Cool video about review score that more people should see

GS putting out some quality content here. I agree 100% with this man. Watch it.

Reviews are opinion pieces. There are opinion pieces that are used to validate other opinions. Typically for gamers' bias whether it is for or against. It has also become the core arsenal for system wars. Very rarely are reviews of games informative or meaningful for most gamers. Because of this review score obsession, there is a greater expectation for every game to be playable at 8 and unplayable lower. This has made review scores over the past 10 years pretty inflated especially for hyped games.

If review scores were the benchmark for the games I play, then I would be missing out on many games that I have enjoyed more than the ones rated highly. It is like leveraging your gaming experience on a stranger's taste.

Yep, good vid.

My biggest gripe with reviewers (especially Gamespot) is how they will ignore price gauges, business practices with a at best tepid tap on the wrist and largely excuse, or wholly ignore technical issues.

Some cases they will highlight it, but others like, Grand Theft 4, Dark Souls: Prepare To Die and Resident Evil 8 and Last Of Us, wholly ignored. Or a lip service paragraph they know most goobers won't read.

Think part of the problem as well is reviewers are desperate for review copies and the first to put stuff out (early review impressions bla), where they will be given a copy of the game advantageous to the publisher and go off that. Or have controlled review conditions and shit like that.

But, if you're on the PC side, they tend to be pretty useless.

Reviews are horse crap. Does anyone here really believe that botw and tears would be 10s if they didn’t have link or Zelda? I pay zero attention to reviews. I’ll try any game.

wonder what he thinks of this number

Saw that the other day, good video. Reviews for me are just another resource that I use. There’s been low scoring games that I really enjoyed as well as high scoring games that I didn’t enjoy.

pretty good vid tho

WHo cares about scores and professional reviews anymore. Steam reviews are a much better barometer to judge it.

I really like the video, and I don't at all think it would have undermined his position as a reviewer working under the MC umbrella to have finished connecting the dots...

No such thing as good or bad games. Games are going to resonate or not with different people for all kinds of reasons. Maybe you share the most common taste denominators which have averaged a game a high score, or maybe a particular 9 or10 is going to bore you rigid.

I really doubt anyone's always perfectly aligned with Mr. Average, and when you can see value where others can't, or barely notice stuff that's going to drive some customers potty, could be wiser to consider yourself among the lucky ones.

I use to feel nearly everything fot mixed reviews and that was okay. These days it feels like reviewers aren't comfortable straying from some general consensus.

Enjoyable games can be reviewed bad and bad games can get decent or ven great scores. And no name sites can come out of nowhere to bolster or tank a game's MetaCritic reviews.

@lamprey263: I agree. All the uniformity is kind of weird, and very far from what I saw in magazines when I was growing up. Hard to avoid feeling like some reviewers must worry a lot about "getting it wrong", which IMO is about the worst thing they could do for the customers they're representing.

I enjoy Pirahna Bytes' games so review scores mean nothing to me 😋

Yeah, good vid. Nice hearing his personal insights and examples. But also, this stuff should be like yeah, no shit lol. Gamers are just that thick about these things. Sucks.

Quit caring about this stuff years ago. Often times don't depend on reviews when making a purchase decision. And when I do, it's the contents of what I'm reading/watching that matter, not a number.

Mostly used to follow GS reviews, but after they thrashed the Harry Potter game because of Rowling I have kind of given up on that… these days I just look at videos and then check steam reviews!

Luckily we have steam, so not really a big deal if you buy a shit game as you can just refund it!

@djoffer123:

Definitely used the refund feature a good few times, it's great. Usually not even bad games, just stuff I didn't dig as much as I'd hoped.

And yeah, +1 for Steam reviews as well. On the fence about some lesser known game, makes it bit easier to sort what's what.

Didn't watch, but I stopped giving a shit about reviews years ago. Don't think I need to watch a video about something I already know and do.

I mean, it's always fun to see games I like receiving praise from others, but I'm not gonna dismiss a game I think looks good because it got 6s, or play a game I think looks bad because it got 10s. If you do, there's a big chance you're gonna miss a lot of shit that you'd like.

100%, this is a thing. I think some big sites like IGN, GS etc. will get review copies/early copies regardless.

but for smaller sites, who rely more on getting that early review out for clicks, publishers will definitely delay giving out review codes if your reviews have been unkind in the past.

When I used to write reviews for a site that was big enough to be on MC and get review copies, but was ultimately done as a hobby by the writers/owners, that happened pretty often - there would be like two 'waves' of review keys - some favoured sites would get them well before launch, so they could hit the embargo, while other sites (like us) would get the review codes on launch day or a day or two before (or not at all), presumably to damage control potential negative reviews.

I can also say there was an instance of a publisher who asked us to consider changing our review/increasing the score after it was published - and the review was a 8/10 review.

I'm not aware of any publishers directly bribing sites for positive reviews, but them playing coy with review copies definitely has an effect on integrity of reviews in some cases.

Was trying to explain this to people here a while back. Obviously it's not some cartoon shit, pubs showing up with money bags lol. Maybe send out some swag, but not like that shit is steering a review.

But yeah, a lot of friends I game with have either worked the review gigs previously, or are still currently doing so. They've all experienced the same exact thing.

Lots of issues with how game reviews work, but this aspect is especially scummy. Especially considering how long it takes to get through some of these games before you really get to the write up.

No, 3/10 is bad.

God even I know that.

Haven't seen that video but that dude makes good content.

I don't think you should play bad games but you absolutely shouldn't let scores influence your enjoyment.

for sure. not sure it happens anymore, but some big publishers will also do stuff like fly reviewers out to a 5 star hotel in LA for a week where they can hang out and play the game with unlimited room service etc. and organized multiplayer events.

Someone on our site went to one of these events, said it was bizarre, they were basically treating reviewers like celebrities, picking them up from the airport in a limo etc.

imagine trying to stay on that kind of list breeds some warped review scores as well lol

@with_teeth26:

Oh yeah man. Talk about some compromised integrity lol.

I haven't heard of those in a while, but the first one I was ever aware of was with MGS4. Amazing full paid getaway to Japan, top service. Literally sitting around a campfire with Kojima sipping wine lmao. Try coming back from that and being like "MGS4 - 6/10".

Crazy thing was, these attendees came back and wrote detailed articles about how awesome it was. Like yeah, appreciate the honesty, but... you really don't see how this is an issue?