Quick question: Can anyone recommend a good non-corporate (completely the opposite of IGN, for example) videogame review site? X-Box and PC games, to narrow it down a bit.
I am looking to hit Best Buy or EB today, but spending $50 to find out that a game sucks has lost its appeal to me…
My own.
Thanks!
A) Great Blitzkrieg review; a great game that deserved more recognition.
B) A positive SWG review? I may just have to give it a go…I am too much of a Star Wars fan to not at least try it, all the bad press aside.
I like to read the reviews at Gamefaqs. Sure, it takes discretion since all the reviews are done by players, but what better way to gauge the worth of a game than by reading the opinions of actual players?
PS: Buy used, save money. I haven’t payed 50 dollars for a video game in years. Stores will almost always offer return policies for defective games, so you don’t have to worry on that count.
Not exactly what you’re asking for, but I like metacritic. They don’t review games themselves; they aggregate existing reviews from other sites, averaging scores into a “metascore”. I believe you will find independent sites linked there, too.
Penny Arcade is a well-known (and absolutely hysterical) comic strip about gaming, but the news post accompanying the daily strip is often full of useful information about games that are currently “hot.” Fair warning: they are irreverent and not beholden to anyone, so they lace their writing with foul language pretty often. If seeing the word “fuck” in print makes you unhappy, this strip will be ruined for you, and probably the news posts, too.
They make no effort to do formal reviews of games; they just tell you, three times a week, what they’re playing and why they do or don’t like it. They review all the major platforms (and sometimes seem to favor consoles, IMHO) so you won’t be left in the dark. They like the X-Box and they hate IGN.
Today’s post, for example, talks about the latest Baldur’s Gate, as well as Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles. They also flame IGN’s review, noting that the play-testers there haven’t a clue. From today’s post:
I would be surprised if anyone was still under the impression that Crystal Chronicles was that kind of game. It’s a four player action game, dense with Final Fantasy fan service and extraordinary production values for the genre. But the mere fact that Crystal Chronicles isn’t an RPG in the classic sense, something [The IGN reviewers] could glean from five minutes’ play, is held against the game in every conceivable way. It is as though they were presented with a race car, and then spent an hour criticising all the ways it differed from chocolate cake.