I generally use gamespot but lately I haven’t been agreeing with their reviews.
They gave Dead Rising an 8.4, noting the save system can be a pain. Not only was it a pain, it was a downright deal breaker. That and the control scheme for firing guns and taking photos was really crappy. Overall, great concept, decent game, too many flaws, certainly not an 8.4. Also the writing was about as bad as I’ve heard.
Project Gotham Racing 4 got an 8.5, the second game in the PGR series got an 8.7. PGR 2 was out-freaking-standing, number 4 not so much. They changed most of the game modes and not for the better, made buying cars less fun, and didn’t include any Porsche’s. The new weather system is as pretty as advertised but they overuse it. I don’t want to drive in the rain or snow every other race.
Perfect Dark Zero got a 9.0. Way off. Graphics were pretty good, but the game was short, easy, and the story was crap. Also, the hardest part of the game was just finding your way around; Id usually just wait until the dam helper marker showed up to tell me where I was supposed to go.
Crackdown on the other hand only got a 7.8. Too low in my opinion. This game wasn’t without its downsides but it gets huge points from me for really innovative level design. The city is really fun to scale and build up agility points so you can climb to higher and higher points. That and the weapon controls and lock on were very intuitive.
In my experience, magazines are utterly worthless (and I’m far from alone on this), and commercial websites are at best marginally useful. Too much politics, too many agendas, too many ingrained biases. Even reviews from players themselves (like on GameFAQs) aren’t much help unless you understand where they’re coming from. For most fighting and fighting-style games, e.g. wrestling, an incredibly complex game system, difficult-to-pull-off-moves, and getting punished 15 ways from Wednesday every time you make the tiniest mistake are all absolutely wonderful things. You might disagree. If you do, that makes all fan reviews worthless. See what you’re up against?
My advice is to build a good rapport with some fellow gamers whom you trust. Otherwise, relying on someone else’s perspective to decide what you’re going to like is an iffy proposition at best.
I like 1up.com’s reviews. Gametrailers.com is also great because you can watch the gameplay as you’re listening to the review, and unlike the GameSpot video reviews, they don’t waste half of it on talking-head footage of the reviewer.
Gamespy primarily (I used to write for them.) But I use Metacritic.com a lot to see what the overall scores are, and I may read a handful of reviews if I’m unsure of a game.
I’d schill a website I frequent that’s a group of people (some Dopers) that tend to run a little older at this point. There are reviews and it’s Xbox 360 oriented. I don’t want to step on toes, so I won’t link to it. If you’re interested, drop me a line.
I really enjoy just going to Game Rankings and reading a few high reviews and a few low reviews. I know everything about the game at that point from every perspective.
Or you could just read the reviews at the site in my signature…
[ul]
[li]Have a review available within a week of a game being out. The sooner to release the review is available the less trust there is. If the review is out before the game then my opinion of them goes negative as well.[/li][li]They have extensive previews that are essentially gushing fountains of praise for a game that’s a long way off. It shows a relationship between the publication and the company and that isn’t good for getting valid reviews.[/li][li]They give out scores on a scale greater than 1 to 5. Note that I’m talking about the granularity. A score of 6.7 means it’s really a scale of 1 to 100. Typically the larger the scale used the worse it actually reflects the review. [/li][/ul]
A valid opinion simply is not possible when the relationship between the reviewer and the producer of the product is so close. This effectively eliminates all major game reviews. I can’t even use Metacritic because so much of the input is tainted.
Here’s a simple litmus test using a recent game: did they give Halo 3 a glowing review? If yes, they’re garbage. Halo 3 has its fair share of widely acknowledged problems such as the horrible single player campaign that anyone who was doing a proper review would have found, mentioned, and if they’re one of those people who hand out scores like they’re candy then the score should have been reduced appropriately even if they still really liked the game. If they didn’t then they are either completely incompetent at criticism, too close to the subject matter that they’re reviewing, out and out corrupt, or a healthy mixture of all three (which is my pick for most gaming reviews).
I usually like Game Informer. They have big preview spreads, but they’re not afraid to give out low scores if the actual release version turns out to be a bunch of crap. They do tend to be biased in favor of the weirder Japanese RPGs though, whether or not they’re any good.
I agree with him. One of the firms I own has a game review site (we’re thinking of adding a movie review site) and know one hell of a lot of reviewers who believe that speed is of the essence. I’ve had writers come to me saying they can write for us because they can do a LOT of ‘box reviews’ where they’ll just review the game from the press materials and never fire it up. It’s pointless.
No, but when a poorly written review of a bullet proof vest resulted in my parents being gunned down before my eyes I vowed that I would not tolerate shoddy criticism. While musing on this while playing a Super Nintendo game I came across the phrase “Game reviewers are a cowardly and superstitious lot.” At that moment someone threw away their Atari Lynx through my window. “It is a sign!” I shouted! “I shall become… a cynic!”
And that Game Informer mention reminded me of another red flag: if the review is less than 500 words then it’s worthless. If there’s more screenshots than actual text to the review then it’s a very bad sign as well.
Ding ding ding. There was this guy at what was then my local Gamestop who just knew me. He would say “this game sucks but I am sure you will like it” and often be right.
Something similar can be done for magazines. Once you learn the reviewers tastes, then you just apply the filter to their review. I use this very successfully with movie reviews on NYT. I can read a flaming rant of a movie and know I will like it.
[QUOTE=Just Some Guy]
[li]They give out scores on a scale greater than 1 to 5. Note that I’m talking about the granularity.[/li][/QUOTE]
I agree with this point so very strongly. Anyone who thinks there’s some meaningful distinctions helpfully elucidated by assigning grades with such precise differences as those between “74” and “76”, or what have you, is someone who thinks things which are incorrect.
Really, the value of a review is never in numbers. If you must give a detachable standardized-format summary, something like a short rundown of the good and bad points is far better than trying to slap a fine-grained cardinal number on the whole experience.
