Its seems to me that any more user reviews and critic reviews line up less and less. Is this my imagination or are gamers generally much harder critics then the critics themselves? This seems strange to me as unlike restaurant, theater and film critics, who pan something that still gets great sales and tend to be more dismissive of the mainstream. But game critics often give high praise to AAA games that have (given the amount of marketing and distribution they have) average sales, with lukewarm reception from the fans and they tend to be much harder on independently produced games..

Does it strike anyone else as odd that game critic behave so differently than other critics. (I know that there have been suspicions for a long time that some reviewers out there give favorable review of games base on influence from the big studios. But it is not like the large movie and theater producers don’t have a lot of influence too and you tend to see more big name critcs in those industries willing to say something is not very good, even if it was a big project.

Is there something to this or is it all in my imagination?

"No we are great critics, you're just entitled." -Game Critics

Most gaming critics act like idiot hipsters who'll recommend any piece of shit as long as it had a big budget and a "cool" trailer. Just ignore them, and stick with the user reviews.

Better image.
Can one upload multiple images in a single post?(edit: apparently I can) Anyway I just find this funny.

It's not just games journalism (although they are certainly the worst offender), I mean even recently Prometheus got given stellar review scores even though the movie was pretty bad, had mediocre acting and terrible characters, certainly being Scott's worst film.

There is no old guard in gaming criticism. Say what you want about old guard folks in other criticism and review fields, but they serve a valuable role. If all you have is a bunch of self proclaimed, young experts on video game criticism, what you will mostly have is a bunch of really dedicated fanboys/fangirls.

Honestly, I find professional reviews and random user reviews to be about equal as far as trustworthiness goes. For every journalist overrating a big AAA release you've got some jerkwad on the internet giving it 0/10 for petty little personal irritations or because it's popular. And as I've said before, at least journalists have to substantiate their opinion in some way, and have to give relatively thorough analysis of the game. I've come across professional reviews that say stupid stuff, or that miss the point of a game. But I've never come across any that go full retard. For all its issues, you won't see IGN posting crap like this:

"The Best Resident Evil I Have Played leon campaign is the best for me. Chris campaign is The Same Resident Evil 5. Jake Campaign is Magnifico Plenty Of that I liked this game.!"
(A real Metacritic user review of Resident Evil 6).

A lot of user reviews simply boil down to "I hate this game, so it sucks," or "I like this game, so it rocks." Or worse, "this game isn't like the others in the series, so it's the worst game ever!" Professionals at least try to explain why they like or dislike a game.

Which isn't to say that all independent reviews are garbage. Personally, I'd trust the opinion of Gazoinks or Waltorious above just about any other source. And I'd trust this forum more than others to give intelligent feedback on whether a game is worth playing or not.

I would go so far as to say (currently) there ARE no game critics, there are only game entertainers. Apart from the occasional youtube channel with 500 views, all of the reviewers are either hopelessly entrenched in the corrupt score-buying system (IGN, Gamespot, etc) or don't really provide true reviews at all, but rather provide "review entertainment" that while enjoyable, isn't really criticism either (Spoony, Yahtzee, etc).

It's a shame, really.

This forum needs a "This" button next to the Rep buttons.

Also, the user reviews on GameFAQs.

I actually posted an article about something similar, titled: "Emotional Gamer VS Professional Game Critic" here: http://thoughtrobot.com/news/emotional-gamer-vs-professional-game-critic/.

Basically it comes down to the review of the details VS the gamer who has an overall ideal of the games. Not often, but sometimes I do take a look at the comments made by gamers, but I noticed that gamers often make very lopsided statements, giving games a 1/10 when there are many merits of the game to take note.

Indeed, opinion is one thing, but I just notice the common trend between gamers that they are quick to bash and have no patience to look at the bigger and smaller pictures. I am not saying Professional Game Critics are always 'good' in their views, but their job IS to make detail reviews of games. Whereas gamers are more black and white in the way they look at games.

However even with all that said, as a gamer/consumer, you have to read everything with a pound of salt and a pint of vinegar. To me, it goes like this roughly:

- 30% of my decision is based on game critic
- 10% based on user reviews
- 50% based on a mixture of developer history, demos, game play and features
- 10% on impulse

Not really. If 100 users rate a game, and half of them give it a 0 out of 10, they might do it for petty reasons, and the game might not actually be "that" bad, but it's still a more accurate indicator if I'm gonna like it or not than these "professional" reviewers, who just kiss their sponsors' asses.

What exactly is that website?
Now now... that's the bitter Postal 2 fan talking ;)

Game "journalism" has become an extension of the publisher's PR departments. There is a reason for that: Providing good reviews requires time, dedication, and skill; it's work that needs to be paid if someone wants to do it on a professional level. However, no customer wants to pay for game reviews any more. Print magazines are dying, customers can get dozens of free reviews by entering the name of a game in an Internet search. Since the customers aren't willing to pay for the reviews, the money comes solely from the publishers, through advertising. I'd risk a guess that the dependency on ads that are directly related to the reviewed products is higher in gaming journalism than in any other category of entertainment.

I don't think there's much of a difference between "critic's" reviews and gamers' reviews, apart from the fact that some fan reviews have a rather crude level of writing that a professional editor wouldn't let pass. But some gamers can write very well. On the other hand, some alleged gamer's reviews are just spewed out by the very same PR departments that provide the professional reviewers with their source material. When user reviews were a new thing, they could actually be trusted. But by now, the PR departments have realized that there are lots of people who stopped trusting professional reviewers, but might trust other gamers. Hence they are using fake user accounts to plant reviews; it's not an uncommon occurrence.

Regarding movies, or literature, I agree with orcishgamer: There is no old guard that towers above the mere economical parts of the business. Everyone knows Roger Ebert, he really doesn't _need_ to adapt his reviews to any publisher's will. The same goes for literature - I'm not in the loop of professional literature criticism in the US, but here in Germany, we have a group of well-known, popular critics who don't need to hide their opinions either. In gaming journalism, this is completely lacking. Tom Chick might be a candidate for "old guard" in the future, but just look at the flak that he's continually getting from publishers - and an old guard that's formed by one popular critic alone is not going to have much effect.

I've noticed that, but I don't really pay heed to those reviews, preferring to see raw gameplay footage after release.
Publishers have massive pull over reviewers & critics, even putting embargoes on negative reviews. I think Giant bomb was formed after Gamestop fired Jeff Gerstmann for giving a Kane & Lynch game a bad review & Square Enix came down on them. Such control over reviewing HAS to be stopped.
On the other hand, the average user is stupid (Flame shields up). User Reviews for games come down to populist opinion. Review bombing is a serious problem. I remember the review bombing of Mass Effect 3. People were giving it 0/10 on Metacritic & even said "I haven't played the game but...". Furthermore, there are those indie hipster assholes that'll bad-mouth & nit-pick every triple A game in existence just because it's triple A.