You may not think so, but others would take clear exception to that. No offense intended, but if you're expecting people to take you seriously on this or other web forums, at least show that you're making the effort to write and spell your words out fully, as opposed to using texting language. We're pretty accepting of people who for various reasons don't have perfect English, but simply using text speak for the sake of using text speak is too much for a lot of people -- myself included.

Thks, I appreciate ur kind suggestion & no offense taken. However, I wld like 2 clarify again 4 the last time unless the MAJORITY of the ppl hv a prob reading & udsding wat I post I really dun c any issue typing short forms esp when it's very obvious I'm not the only 1 who use short forms in this forum (or any other forums on the web 4 that matter).

As 4 whether I expect ppl 2 take me seriously, if just cos 1 uses short forms they r not 2 be taken seriously then I guess many ppl can't be taken seriously. I can't ctrl nor am I bothered abt how other ppl thinks, as long as most ppl can get my msg across it's gd enough 4 me.

2 those who unfortunately can't take my non-standard form of English I apologize once again but u r welcome not 2 read them.

If u need more clarifications pls kindly search & read my other posts in other threads as I dun like 2 derail other ppl's threads, thks.

U r welcome, glad u can uds wat I wrote & find my perspective helpful. ;)

Most reviews are pretty bad here on GoG anyway so it doesn't really matter that much.

I agree w op aft he clrfied bcz a sngle lne f cmplnt s nt a rvw. :-)

Well you're ... oh, umm, nevermind. :-/


Don't be sorry, you're right. Agree totally. I don't write reviews all the time, but whenever I write a review I generally like to give an accurate description of as many aspects of the game as possible and a fair assessment of the quality of the game. Unfortunately, like most review sites, including Metacritter, GOG's game reviews are cluttered not only with people complaining about technical details that belong in a game specific forum but also people who don't know how to write reviews or write one line "Wow Gr@te G@me" reviews. But the worst variety are the completely uninformative and useless "I remember playing this game when I was abandoned by my parents while they went to Ayahuasca Retreat in Paraguay for three weeks and left me with an alcho nanny who beat me black and blue 17 different ways 'til Tuesday and forgot to feed the dog and it attacked her and devoured her alive and I had to survive on my own and resort to cannibalism and I fell down on my knees and thanked sweet little baby Jeebuz for Resident Evil. Five Stars" variety that tell you little or nothing useful about the game. Then there's those that have a little substance to them but are mostly just bias without any useful description or info on the game itself. And of course there's the whole every game gets 5 stars factor - 5 stars should only be reserved for the most rare, exceptional games ever produced.

I know 2000 characters is a lot to fill out but its really quite easy. A brief one or two sentence general description of the game. Some specifics about game-play. Sharing a comment on your opinion of the aesthetic qualities of the graphics may be helpful. And some more specifics on other qualities the game might be endowed with such as immersiveness, mechanics, online community, options, re-playability, user interface, and other features. Finally some closing comments about the game and before you know it you've written a game review that people will actually want to read and may even assist them with deciding on a purchase! I hope this helps. :-)

I still prefer the warning. A bug complain warns me to search more. An "I love this game it's great buy it" tells me nothing.

A great example are the Chaos Gate reviews. I don't care "The emperor tells me to buy it". I don't care "It introduced me to W40k". I don't give a monkey's about being "A blast for the past". I care about "Inmediate CTD". And I care that there are a lot of reviews about that issue which are marked as useful. I know that I wouldn't know fo sure until I tried the game, that they being marked useful proof nothing. But it tells me to search the forums, the web, to try before buying... whatever. It points out that the chance of wasting money is way far from an asymptotic zero. And to be careful and don't buy it on sight.

So, in a system were the norm is a combination of non-english reviews, a few spam reviews, a lot poorly written and pointless reviews, "I don't have the game but played it 20 years ago and it was rad" reviews and the awfully common "I am not nostalgic, this is a masterpiece" reviews, I don't find that a "It crashes" review is out of place.

But that's me. If you prefer people to tell how heart-warming were the evenings playing the game with friends and praising GOG is totally OK. If you think that a review should stick to describing the gamecard, it's fine. But I personally don't give a fuck about those reviews. So please, keep both, as I don't claim every review I found shitty or misleading should be removed.

Well, there r those who write in short forms that can be understood easily cos they r near-universally recognized & then there r those who write their own short forms just 2 troll ppl 4 fun & irritate the hell out of others on purpose. It's a BIG diff & I'm very sure ppl can tell 1 fr the other. ;)

Could just be me. My house is busy a lot of the time and trying to block it out is difficult.
I thought short forms were a thing of the past... I guess university writing is to blame :)

A single review is worthless. For all we know its written by the devs or a fired employee. It takes a compilation of reviews to get an idea about a game. I tend to ignore subjective comments like "boring" "too long" , etc. But when someone drops a one liner that helps determine the games feature set, stability, etc... I find that very valuable when added to other data available about the game.

In fact, if the product is popular enough, I PREFER reviews that don't rehash the same stuff all the other reviewers leave behind. There could be 500 reviews on a game and someone new to the game will try and leave a 3 page review discussing the color palette in the opening sequence and the font used in the closing credits... but then will bury a glaring technical issue in one line in the middle of the review. This is more of issue IMHO. People spend so much time on subjective stuff, especially to argue and complain that rarely anyone leaves the true meat of review. I.E. will the game work for me?

Using the specific example that the OP later clarified, to note that a game does not work on the current most popular OS by several fold, is a very useful piece of information. While that review does not provide enough data to know it can be trusted, it does provide enough incentive to investigate further before buying.

One example. I just bought a Fire TV Stick this weekend. The whole reason I bought it was because it supports Plex. I have a plex server and I want a way for my TV to have a native Plex app instead of using the bland DLNA app on my TV. Guess what? the plex app for the Fire TV stick does not work. I'm honestly considered writing a review, in full, to be... "Does not work with advertised Plex app". They advertise it, I bought it. It doesn't work. I don't want to water anything down in order to help other potential purchasers. I don't care to describe other features to anyone else as the product is useless to me without the feature I mentioned and there are enough other reviews out there that cover those highly opinionated details. Bottom line, it does not work. How would you get that across? I would flag reviews like that as very high to get them at the top of the review charts. Not only will it warn other purchasers, but it might prompt the lazy devs to get off their butts and fix their product. Downrepping reviews that cut to the point and mention technical shortcoming enables companies to keep making money off of incomplete products.

Hope that helps.

Good point, reviews are either too positive or too negative on this site it seems

Please don't tell me, you were born 1980, because as a fact (and not as an insult) your posts look like they've been written by a 14 year old kid. Nothing wrong with kids speak, but the posts are unnecessarily complicated to read, while their style isn't adding any value at all. Don't be surprised, if people who read in the forum a lot, find this annoying.

No YOU are making a good point ;)

One problem is that reviews themselves a subjective. But also the reader himself, like what does he expect too see, what information shall be in there and so on.

Most people writing the reviews do write them because they like the game, hence quite too positive.
Some others were duped into buying (out of whatever reason ;) ) and write too negative.

Technical Issues on the other hand (again within limits) are neutral. Do they belong into the sub-forum? IMHO I don't think so, as this is THE major blocking point for a decision to buy or not to buy.

If you really look at a lot of the games (YES I like my oldies as well!!!):
Graphic outdated, shall it be in the review? In an objective one, you would need to put it, but most users here are here for the games and not some shiny new thing ;)
Comfort play (couldn't think of another term), like Controller, Joystick supported or whatever? In a good review, again yes, but there are already limitations depending on the game itself (And as Goggers we know about it ;) )
So only left (more or less) the content itself, which you could just downgrade to a oneliner like:
Puzzle, Shooter, 4X and similar, but that wouldn't help either ;)

So my question to you in the moment, what do YOU personally expect too see? ;)

Because bugs and technical issues are part of the package you're purchasing and always have been in regards to PC gaming. If something isn't working right, a customer has every right to know this prior to purchase and there isn't anything wrong with including it in your review, especially in this day and age when people tend to focus more on "problematic" content, rather than whether or not a game is actually going to be problematic to your system.

Heck, if people didn't include tech issues in reviews, how many peoples' hard drives would have been borked by games like Ruins of Myth Drannor or Myth 3: The Wolf Age? Maybe you should consider taking your own advice, OP.