PixlBit

yeah I'm quite interested in this game but I don't think I have the balls to play it.  I think I'm gonna pick it up for my brother for xmas and watch him play it instead.  

It's just pure immaturity. Can we get a demographic of who are commenting on these reviews? My guess is it skews very young, like teen or below.

Well since someone tried to discredit my entire argument on the basis that I have a "cow opinion" is probably an indicator that you are correct.

I probably shouldn't rag on a particular age group. Immaturity can happen at any age. What I really mean is, if someone gets mad because a writer doesn't share their opinion, that's immature. Have a debate. Name-calling is pointless.

That demographic is just someone who watches the show Friends and remembers when Joey says a "moo" point is "like a cow's opinion. It doesn't matter."

I was listening to a gaming podcast recently hosted by former gamesradar reviewers and they were discussing their old game reviews and sure enough they admit that they considered what the readers opinions would be of them when they reviewed a gamed so they may have bumped up the score to avoid trolls and hate. Or they gave games scores they felt the readers would expect. That magic "8" score that all the things get. 

I pretty much stick to reviewer that have the same taste as mine. Games can have flaws and still be good, or have low scores and still be fun to play.

 

I haven't really bothered consulting game reviews when I buy games for many years,, which is part of why "game journalism corruption" has been a non-issue for me. I know what kind of games I like. The only thing I really need to know is if a game is obviously broken.

The only kind of reviews which might resonate with me are "thumbs up/thumbs down", a la Siskel and Ebert, or the "buy/rent/skip" model of reviewing, but even then. I generally ignore reviews.

The one thing that I don't get is why so many people seem to live or die by reviews.  I know my taste in games and I typically pick up those games regardless of reviews.  The only thing that I may look for in a review is whether or not a game is broken, and if that brokenness has a factor on the FUN.

There be stupid peoples everywhere.  Damn shame we can't avoid them. 

Fuck a review.  Most game review scores are meaningless.

I'll play a game myself, or ask a buddy who has played the game what he thought of it.  

I don't think they're meaningless, but they shouldn't be all a person looks at. Unfortunately not everyone has money to throw at games so reviews help a lot. You're fortunate to have a friend that can tell you what games are good, but not everyone has gamers as friends.

 I'm saying this mainly to say that I still find reviews valuable. Hell, I write a fair few of them now adays (even more now that metacritic is demanding we write 15 a month) so I'm pretty quick to jump on the defensive.

Not everyone has a gamer for a friend?  Sad.

It's a sad, sad world we live in lol

Setting aside problems with reviews on popular websites, yeah, people treating reviews like a gospel or something to live for are at beat clueless. I used to follow reviews for example, but as I got mature I realized that we should always form our own opinion.

Besides, except for some, I pretty much decide what game I want by simply seeing gameplay videos or Let's Play like game ala Totalbiscuit.

Yeah that's fair enough. I follow reviews a fair bit, but mainly to see how a game is fairing. I've gotten tons of joy out of games that didn't score well, such as Shadows of the Damned. But you're right, Totalbiscuits format is much better for allowing you to decide whether you'd like it or not.

Yeah every review is a bit slanted based on the reviewer's taste, and we tend to find folks who have similar tastes. The reviews I don't care for are the ones that have been slanted by the game developers who exchange favorable reviews for exclusives to stories. 

That rarely happens on the major sites. Smaller sites could quite easily tempted by it, as could Youtubers. The major sites like IGN, Gamespot, or Kotaku (yes even Kotaku) are pretty good with this.