This is a rant, complain, dramatic exit or what ever you want to call it but reading the Batman Arkham reviews drove me over the edge...I just feel like I need to get it off my chest.
I have been a loyal fan of GS for the past 11 years. The first time I stumbled here, I was actually looking for a walk through for Monkey Island 3! The internet became available to everyone very late in my country and back then, I did not even know game review sites existed. I cant remember how I ended up on GS and I remember what I saw first : The review for MOH: Allied Assault. I read and saw what a game review was like! I remembered the way I used to buy games just by looking at the cover and screenshots of the back of the box and trying to find out if the game was any good. I remembered how many time I got burned and bought a crappy game. So GS became my only gospel, I strictly bought games based on reviews I read on GS. I had a system, if the game got 9+, I would buy the game even if I was not a fan of the genre. Scores between and 7-9, I bought those games in genres that I liked.
A while later I tried other sites just to see what was out there, I read Gamezone, they gave a Dynasty Warriors game ( I think the fourth one) a 9.0. I bought it when I got my PS2, huge disappointment! I checked GS:7.2...I started to check IGN, and then promptly stopped when they gave Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball a 9.2. I might be mistaking but I think at some point GS reviews became subscription based, that is why I moved to other sites.
But one day something happened, I read the Assassins Creed 1 review, this sentence written by Kevin made me run and buy the game "Assassin's Creed is a beautiful and exciting experience that you'll remember for years to come". I played for 2 hours, it was exciting at first, but then...the repetitiveness kicked in. Doing the same missions over and over, boring level structures and such. I seriously read the review again thinking I might have missed something, but no, nowhere in the review this was mentioned. After that things started to go down hill.
Before 2010 I only came to GS for the reviews, I did not read anything else, and did not even read the names that were reviewing the games. At that time I started listening to podcast and names started to stick, Tom Macshea. I liked him and started paying attention to the reviews to see if I recognized anyone. Then some time later I saw some people making fun of Caro, and I started to remember her. Only lately I have been paying attention to who is writing the review, for me GS is a whole thing. I dont agree with the :"it is a person`s opinion", for me GS used to be very consistent. I could trust the reviews to be of a same caliber no matter who wrote them. GS was not a blog for people to express their views, it was a place that I trusted to choose where to spend my hard earned cash.
But things has have changed, for the worst. Seems most here are just looking at the reviews in order to force their views on people reading them. I defended controversial scores from GS, specially those from Tom but when Beyond came and got a 9, I played the game. It did not deserve a 9, it was a good game but did not deserve a 9. I remembered how Tom gave Th Last of Us an 8 criticizing the story and I agreed with him. But how he thought story in Beyond warranted a 9?! I did not understand. Caro started to criticize games who were not too good towards women and deducted points from the score. I remembered Duke Nukem Forever, and how in the bad section horrible treatment of women was not mentioned, even though it was mentioned during the review, leading me to think that it was not counted as a negative towards the score. Then came GTA V, and the bad treatment of women was mentioned in the bad section thus as a negative towards score...
I remember in one episode of gameplay podcast, how Kevin said that those who have problems with GS should just leave. I thought to myself, someone like me is nobody to him, he does not care about the insignificant me and tells me to go away because I am bothering him. But GS was like my home for gaming for the past 11 years, I stuck by it during all this time, does he know that I probably have been here more than him? Why it is so easy for him to tell me to leave?
Anyway, now I am done, and I don't feel any better than I did before. I just had to say something after all these years. For my self at least.
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