User Reviews - In Need of a Serious Overhaul?

Please, please, correct me if I'm wrong on one of two things.

1) If this has been suggested before.

2) If it has, it has been discussed before. If it has, you may close this thread (moderators-administrators)

Many of us Gamespot users create reviews. However, if you don't notice, it is nothing like the reviews you see from the Staff reviews. My question is: why? Before I get to this, one question (I have never made a review myself...yet), can you use italics, bold, underline (basically what you use in posting now), in reviews?

Anyhow, why? You see the fancy space for the pictures and usually (if not always), when there is a video review, a box showing a description of it and a link to the video. My question is: why hasn't this been done with the users' reviews? Is it not possible? Even if you had per say the link to the person's video review (if they would make a video), link back to their video sections in their user profile, it would make it look...more proffessional than normally. Another space for pictures (even if that links back to your user section designated to the Images!) But, if it was possible (like, clicking the video review and bring it up in a video player), would anymore consider doing it? I mean, creating a whole new section in the video player section designated to Users' Video Reviews would be huge, in my opinion.

I show an example.

I'll show an example of a review (Robbie_IV, first person I saw on OT stickie pages who had a review.)

To this USER review.

What you see here is a very basic layout of a normal user review. Has a final score, similar to the staff reviews, box showing ratings on different things in the game, and other things the user review probably has exclusive (i.e. learning curve, difficulty, etc.) There is nothing wrong with this, but is left to be desired.

Now, here is a STAFF review. Halo 3, just to put out there.

Halo 3 Review -- Staff

Right off the bat, A nice little box showing you the video review, and the score sticks out. Lets start with the score. Reviewers rate games 9.0 and above, possible to make an image along the lines of "Reviews Choice?" That might be neat. And then, the video review. Its tedious to provide a link to your video review outside the review itself (user reviews), and here you see in the Halo 3 review its right spanking there for you to click. Why not in the user review? Then: game merits, even though I don't like them, I'm sure many users would like to give a brief explanation of the games good and bad (like some people might not want to read the whole review itself.) Would be a great feature if provided, IMO.

A paragraph in or so you notice a Halo 3 picture probably taking up about maybe a 1/6 of the first page of the review. Possible for it to show in our reviews and either link back to our user section and/or have it's own seperate section when clicking in? (Hence Albums!)

In my opinion, I believe the user reviews are stripped down, severly. I understand staff reviews are supposed to be professional and such, and user reviews are just there for users to express their opinions, but I'm sure there are many people that want such features to be implemented in their user reviews to feel like they are one of the staff reviews themselves.

This is just my two cents, I appreciate it if you read all of this post. Thank you! :)

-Karmum

thanks mate, for being so brief..we've talked about review issues many time and there still no step taken for that. another think you've forgot to mention or you might've ignored that, when you write a good review and you've got good numbers of recommendations, you review doesn't come at the More Player Reviewssection. only the recent ones come. and sometime compared to your one is nothing. I won't say that GS only values the reviews they wrote and mostly ignores ours, but there should've been a little more facilities or privilegethan what we have now.

thanks mate, for being so brief..we've talked about review issues many time and there still no step taken for that. another think you've forgot to mention or you might've ignored that, when you write a good review and you've got good numbers of recommendations, you review doesn't come at the More Player Reviewssection. only the recent ones come. and sometime compared to your one is nothing. I won't say that GS only values the reviews they wrote and mostly ignores ours, but there should've been a little more facilities or privilegethan what we have now.

dev_ron

I apologize for skipping out on some certain things. I haven't reviewed any games and haven't gotten too in depth with the user reviews, but this is mainly because of the fact it isn't much depth. :?

thanks mate, for being so brief..we've talked about review issues many time and there still no step taken for that. another think you've forgot to mention or you might've ignored that, when you write a good review and you've got good numbers of recommendations, you review doesn't come at the More Player Reviewssection. only the recent ones come. and sometime compared to your one is nothing. I won't say that GS only values the reviews they wrote and mostly ignores ours, but there should've been a little more facilities or privilegethan what we have now.

dev_ron

agree with everything you said.

Giving this a small bump -- I think some people would really like this to happen.-Karmum-

As we would many other great ideas, but the possiblity of them even being considered such as Unions: V2 are slim.

[QUOTE="-Karmum-"]Giving this a small bump -- I think some people would really like this to happen.serbsta69

As we would many other great ideas, but the possiblity of them even being considered such as Unions: V2 are slim.

Yeah, unfortunately. But correct me if I'm wrong, Unions V2 is an eventually coming? But anyways, it is always nice to get support behind something.

Unions Version 2 has been promised to come for over two years (all those ideas have been suggested eversince the unions came in 2005). I honestly can't see GameSpot getting to any of these ideas.michaelP4

Same here, nothing more that we can do about it then complain like were doing now.