just say "You must play this game it's the game of the year!", and get all fanboy on your butt when you think the game is average at best or when you point the flaws of the game.

[ManicMatt]

I really dislike Myst. Infact I can't stand it. If I was biased I'd give it 55%, and mention that there isn't any people in the game and the puzzles are too hard.

But there isn't supposed to be any people and the puzzles are intentionally designed to be that way.

That is why I feel biasm has little place in a review.

Most of us may like Monkey Island, but some people think it's a terrible game and doesn't interest them. Would they give it 30% because it's not their cup of tea? Shall they be biased?

[Ghormak]

A reviewer shouldn't give something a higher score because they think "I don't like it, but you might!" I just want honest opinions from reviews. What did you like about the game? Why? What didn't you like about it? Why? Chickening out and saying "I guess I can see how somebody might like this, maybe" and then giving the game an inflated score isn't helping anybody.

[AGA]

The majority of good review magazines and sites select the reviewer for a game based on their preference for the genre at hand. So they don't end up with the 'I don't like this kind of game, but I'm gonna review it anyway!' situation.

[ManicMatt]

Yeah, usually AGA.

Ghormak, that's totally the opposite of what I am saying. I don't like golf games, yet I could try and sit down and play a bunch of them and would be able to tell you which ones were well made, accurate and would be fun for a golf loving game player. I had one of the Tiger Woods games, and I could tell it was an excellent title, that was well made and has good physics, plenty of courses and a good challenge, however golf isn't for me.

Elsewhere, outlaw golf isn't very good, but it offers an arcade-ish approach to the genre, for those looking for something fresh in their golf after playing a million tiger woods games. If you don't mind the silly characters.

[Mr Flibble]

(Completely out of step with the rest of this thread, but)

The reasons the game I played got 6/10 was apparently down to repetitive gameplay and a fairly loose implementation of the licence. However, on playing the game for myself, I didn't notice any of that stuff, and enjoyed the game quite a lot. The gameplay does boil down to the same manouvers each time, but since it's a fun and complicated system ( to an extent) I find it fun and rewarding.

Essentially I disagree with the reviewer, but if I had actually read his review and taken his advice to not bother with the game... I'd never know I disagreed.

I've started to use reviews less and less these days, perhaps just the first few lines to get the gist of the game before the opinions come in.

[Nikolas]

I think there is a connection to reviews and marking an essay on the uni, or something simmilar. I'm doing exactly that while a 2nd year PhD student... 

Now, from what I know about marking, in order for marking to be a little accurate accross different people marking there needs to be a clear definition of the criteria on which the marking will be based on. Further more it really helps if the students actually know about those criteria! Additionally there are 2 main ways to mark, the "run a 100m run" way, where there is simply 1st, 2nd, 3rd and the rest (so the first 3 pass, the rest 5 don't in the case of a run), or the absolute "driving license" way, where you get 51% and pass or 49% and don't! These ways are often mingled and this is the main complaint on the unis here in the uk (at least from the tutors point of view). They are forced to have 74% as excellent! Above that is an incredible grade for anybody inany department in any uni...

Same goes with the reviews more or less...

People reviewing professionally, look on certain criteria and know which ones to weight on. Of course personality does play a small part but if you have something like:
Sound=10%
Graphics=20%
Gameplay=5%
etc...
then there will be a coherent bunch of reviews for any kind of game...

Extreme example, a rogue type game could get a 0, because it's ASCII, while a 3-d dynamyte game would get 100, which is totally unfair and is never judged this way.

Main difference between marking and reviewing, is that while marking there is no financiall dependance in any way between student-marker/tutor/etc. In reviews there is a strong relation which is reinforced both ways. As long as the financial ties exist between reviewers and game developers it's very hard to be really unbiased...

[Eggie]

You can't be totally objective about something like computer games.

It's an ARTFORM, man!

[blueskirt]

The majority of good review magazines and sites select the reviewer for a game based on their preference for the genre at hand. So they don't end up with the 'I don't like this kind of game, but I'm gonna review it anyway!' situation.

That doesn't really help the situation at all. If they ask FPS gamers to review FPS, that simply make the reviews worth nothing for every persons who aren't fan of FPS. What gamers need to find is a game reviewer with the same tastes as them, who loved the same games for the same reasons, who hated the same games for the same reasons. At the extreme, a reviewer who have the same movies tastes and gaming background as them.

Or a magazine/website that ask several reviewers of different genres to review a single game. This way you get several opinions, more chance to have the game's flaw pointed by a reviewer who isn't caught in the hype, and more chance to have a reviewer with the same taste as you. Nobody need a bunch of so called expert who will all label the same games as "game of the year" and tell you it's your problem if you don't like the game.

A good reviewer, for yourself, must have the same opinion as you on a game, but before you bought and spend 30 hours on the game to find out. And who need unbiased reviewers who'll make you waste money and time playing games you won't like and missing games you'd like?

[Ghormak]

I don't like golf games, yet I could try and sit down and play a bunch of them and would be able to tell you which ones were well made, accurate and would be fun for a golf loving game player.

You can separate well made games from poorly made ones, but if you didn't like playing the game, I would not trust your recommendation at all. It's as BlueSkirt says, you need to hear a recommendation from somebody you know who liked it, or failing that, a reviewer (or several, preferrably) who's good at writing and explaining why they feel like they do about the game.