And yet that's what a lot of games reviews do. When a reviewer starts using buzz words they are reading and regurgitating from the review guide the publisher has included with the demo review. Ars Technica, Rock, Paper, Shotgun and Giant Bomb didn't review Brink because the online wasn't ready and the Xbox360 version was the only one that was playable. Well why the hell has every other magazine reviewed it? Why did Joystiq give it a 2/5 when the reviewer only played it for 2 hours?

Dragon Age 2 is another great example with The Escapist and PC Gamer US giving it almost perfect scores but the reviews mentioned nothing of the linearity of the story or the moronic WoW-Style fetch quests. Reviews are a PR tool and you can tell who the tools are by how they write their reviews. As Games Journalists are Incompetant Fuckwits pointed out websites and magazines are often offered exclusive access to a game if a) It gets on the cover/frontpage and b)The game scores a minimum of an 8/10. An exclusive first review can often lead to a massive spike in sales or hits and it's too much for most reviewers to ignore.

I rarely read reviews, especially user reviews.
It all started years ago, when i was reading mags, and i've noticed that some of the reviewers didn't really play the game they were reviewing, or didn't bother to check the options of the game. So i gave up on reading mags, they're only worth the price of the full versions on disks for me nowdays.

Then i've seen the pre-release-8.0-or-higher policy on CNET sites, like MetaCritic, and a bomb of 6.0's 2 weeks after the reviews. I can't really tell anything from those reviews.

And then, there's the user-reviews who still mistake their taste for quality. The internet is full of meaningless "i liked it, 10/10" and "i didn't like it, 1/10" reviews. I don't care if some guy liked it, i don't even know him.

The only reviews i can listen to, are my friends, but my friends aren't really reviewers, so their views are kinda skewed.

It saddens me, that critical journalism fell so low.

All the more reason to not trust them.

I'm coming to the opinion more and more than I'm happier waiting for games I really want to sit on the shelves for a year or so, then pick them up when they're in the $20-30 range. There'll be enough people buying new copies on release to keep develops in business, but it'll be more comfortable on my wallet.

Okay you are either A: retarded or B: a troll - I'm guessing it's the latter. Are you really that dumb that you can't tell the difference between a customer and an employee? He wrote his review as if he was an unbiased user when he was in fact working for Bioware. It's almost the same as insider trading i.e. when you use inside information to get an edge. When users go to Metacritics they read user reviews to get the perspective from other regular users and when an employee from the company that made the game post his review as a regular user when his own paycheck depends on the success of the game then it's CLEARLY not okay! Also why do you think EA removed the review? Could it be as damage control - because they knew it was not okay?
The same goes for professional reviewers who are dependant on add revenues from publishers like EA and hence they have clear motivation for being "kind" to bigger games like DA2. That's not to say they are always wrong or bought off or unfair but it's clear that sites like Gamespot, IGN, GT etc. are harder on indie games than AAA titles.
Like I said I think you are nothing more than a troll because noone can be as dense as you are and I completely agree with Delixe.

do you have a problem with somebody, say one of your friends, just simply saying " that steak was excellent" or " that movie was bad"?

No. because 'excellent' is a far more descriptive term than saying 8/10, words describe everything better than numbers. numbers are stiff and inflexible, words aren't.

If Pictures are worth a thousand words, then words are worth a million numbers.

Besides in an open dialogue, a friend wouldn't simply say 'this steak was excellent' they'd make a conversation about it.
And they certainly wouldn't say the steak at the glorious steak house is a far superior steak than the cheap steak house because the glorious steak house has 10/10 whilst cheap house only has a 7/10, and yes I've heard countless conversations about games that follow that structure.

For me excellent and 8/10 are equally uninformative. The thing with number/star/one-word review, is that a single number is not able to tell us much, it's like IQ, doen't tell me a thing. It's an average of an average. Take Your steak, Your salad, Your coke, Your waiter, Your table, put it in a blender, what comes out, is a single number mark.
See, with metacritic, it's even funnier, it's an average, of an average, of an average. How helpful can that ever be?
Remember when game mags scored graphics, sound, playability, the value for money [is that how it's called?]. That's informative, but the meat will always be in the extended review, not just the score table.
The TL;DR attitude brought us here, arrogance and laziness.

The only thing worse than numerical/star/whatever ratings is YT's approach, of like/don't like. As in anyone cared how many people like something.

[/rant]

Completely agree. It's especially funny when many magazines actually provide a reference for their numerical scores, saying for example "1= terrible, 2 = very bad.... 9 = amazing, 10 = masterpiece" and thus making a mockery of the whole thing. I like how EDGE's reference chart says "1 = one, 2 = two, 3 = three" and so on.

The score has to mean something practically. Ultimately there are two scores: buy this game and do not buy this game. You could then say there's a grey area where it can't be wholeheartedly recommended but you'll probably like it, and then possibly a companion to that rating that states you probably won't like it but you may if you like the subject matter or genre a lot. The best way seems to be an out-of-5 rating system. That allows for two extremes (DO NOT BUY, DO BUY), two ratings nestled within that (PROBABLY DON'T BUY, PROBABLY DO BUY) and then a central point for it being a real mixed bag that's hard to define either way.

I think Giant Bomb's 5-star system works the best. They also clearly demonstrate how they feel about the game with a cartoonish avatar of the reviewer. If it's 5 stars, the avatar is going crazy. If it's 1 star, it looks like the avatar is killed or very angry. If it's somewhere in between, it varies between nonplussed to thumbs up to hands folded in anger.

An out of 5 rating is usually the best whereas percentage is all but useless. The difference between 3 and 4 out of 5 is large, 76% and 78%? Not so much.

Yeah, I like Giant Bomb. The CVG magazine also used 5 stars as does GOG itself. EDGE uses 10 but that's not so bad since you can basically see it as the 5 star rating with fine tuning, e.g. 1-2 = 1, 3-4 = 2, and they can just put a little subtle spin on it. When reviews start doing it out of 100, or worse still, doing it out of 100 but adding decimals, it's just ridiculous.

Yeah, that's one of the main reasons. There's no viable difference between such subtly different scores. On top of that, it's hard for the magazine/website to keep track of relative scores, it seems. Fanboys may be checking scores down to the decimal place whereas the writer just through "Ahhh, something in the 80% range I'd say!" and slapped it on there.

It was done as a joke, but there was just a thread on /v/ in which people said The Witcher 2 is a huge failure because Game Informer gave it 9.25/10 whereas they gave Dragon Age 2 9.5/10. That sums it up, really.

Did Delixe call you something disrespectful? No...so there was no reason to call him a "dumbass". Stop behaving like a troll.

Hi there, folks.

I'm new to posting in the GOG forums but have been a member for a while and also a huge fan of what GOG has set out to do. I also adored The Witcher and am as excited as many of my fellow GOG-ites at the impending release of The Witcher 2.

Now that introductions are out of the way, I'd like to chime in on this topic, briefly.

First my background as it relates to the topic:
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Professional Freelance Reviewer for PC Gamer (Future, Inc. - USA Version) magazine - 2006-2008

Also reviewed and wrote other types of articles for Gamesradar.com 2007-2008

Currently reviewing board games or writing editorials for my column at the Knights of the Dinner Table magazine/comic book (Board Squawk column).

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So I can speak from DIRECT (not hearsay) experience on this subject matter and more specifically, about whether or not I saw any sign of PC Gamer being paid-off or if I was bribed myself. Unequivocally, I can tell you that I saw no sign of this going on at all. Granted, as a freelancer, I wasn't privy to all the inner workings that went on at the San Francisco offices but certainly no one bribed me at all. If I liked a game AND I felt it did things well, it got a good review. If I disliked it and felt that it dropped the ball in a number of areas, it got a far less glowing review.

I think you run into problems when you try to label all professional reviewers as being "on the take" or "corrupt." That's a bit knee-jerk. Most reviewers take their work very seriously (some perhaps TOO seriously - but that's a topic for another day) and would find the concept of taking a bribe for a good review to be ethically repugnant. I can't speak for everyone, and of course there are surely bad eggs out there, but the majority of the industry is more clean than skeptics would like to believe.

I think several of you have hit things on the head with your methodology. Find reviewers who mirror your own personal tastes and whose insights seem fruitful and revealing. Take what you read with a grain of salt and also put a high value on your time with a game's demo (if one is provided). It certainly doesn't hurt to use a friend's advice - especially if you trust his judgment.

I'm a bit different from most reviewers in that I actually don't mind putting a numerical score onto my game reviews but I also agree that the heart of the review, the part that really matters, is in the text itself.

I'll be happy to answer any questions you folks might have. Thanks for listening.

Game on!!

First of all, welcome and thanks for posting. However, I am curious. Even if someone isn't bribed outright, don't you think there's some pressure to not bag on big sponsors too often? I mean, we all watched what happened to Gerstmann, after all.

Also, I often see what I call "movie critic syndrome". This is basically the same thing you see in movie critics, they take so much stuff in they begin to lose the ability to see what a casual viewer sees, and the audience they can speak to gets reduced. It's like asking a cameraman for porno films to review porn. The constant exposure is going to screw up the communication most of the time.

Now, there are clearly decent reviewers, but honestly how do I find one. Go ahead and look at the DA2 page on Metacritic. Where in all that mess do I even begin? I remember when The Firingsquad microwaved Daikatana and told Romero to stuff it, I don't see that these days (except for Yahtzee, but that's his whole routine to be negative about everything).

I mean, how much DA2 did a reviewer have to play before he said "YOu know what, I'm sick of this laziness and this cave, fuck you Bioware, this game is shit and you could have done better!"? I haven't read that review, and if it was published it was well outside the initial sales window of the game. Where was the courage to actually damage Bioware's sales on this one? It happened anyway and they deserved it, but no reviewers were calling for their heads.