You are right about the games you mention, as they have received massive updates. But I wanted to point out the habit of many people writing low star reviews, without giving the game, they're writing about, a chance to show its positive sides too.

640K is enough for everyone! :P

Not to mention there are some delisted games that have been brought back under different versions/publishers with their original reviews, which is... kinda sketchy, although you could argue (as the Devil's advocate) it's technically the same game.

This is an amazing idea. :)

I'd love to write my reviews as short stories in the perspective of the protagonist, 640000 would be definitely enough. :P

Yeah that would have been an issue, but hopefully the days of downvoting are over.

And what of games where they are altered AFTER reviews are done? Like oh Mortal Kombat 10 or whatnot, adding in the micro-transactions after the flowery reviews and ramping the difficulty up?

What if you can't stand the game and it's like grinding under your fingernails where you just want to throw it away because to you it's obviously not a good game (or one that you can play?). So you only put 1-2 hours into the game before tossing it in the verbal trash bin?

What if there's a major content patch that the game won't work with afterwards? (Say it works online, or they deleted the old installers and the old version of the game is inaccessible now and it's unlikely anyone is sharing the old version) And the old review no longer fits?

What if on your second or third play-through, you notice a mechanic that was terribly explained but CHANGES EVERYTHING of how you play the game; And you need to now include that and update your thoughts and how it affects the game of 30+ hours without said features and 10+ hours now WITH the feature and how much it streamlines your game? (Yes more than once i've been like 'Oh my god, i could have been doing THIS this whole time')

What if the game sucked without mods, but mods make it actually fun rather than a grind, and you append your enjoyment of the game once the grind is removed?

What if a review was a warning about some feature that was fixed/removed and no longer is accurate and needs removed? (Defender's Quest comes to mind with phoning home)



Since games get updated, reviews should too in my mind. Oh i certainly wouldn't go updating without good reason, as i tend to walk away from the game(s) unless I'm replaying later (And once or twice notice i review a game i already reviewed, giving nearly the same thoughts and criticism of said game). Sometimes a game is viewed differently at a different stage of life or different IRL life events that what didn't make sense suddenly does now.

Rather to clarify, my review was not marked as helpful.

Yes I guess that is one possible flaw with the method I mentioned, if the reader does not return to the game page and mark your review.

I have read many reviews, naturally, and have never graded any of them. But then I see reviews as a very loose guide full of opinionated talk. They are only part of what I use to make a buying decision ... or in most cases just adding to my wishlist or not. I certainly don't see any review as fact, so I don't kind of give any blessing.

In a way, it is like buying an book or a movie, which I get asked to review, but rarely do, as it is often months if not years before I actually read or watch that item ... very much the same for games. Music tends to have quicker usage by me, but music is even more subjective, so I rarely bother ... and it certainly takes a strong motivation to bother.

I
too have read many reviews, and the ones that tend to catch me are people who are too incompetent to operate a blanket or more simply, have some external issue with the game that isn't actually the game.

Agree with most of your points, but really disagree with those two.
A review should be about the whole game, one huge problem with user reviews being that plenty tend not to follow that rule. If you didn't actually play through the game, don't write a review for it. (The exception are comments written as warnings. Those shouldn't "count" as reviews, but they have their place, such as saying the game doesn't work under certain conditions even though the listed specs may lead one to believe that it does, or that it's impossible to get past a certain point due to a gamebreaking bug, or on here obviously warnings about any SP content behind DRM. Those have their place, but they're all also elements that can change, in which case such comments should also be edited or removed.)
But the mods part is clearly a different business. A review should be about the game itself. If you want to review mods, review the mods, separately, on the site where they're made available or something similar. (Exception is if at some point the installer is changed to include bundled mods, but in that case that's a major change in the game itself as sold here, so it can warrant a review change.)

Agreed. But there's plenty of examples of games so terrible (or hard) no one could complete them. Battle toads for example has a section jumping from platform to platform where it's literally impossible to complete the game even if you did every jump perfectly. A couple games (SmashTV) didn't have an ending because the creators never figured anyone would actually succeed. Superman64 was unplayable. Ride to hell: Retribution, etc. I'm sure most reviewers don't get near the end of the game before their review.

Then Rambo the recent on-rails shooter where you only need to play 1 level and you can pretty much say 'more of the same'. and 'audio/story ripped straight from the movie'

Then there's Skyrim on PS3 where if the savefile gets too big the game crashes and makes it impossible to proceed.

Depends on what the mods do. Adding content? Yeah that shouldn't be part of it.

Changing experience/money/perks gained and effectively removing the grind? What of fixing bugs, removing limits in inventory, or just pushing it into an 'easy' mode (combat-wise) so you can go through the story? You can easily review the grind/difficulty using said mods to speed progression up. 90% of the 60+ hour games is grind, of which if you removed it you may have 4-10 hours of good solid gameplay where you aren't having to replay missions (or stuck in 5 minute turn based combat battles) or do things over and over to get through to the next story arc.

Loop hero i played, and it was a nice slow grindy game and probably be 30 hours to beat. I changed the ini file for rate of items and strength of items, and soon swimming through equipment upgrades and finished the story and game in like 3 hours. And i was happy with that speed vs previously. Otherwise i'd have probably just quit in frustration after 4-6 more hours and the experience would definitely color my fun experience with it.

*nods*
A review should always be based on the product as purchased. Begin your review and star rate it according to the vanilla experience.

If you want to add a note at the bottom telling the customers that a specific mod improves the vanilla experience, then that's OK but the review (and especially the rating) should be about the vanilla experience or you're misleading potential customers whom may not be interested (nor knowledgeable) in modding the game.

If you want to make a glowing review of the game based on the mod, then review the mod on the associated website it's hosted on.

The core game hadn't changed. The story, locations, mechanics, etc. None of those really change.

I've done the whole heavy grindy difficulty of running outside of town to fight one monster, get a pittiful amount of experience and go back inside to heal for free because i couldn't scrap 50g for a healing potion. 15 years ago i could go through with it. Today? No. Screw that. I don't have the time or patience anymore like i did in my 20's.

A game first and foremost is suppose to be fun. If you aren't enjoying yourself, then you probably shouldn't be playing at all. At which case screw the devs who made it to a slow grind, and i'd hope not to ever give those devs a dime.

Still, you need to accept mods are a thing and extend the life of a game loooong after it should have ended, and i'll bet more people replay games with mods and keep playing rather than the core base game. I'll specify in a review when i used mods and how it affected my game.

I agree to the extent that I've had to cut my reviews down to be less detailed than what I'd prefer. On the other hand, it also forced me to use less flowery language and be more to the point. These aren't professional reviews after all, and frankly a lot of reviews don't even make good use of the character limit anyway, basically just being shitposts or "gaem wont start and is bad".

On steam i was downloading games i'd bought before, and try to load them after disabling the steam client. If i couldn't load and play the game, i'd give it a thumbs-down and say it was DRM'd. That was my review.