Game Critics (who needs them)

As someone who has been coming to this site regularly (several times a week on average) for the past years, I´ve always found myself shocked at the amount of hate and/or negative comments in general that reviewers get whenever they publish their professional opinion and score of a game. Its like there is no way for the critic to be right. If the score is too high then hes probably being paid by the manufacturer, if the score is too low the hes being paid off by the competition. Not to mention all of the accusations of being biased and the awful name calling.

I tend to see it in another light because I actually depend a lot on reviews. Games in my country are really expensive so you need to be really sure that a game is good before you commit money to it.

And the reviewers here are amazingly professional, and they always speak with honesty.

Of course you cant take a review as absolute truth. Since the critic is still a person, hell probably take issues with a certain aspect of the game that you might no find so bothersome.

But that doesn't mean that the critic is wrong or stupid or bribed.

You tend to get to know the reviewers opinions and tastes. After being on this site for several years I have a good idea of what most of the reviewers on this site like and enjoy. I know I can usually trust in Kevin Vanord opinion when it comes to a shooter or RPGs because after having played several games reviewed by him i found myself agreeing with most of his comments on the game . Now for a more story driven experience i usually find myself agreeing more with Tom McShea´s opinion (i even agree with most of his opinions on bioshock infinte).

And that is OK, the diversity is always good for the gamer not bad. there is no perfect game and the game you loved will probably be hated by someone else. And the critic will probably agree with both because he has to see the good and the bad.

And if you disagree with the reviewer you can write a comment on the review asking him or her about it.

This is a wonderful site, and the amazing thing about it is how open all of the staff is. You can leave a question in the comments of a review and chances are it will get answered by the reviewer himself. You can look them up on Tumblr, twitter or even facebook and you'll get a straight answer from most of them. This interaction is to me priceless. The only thing standing in between of that are the hundreds of offensive comments on every review that drown out real questions from gamers who just need a little feedback.

But if we as a community keep going back to the same bs of You got paid by microsoft, you should be fired, etc the we risk losing that opennes.

Who need game critics?

I certainly do. Thanks to them i enjoyed hundreds of hours into Dragon Age origins. And tom mcsheas review of Beyond is what convinced me to buy it and i loved that game.

And kevin vanords excitement over Dark Souls overcame my fear of the difficulty and i also enjoyed countless hours dying every thirty second followed by hours of cheering whenever i didnt die.

Do you have a game you bought based on a review? or wanna comment on the role game critics play? just leave a comment or write a message. Just keep it clean please.

Happy new year everyone

I totally agree with the TC. A common thing people say when bashing critics is that user scores should be more relevant and are more reliable. This is not the case in my experience; user scores just draw out fans to write reviews promoting what is already their favourite game or fanboys of the competition to put it down. This noise cancels out the reasonable discussion among user reviews.

Also plenty of sites way over rate things too much; Gamespot is great because it's critics tend to score below the mean so we can actually see when a good game is a good game.

i really do like reading a good review, but i don't use them as a purchasing guides. if i want to know what a game plays like, there are almost always gameplay videos floating around somewhere. i like reviews that add to the discussion about the game and i don't care whether or not i agree with it. i'd just like the reviewer to be honest and take the time to give their reasoning.

i like the GotY season for similar reasons. in some ways, i kind of like the GotY lists with a paragraph or 2 for each game more than the reviews i read at the respective launch days. reviewers have largely gotten the "did i mention that this shooter has 15.5 guns and an invisibility move?!?!?" urges out of their heads by then. they don't dick around trying to list every last feature and instead just give their thoughts on the game and how it affected them.

Reviews are purchase guides for undecided consumers. I only use them if I can't make up my mind, but I never go with just one source either, since in the case of this site you have critics like Tom and Carolyn, and taking their word on a game is like playing Russian roulette. Either you are the luckiest SOB in the world, or your brains end up all over the floor. No in between.

I find your post offensive. It's too muddled and profoundly misogynistic. :P

i never read reviews.... i just look at the score and thats it.

if i want to see what a game is like i just watch gameplays on youtube.

@Randolph: I never go with just one either, but I always find myself agreeing more with this site. I see you have problems with Tom and Carolyn reviews. I dont, but like i said in the blog, its a matter of knowing the reviewer. I usually know that ill agree with Tom McShea. And Carolyns reviews of Saints Row is what convinced me to buy it. Well that and Shaun Mcginnis video of griffin in that game, hilarious.

@KBFloYd: I watch gameplay videos but since you´re not the one holding the controller, they don´t always give you a real sense of how it plays like. You might see something awesome happening on the screen, but on the joystick is just really frustrating to pull it off.

Reviews tend to give you more of how the game feels.

Personally I have not experienced problems with reviews when it comes to making a decision about whether or not to buy a game. I think our options to make an informed decision, besides reading reviews, have increased, which could be a reason for reviewers to implement more explicit personal perspectives in reviews. Whether or not that's a good thing and how grave (or even present) this tendency is depends on the person. In my case I still find reviews very useful (even the more opinionated ones). As a matter of fact, I welcome clear personal perspectives. They add variety to the field and introduce views I wouldn't have considered otherwise.

The increase of options to find information about a game (which means a lot of opinions can be supported up to a point of at least basic validity) could also lead to people being more confident about their views and their rights to criticise other views. And the increase of diversity in games (including 'indie' games) could lead to a specific personal preference or perspective (and the sum of these varying perspectives) becoming more and more important when it comes to judging a game. I'm very much speculating of course (I have no proof of any of these factors even existing), but it could explain why people question reviews more often and more confidently.

It depends. If the person who is playing the game is visible and talking about the game you can often get a sense of how he/she feels about controls or other (non-visual) things. Of course that isn't a guarantee, but still...

Actually I can't tell about any game I bought *because of* some GS review, and more often I also disagree with the scores they give. But actually I think they now make a concession in this respect since featuring alternate reviews for video games, including written by the users themselves, parallel to the "official" ones.

The only problem i have is reviews are becoming a lot more personal, and due to this are skipping on the vital area's of the game, some are very rushed and don't go into much depth, but they used to a few years back, a review should be an unbiased view of the game and it's core gameplay mechanics and the story, but what we get a lot is, more the likes and dislikes from the reviewer, than anything not all reviews are like this and there are some good ones but, overall i'm finding reviews becoming alot more about their tastes than the actual game.

i believe certain reviewers should review certain genres, the one's they are interested in themselves not someone who has hardly played the genre, i honestly believe there should be 2 reviews done for each game, someone who is interested in that genre and someone who isn't to get an understanding from both sides,

@bezza2011: Actually reviewers on Gamespot usually (you cant never say always) review the games they are interested in. That´s why the fighting games are usually reviewed by McGee. The nba2k14 by Tom McShea and the rpg by VanOrd.

They only review games in the genres they are interested in.

I do get the feeling that Video Reviews here used to be longer and delve deeper into certain aspects of the game and are becoming shorter.

But the written review has, luckily remain pretty unchanged

i still find the written reviews go into little depth sometimes not all the time.

but the point i'm trying to make is the whole point of a critic is to give an unbiased opinion, but it's looking like were getting more and more reviews about the reviewers personal feel towards the game and not a over view of how the game plays and feels, because if the person didn't get the story thats is personal view he shouldn't comment on it, because someone else may completely get it, i just think there is alot of personal view thrown in towards things rather than a professional view of the game, if you can understand me lol way hard to write it down how i think lol

GS said they were going to do multiple reviews as part of the new site format, but so far it's only happening sporadically. I really hope that at some point they'll do it on a regular basis. I understand they can't do multiple reviews on every game, but some consistency would be nice.

sometimes i agree reviews can be really hard on games

like people hate atelier rorona because it was to niche i mean yes the game wasnt perfect but it was far from bad

im not sure why gamespot even hires people to do reviews. I trust normal gamers more then someone who gets paid to do it. Games that get terrible reviews i still look at if they interest me and usually some user reviews them and will give good points on why its still good even though it may not be to some people.

So trust normal people who review the games for free more then the paid reviews on these sites.

The only real value a review has in pointing out the quality of the mechanics...ie whether the game plays or has issues. Anything else is just opinion and not something I base my decision on.

I think it's a bit of a misconception to assume that it's somehow strange that users could write reviews that can compete with those of paid reviewers. These people aren't paid solely for their reviews; they often have other editorial and reporting tasks. Also, most reviewers know how to write eloquently, which can't be said of a lot of users. Apart from that I don't see why users couldn't write a review that is just as valuable and useful as one from a paid reviewer. Our experience with, knowledge of and in some cases time spent on videogames is really not that different.

Maybe reviewers used to be authorities back when there were only written magazines or only a handful of websites, but at this point the user is given so many (re)sources that he/she can confidently question any authority a paid reviewer might have left.

The gaming press suffers from being generally awful at video games. The only useful information they can give you is on the technical side; i.e.: does this game work or not. And even there they seem to fall short considering Battlefield 4 is rocking like an 85% average review score.

Outside of technical elements I haven't really gained any worthwhile insight from a review in years... Why do I need people who are bad at fighting games to tell me how good a fighting game is? How does this benefit me?

@ferrabymouse: To me the inconsistency on this site is staggering. I have been here for nearly a decade and i have seen how much gamespot has fallen. The worst reviewers by far on the sites i visit are Tom McShea and Carolyn Petit. They are contradicting, spew in their opinions on matters that don't really have to do with the game and Carolyn is also known for putting her political bias views in her reviews like GTA V. The rest of the crew i don't have any issues with, because they are actually good reviewing games and i rarely have any problems with what they say or score the game

What people fail to understand is that reviews are opinions. Of course someones personal beliefs are going to affect their stance on the game, just as if you don't like a particular game element that might seem inane for you, others might feel the opposite toward such. I actually like Gamespot. You never know what score a game will get which makes it so unpredictable. Other places on the other hand, especially IGN you can tell when a game is going to score a 9. I feel like their system is less on personal opinions, and more on what will make people happy. In gamespot however since the reviewers don't really care, they seem to be highly criticized. I actually wish more places were like Gamespot, it's really annoying that virtually every game gets the same score by virtually 90% of game critics. That rarely happens in other mediums.

The funny thing is when people actually get angry over a review score. I mean, surely there are more important things, right? I couldn't believe some even ended up personally attacking Carolyn for her GTA review.

True, they are opinions, but they get paid for their opinions

They're lucky, then.

I got angry because she took her bias views with a political motivation, which she clearly has shown she has and put it in the review

I stopped bothering with reviews a while back. They are increasingly about the reviewer and a lot less about the reader. I feel the function of a review is to offer information to the reader in an attempt to inform the reader on whether or not the game is for him. With reviewers like Mcshea, Carolyn, Jim Sterling and Greg Miller, it's all about yelling their unusual opinions at the top of their lungs. They just complain or commend games based on really personal preferences rather than telling us what the game does and if it's for us. I feel like the attempt at objectivity has been lost and I f.eel like the review score is a major culprit.

I still read reviews, but I stopped trusting them and I don't let them decide my purchases. I usually use gameplay footage and previews for that.

So two people make for staggering inconsistency and a fallen GS...?

I'm sure they get paid for more than just reviews...

Petit's bias in the GTA V review was harmless. It did not dominate the review and was a clearly separated paragraph that didn't influence any of the other content of the review. The rest of the review was pretty standard. The fact that the misogyny thing might have cost GTA V a 10 is absolutely irrelevant if you are willing to put a little effort into separating between what you find important and what the reviewer finds important. Misogyny seemingly cost GTA V a point. You don't care about misogyny. You add a point to the score. There it is, a 10.

If the review had been a propaganda piece about how misogyny in GTA V ruins the entire game and that it deserves a 4, then maybe I'd feel a bit of sympathy for the people who were upset. But it wasn't. It was a clearly delineated, non-pervading paragraph that hardly influenced Petit's overall appreciation. This hurts noone and it might actually help some others. Don't misunderstand, people are free to criticise it for whatever reasons, but getting angry or upset makes no sense to me at all.

Also, this review is part of countless reviews, both by paid reviewers and by users (not to mention all the gameplay videos out there) There are countless alternatives to Petit's review. She used one paragraph of the millions of paragraphs out there to address a minority. And yet, people felt the need to claim that that minority doesn't deserve that paragraph. Again, people are free to criticise whatever they want, but I sometimes feel a lot of people either felt personally attacked or extremely entitled.

You got angry at that? It is her opinion, she didn't like the fact that it was misogynist, so she made it clear. The game still got a superb score, much more than I would have given it.

Of course we don't need someone to tell us what to buy, but most like to hear that the choice they made is the right one.

So that's why critics matter even thou pretty much all say hey we don't care and why most get angry when a critic badmouths a choice we made.

So TS you are right but also dead wrong.

Actally yes, because they make only reviews and podcast. And that is what they mostly do.

It may not have dominated it, it still got in there and it was not harmless. Carolyn isn't the only one either, with McShea being highly inconsistent aswell

Some people need celebs to worship and tell them they're inferior, so I guess some people need "professional" reviews to tell them which games to buy.

I have to admit I'm not entirely sure what they do, but I can't imagine it's just reviews. They probably have to do a little modding, check other reviews before they get published, do some interviews, do some streams, write editorials, have meetings. Not everything these people do will be explicitly visible on the website.

So it's really only McShea and Petit...? Two people in an ocean of reviewers. Tell me why it isn't harmless? Tell me why their reviews make it completely impossible for you to make an informed decision about whether or not to buy the games in question?

They used to, not anymore, none of the two i mentioned have their own shows or streams

I am saying it's this site, i don't know a lot about people about all the sites on the internet. There are people i disagree with on Rev3Games, Gameinformer and IGN. But i don't think any of them are inconsistent. McShea's is inconsistent and lazy and doesn't support his claims in reviews and just states them without anything backing it. Carolyn is also inconsistent and is politically bias.

I know, you said that before. I just don't understand why it's such a big deal and why you can't cut GS (as a whole) some slack if you say it's just Petit and McShea who are lacking.

Because they give this site a bad name, sure you can say it's just their opinion. But back in the they had Gerstman and Greg Kasavin. Those guys had class. That's why i just don't take this site serious when it comes to reviews. I like the other stuff they do, but i can't take them serious. I rather listen to Sessler break down The Last of Us on Rev3Games than hear the inconsistent and lazy review of McShea

I don't care what a critic has to say.

Millions of people love Michael bays movies, millions of people think mcdonalds has good food, millions of people like Justin bieber, millions of people think duck dynasty is great television, and so on but I don't agree with any of them so why would I care what 1 guy thinks of a video game? A critics review is just a single persons opinion of something and means just as much to me as if a stranger ran up to me on the street and said "Batman arkham origins 7 out of 10" and then off never to be seen again.

Besides the whole critic thing is flawed because game reviewers are paid by game companies. Magazines and websites that review games make 90% of their money from advertisements, and most of their advertisements are for video games so in essence they are paid by the people who make the products they review. GTA5 for instance was throwing around millions in advertising dollars, who is really going to piss them off and risk losing money from them in the future by bashing their game even if they genuinely didn't like it? No one. That's why the magazine pc accelerator went out of business because they spoke their mind and a lot of companies quit advertising with them and they went under.

Its also skewed opinions because I see countless reviews where the reviewer talks about getting invited to some nice beach house condo to try out the new game, or invited to the developers head quarters and given a tour, or some nice dinner. Of course they are less inclined to be honest or scathing if they get treated special.

But it all boils down to it just an opinion of some random person Ill never know so I don't care what they think. Just because someone loves something doesn't mean I will so I buy what I want, not what someone else tells me to.

Fair enough. I still find it a little weird that you don't take the site seriously anymore just because of two people (and the supposedly bad name they generate), but fair enough.