Ive arrived here a few weeks ago, loving the games available and the support available. I come here to look for a game i can buy today, and enjoy TODAY. So many horrible games are getting 5 star reviews, making the public review system pointless. Im starting lose faith in public review system in general. With that said, i think its up to us, as gamers, to control our emotions when it comes to these reviews, otherwise whats the point of having a public review system when everything is rated 5 stars by people who loved that game 10 years ago!

Sonic the hedgehog, when it first came out was a 5 star game. Would i play it now, no, there is so much more available that is better than that game, so i would rate it 1 star, and not recommend it to anyone.

I think people are getting a little overexcited and rating games by how much they enjoyed them years ago, instead of how good it is by today's standards, they give it a 5 star rating because they loved it "in the day" but would never play the game now, because they are too busy on fantastic new games the world has to offer.

So, can we please hold off on the 5 stars unless it is truly a magnificent game in TODAY'S standards, not YESTERDAY'S
standards. For the sake of people like me, who are actually looking for a decent game to play today.

Review systems with ratings are worthless. For most people 5/5 is good, 4/5 is average and anything else is bad.

The most grotesque review systems I ever saw was on the TES Nexus, where you got fucking banned if you gave a mod a rating of less than 7/10 or something. It was mind boggling; retards making a rating system from 1-10, and then banning those who used the whole spectrum. Too bad for those who thought 5/10 was mediocre instead of 9/10.

I think, for the sake of yourself; don't follow another's review to a tee. I enjoy games that are rated 3 stars on here.

Some really old games ARE in fact, still good today though. I am currently playing Evil Genius, Majesty Gold HD, Startopia, and Warlords Battlecry 3 out of my old games. These are just amazing titles, despite their age.

'Today's standards' should have nothing to do with keeping up to par with mainstream titles, especially graphically; which is what I'm getting from this. Correct me if I'm wrong. Today's standard should be what you perceive it to be.
[Start of rant]
For example, my friend who is an XBOX1 slave comes over and sees my game with dated graphics and just says it's shit, 'buy halo, it's the best game of all time'. I tell him that his brain is degrading and that he should learn to open his mind to different games, because he is just missing out.
[end of rant]

In short, there are solid reasons why some old games receive 5 stars today. If you try them out, you may even surprise yourself.
edit: if the reviews bother you so much, simply cross-check them with Steam's 'yes or no' system and see if there's similarity.

Sonic is still a great game by today's standards (consider that it's available and rated highly on Google Play despite many of those who game on mobile devices not having experience dating back to the days when it originally released), and if you're judging it based on your memories and interpretations of how gaming has progressed since and/or how modern a game needs to look in order to stack up, then you're no better than those judging games based on nostalgia. Just an equal and opposite problem.

It is NOT Saturday!

You'll need to read what people write if you don't trust the stars. Reading reviews is generally the best policy anyway.

I agree with one of the posters above and will add:
I recently replayed first Sonic, and it was a blast. 2D games, especially with "cartoon"ish style (in wide sense of word "cartoon" - everything which isn't made to feel "realistic) don't become victim of "old age". The only part I didn't like about it was "Star Light" zone, but I found that Zone dull (too poor color palette) even when I played Sonic first time. Indeed. Also what some people bash and label as "bad" (feature/element, etc.), for others it is "good". Reviews make it more clear.

That's unlikely to change, especially given "Good Old Games" remains one of the main reasons people shop here vs. Steam, I believe, and thus will continue to attract those with rosy nostalgia goggles.

I'd encourage you to watch YouTube footage to get a sense of whether or not a game holds up.

Also, GOG has a "post-2005" filter if you want to focus on searching relatively new games:
http://www.gog.com/games##sort=bestselling&release=a2005&page=1

As with most anywhere, actually reading the reviews is key. I generally pay little attention to someone else's arbitrary rating on whatever arbitrary scale has been devised, because, regardless of how carefully the rating scale has been considered by the people who created it, most of the people who use it will do so irrespective of any guidelines set out by the scale's architects.

That being said, when such hyperinflated user ratings are the norm -- as you said, 5-star ratings being WAAAY too common -- seeing a rating of 3 1/2 stars or less should really give one pause, especially for an older game where nostalgia should be in play. If a game from the '90s has an average rating of 2.5 stars on GOG (with hundreds of ratings, not just a couple dozen), then you can bet it: A.) was dogshit back when it came out, and remains dogshit; B.) has serious problems running on modern systems, even after GOG's finished tinkering with it; or, at the very least, C.) it has aged very poorly (godawful controls, painful sound & graphics, what-have-you) and cannot be recommended for play nowadays.

I encourage you to ignore reviews rating and read the reviews.

there is a nice program you can install to sort reviews by their length. Because most lengthy review are well thought out and highlight many pro and cons of the game. Nostalgic people usually don't remember too much about the game to write a lengthy review.

http://www.gog.com/forum/general/adalia_fundamentals_fixing_gog_so_you_dont_have_to/page1

I agree that people are way too generous when it comes to 5/5 ratings (or anything above that to the point of pointlessness like 10/10 or 100/100), but you picked the worst example to make your argument with the whole Today's Standards rant when Sonic the Hedgehog (as well as the two sequels after it) aged and plays just fine for the most part.

"Stop liking things I don't like!"

I think I've only given 2-3 games a 5 star rating. (I think Ring Runner, and Magic Maker among them)

7/10 is the minimum a site will usually give something so they don't tick off the publisher it seems, as such the rating system is 7-10 instead of 1-10. If 6 or less is equal to a 1, why is there a 1-5 at all?

Very sad the way the system works. However I'm not sure about here. I know a number of games could be rated 5-star out of sheer nostalgia of being able to get them again, or maybe old memories, but no refreshed experiences of usually buggy play or how bad the UI was in the day that you just suffered through because there weren't better games to play at the time. Agree with you 100%.

I'm reminded how nick at what used to be Rev3Games did a review on South Park (on MetaCritic?), and people chewed him up about his rating being a 6/10 or something instead of a 10/10, and never even read the reviews, even though he very plainly gave his reason why it was less than perfection.


Edit: Actually i'm reminded back to creating my own rating system. Then i rated a game as an example and gave a final score. It has the potential for like 60 points, each category worth 5 points and a single category based on the theme of the game would get double points; Then convert it to 5 or 10 stars or whatever was used. I did ring runner, and i think the final score was 4.2 (or something similar). I really wonder if i should find that page again for reference, without going into a huge review each category spoke volumes of what i liked or didn't like. Naturally a game that doesn't have a certain category would just have it removed. (Thomas was alone [tiny](for example)[/tiny] would have the graphics removed).

Just so you all know, im the guy who shuns the graphically superior games of this era, like CoD, the new Tomb raider series and even the strategical games like Company of Heroes. They all fall drastically short on game play as they all seem to make room for more enhanced visuals and sounds. Im the guy that gets harassed by friends for playing games with horrendous graphics. I used to live at places like abandonia and HOTU, but didnt feel right not supporting them financially for all the enjoyment i was getting from them, so finding GOG.com, where i can still support the developers for apparently "free" games financially was a huge bonus for me. Some examples of games in my library now are B-17 flying fortress and Warhammer - shadow of the horned rat. I already owned these games, having downloaded them for free, but purchased them here anyways as a support and hope that more of these games are made

Some examples of games that i play now, that i would consider as 5 stars even though so much time has past, are:

Men of War, Star control, Pirates! and Port Royale, Alpha Centauri, Masters of Orion, Heroes, X-com (Perfect example of true 5 star game!) FTL, Star wars rebellion (Just found found this game on GOG, love it!) Castles.

Mostly i use emulators for old games like Front Mission, P.T.O, Romance of the 3 kingdoms, Final Fantasy, Unholy War, and similar games. CLEARLY the above mentioned games are Good .... ole .... games, because, im still playing them! and on that fact alone i think all games on this site should be judged and rated, not by how good they were on their day, but how PLAYABLE are they now.

Some good examples of games that i used to love, but do not play anymore due to them being replaced by something better, or are simply too cumbersome and outdated to play are:

Star wars KOTOR I+II (outdated combat die roll physics), Fantasy General, Archmedean Dynasty, Wing Commander, Sword of the samurai (5 stars? WTF?), Wings, Rainbow 6.

Now they WERE all amazing games, but if they arent good enough for me to play today, then why should i recommend them to others to play? i think thats misleading, and i think we lose alot of credibility as proper gamers if we give 90% of our games 5 star ratings. Especially if we havent even played the games for years, because we choose to play something newer. Thats hypocritical.

Bear in mind guys, im not saying im right, this is only my humble opinion, but i am a hardcore gamer, i value realism and immersion over all else, and i realise everyone is different.

Also, Sonic was a bad example, but im sure you all know the point im trying to make, and it has nothing to do with sonic.