User Reviews

Why did they scrap the individual user reviews divided in platforms?

When I'm looking for user feedback/reviews I want to see the reviews on my preferred platform (mainly PC). Sometimes the games differ from one platform to the other (be it technically, visually, mechanically, etc.) and it's really hard to know if a PC port of a console game is any good (or which console has the better version of a game) with this new unified user score.

Please, bring the old system back!

Agree! I'm with you!

I'm not sure what you guys are talking about. When you see a review on a game page that review is for that game on that platform unless the reviewer specified the wrong platform. Scores are only aggregated in the review pods, i.e. "You rated this 9"

He's talking about having the same user score across all the versions of a multiplatform game, for example Battlefield 4 has a user score of 7.7 for ALL the versions, that way people will not know if the PC version is better or if there is an inferior port.

You're talking about Editorial Reviews. User reviews are not that way and that seems to be what OP was referring to. I can't speak to editorial reviews, that's an editorial decision not a technical one.

@edgework: @edgework:

No, he's not talking about Editorial reviews. I've repeatedly explained this issue on other boards. I think, Jeff, you're thinking of individual reviews - say I go in, and rate Battlefield 3 a 9.5 on X360, and a 9 on PS3. You're saying my review will show up only as a 9.5. That's not the issue.

We're talking about looking up any given game, and seeing one, and only one, User Average Review score, that aggregates every single rating across every single version of the game. Here, look at the 8.4 in this game:

http://www.gamespot.com/tony-hawks-pro-skater-3/summary/

THAT'S what we're talking about. On the old site, you could look up Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3, and see 3,000 people rated it an average of 8.7 on PS2, and 3,000 people rated it an average of 8.2 on XBOX, and 3,800 people rated it an average of 8.1 on Gamecube. After the site redesign, all you see here is that 9,800 people rated the game an 8.4. There's no way to break it down.

Does that make the issue more clear to you? We can no longer rely on User Review Average for any given game, because it doesn't tell us anything if that game was on more than one platform - one version may be great to users, one version might be terrible, but the ratings are going to get aggregated so there's just an average score. Or all the versions could be average, resulting in the same average score. You've rendered Average User Score useless for any multi-platform game. And, all due respect to the Gamespot reviewers, some of us put an equal amount of faith on the thousands of people who rated games. In fact, for games before 1999, that's often the only rating a game can have.

We're begging you guys to do something about this... you're taking away one of the most important features of Gamespot (the vast User Review database) for no discernible reason. Thanks...

@derek3143:

I don't mean to speak for the OP, but I'm pretty sure that's what he's talking about. Not what happens when he reviews a game. It's what happens when he looks up a game, and sees only one User Review Average that clearly aggregates every single score users gave for every version of that game.

(And that's not the way Editorial Reviews are presented - on each game's home page, it's true that you only see one Editorial Review for the game, but you can click on the Reviews and see what the platform-specific Editorial Reviews were. There's no longer any option for doing that with User Review Averages).