That's a big problem indeed. Valve tries to rectify it by making older reviews less important; but that caters to the specific wants of e.g. Early Access developers or AAA day one patchers so much that I don't really wish to see it reproduced here.

As is quite evident from e.g. metacritic, a 'metascore' calculated from individual reviews tells you nothing about the actual quality of a game. Usually, people trust in a select few from the gaming press with similar subjective tastes. That's the way reviews still work on GOG. The individual star rating is irrelevant, and identifying with the tastes of the reviewer is crucial.

But GOG still restricts the length of your review to a few tweets, and they still determine what review you see first based on a stupid up/downvote system. If the entire system isn't reformed, at least these things could be addressed.


I'll say, that's what bothers me too. A lot. Review bombing much in this fashion has become popular particularly on hit-and-run review platforms like metacritic.

I feel that restricting reviews to confirmed customers would be a bit overkill though. Sometimes e.g. Steam Early Access players have valuable insights into the very game GOG gets months later. And, well, I did write a review to a game once that I hadn't played, on Amazon. Assassin's Creed. Because the copy protection Ubisoft leaped to was simply unacceptable. So I wouldn't even plainly state that non-players should under no circumstances write reviews about a game. In some cases, they should make their voices heard.

There may be no good solution for curbing the offhand 'didn't play 'cause girl stuff LOL' review. :|

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You're a "special" persona aren't you?

Yeah, the evolution to Steam reviews is pretty cool. A difference between the 2 rates can indicate if a game has been patched, if new content has fixed an empty game, or if new OS don't mix well with it. Then skimming the recent reviews will allow you to see what exactly waranted the change. And the fact that you can ask specifically for negative recent reviews will underline a technical problemthat still exists.

GOG reviews? The ones that gathered more votes (even negative ones) will appear before any new stuff. Which means tose new reviews will not be seen, and thus will never get the votes that would allow them to climb to the first pages.
So GOG reviews actively BURY the useful recent reviews behind pages and pages of old stuff :/

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Agreed.

I don't even necessarily need the filter. If you encounter a review that's just horrendously negative or positive but doesn't have the 'verified' badge... you tend to know what's up. Basically one-star and five-star reviews without the badge demand a bit more precaution.


One day, you'll have to make it a tad easier for us to peel the definitely worthwhile suggestions out of the kiddiespeak. Please? Not that I don't respect your personal posting flair. :)

So this would basically be a reviewer controlled tag system that allows filtering? Interesting suggestion. Tags could very specifically address certain mindsets of the reviewer. It could start at the "tech/bug review" level but could also extend to "nostalgia reviews" or even "basic flaw" reviews (i.e. flaws so blatant that you didn't even bother to buy and play the game; would be a catch-all for the odd "feminist agenda" stupidity review as well as legit reasons for shunning a certain game).

In all cases you mention above, it impacts on gameplay.... and gameplay is king....

However, in my opinion, a review should focus from that perspective, not a technical one.

Except it could actually work if they implemented it here!

(I've written reviews on Amazon that don't show up as verified despite my memory, bank statement, and the site's own "YOU BOUGHT THIS ON [X DATE]" banner suggesting otherwise. Suppose I'm little salty about it since they pretty much hide the unverified ones now.)

this, though I forget to do this or too hyped and buy right away, thats when I find many threads with my tech complaints or bugs/glitches that I am having for the game on steam or gog game forums. i could have saved a lot of money/aggravation/disappointment if I gone into forums first

Well, then more or less any technical issues will impact gameplay. From being mildly inconvenient (memory leaks forcing you to restart from time to time, or some stuttering during certain portions of the game) up to "impossible to play" (game crashes on startup). How much these things impact gameplay, well, that's going to depend a lot on the game or the person playing the game.

And I don't think gameplay is the most important part in every game. Sometimes story trumps gameplay (Planescape Torment, Syberia, The Walking dead and so on). Heck, sometimes even graphics trumps gameplay (like the beautiful Tormentum: Dark Sorrow

And because different people value different things, that's why it's important to not just focus on one thing or another, but rather have all of these things represented. You might not find technical issues to be a big deal, but someone else might. Someone else might want to know if the story is good, because that's what they value.

People actually read the reviews here? :P

I actually think exactly the opposite. There should be an other section for people who complain about technical problems. I dont want to see nor care if the game does not work on your system. I just want to see if the game is actually good when it works.

Well a review is a review. There are certain rules to follow when it is supposed to be useful for others.
It's simple to moderate those reviews using those rules. If GOG would deem the review section important they would. Just like others.

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