So I used to read my game reviews at Gamespot.com, but decided I couldn’t go there anymore after they rated Halo 2 higher than Half-Life 2. Then I started going to IGN to read reviews, but it seems like since they’ve been bought out (by who was it, AOL?) there’s just so much crap to wade through to get to what you want.
Anyone know of any (perhaps lower profile) review sites? I’d like something that’s more brutally honest. Maybe some cussing would help.
Not a review site per se, but gamefaqs.com allows users to send in reviews. It’s nice because you can get a wide variety of reviews (when I use it I try to read ones with differing scores) and many of them are quite well written. Some will praise a certain aspect of gameplay, others will whine about the same thing, but between them I find I can get a good idea of if I will like that part of the game.
I sometimes use www.metacritic.com for compilations of reviews. Rotten Tomatoes also has a game version of their site. I love to find the really sucky games and read the reviews, especially if it’s a game I also reviewed.
Of course, my reviews are brutally honest (but without cussing.) I don’t exactly write for a low profile site, though.
I’m a freelancer, so I only have a chance of getting games the in-house staff isn’t interested/doesn’t have time for (I was willing to trade my non-existent first born child for The Movies, but my editor must’ve gotten a better offer.) When he sends out an email, I look through the list and select which games I’m interested in, noting any that should deserve special consideration (like one I really want to review, or one for which I’ve reviewed the original (I’ve played the entire Zoo Tycoon series because of this second consideration)). He makes his decisions and lets people know who got what.
I’ll play any PC game that isn’t a sports title, war game, or simulation (vehicle; I like strategy sims like tycoon games). If you were querying a site or magazine to get freelancing positions (and I presume full time positions, too), you would mention your preferred genres, your less-preferred but still willing-to-play genres (RTS for me), and probably your most recently-played titles. The more flexible you are, the better your chances.
I’ve been a paying member of both IGN and GameSpot, and they both give you a fair deal of value for money. Even if you don’t always agree with their reviews, you get a significant amount of factoids and media and can usually make out enough to know what’s up.
I can’t claim full objectivity though as I have also written for IGN (mostly columns on GT4). I have also done real reviews and previews for a while for a Dutch site (GameVillage), which at least landed me a number of free games and I had a good time, though it was a lot of work - you also had to do the layout and screenshots yourself and post the item to the front page.
Anyone here remember Ace magazine? From FuturePublishing? God I loved that mag. Particularly their A list (best of category) was magnificent.
Right now, I also like eurogamer.net, which writes really intelligent reviews. But they don’t cover nearly as many games or offer comparable amount of stuff as the big two (IGN and GameSpot) do.
Generally though, currently GameSpot is my first stop - their video reviews are particularly good - and has taken the place of a real magazine subscription (which by the way is at least twice the price of GameSpot and IGN membership combined, at least the last time I checked, and saves you most of the commercials).
They don’t review the content directly (whether it be movies or games). Instead, the site compiles a number of reviews from a wide variety of sources. The sites listed above are probably encompassed in Rotten Tomatoes. Check it out!
Maybe they fixed it, but when I last went to Rottentomatoes they didn’t compile the game reviews well. They’re of course great with movie reviews, but with games they’d often put rotten for good reviews and fresh for bad reviews.
Actually, I’ve noticed that, too. Metacritic seems to do a better job, but even they are not without error. One I noticed:
And they show a score of 80 (out of 100) for the game from that site. A click on the link shows the actual score is 2/5 stars, the same score I gave the game, which would translate to a 40.
Another good way to get content for new products is to read either Blue’s News (www.bluesnews.com) or Shacknews (www.shacknews.com). They’re daily compilation sites. (There may be others; those are the two I know of.) So if you’re wondering if, say, Call of Duty 2 is a good game, go to those sites and find what gaming sites have reviewed it for the last few days. I’ve found out about a lot of cool games that I hadn’t really paid attention to before that way.
The Movies is gold, and the reviewers have their copies. The Nov. 8 release date is pretty much set in stone now, though a short delay is not an impossibility if there were some sort of production problem.
One thing that I can’t find (not even after trying to navigate through the needlessly annoying official website) is system requirements. Anyone know what they are, or at least where I can find them?