I like to read user reviews on GOG before making a purchase. I also occassionally take the added effort to craft a review. It's kind of disheartening though that if a review isn't one of the first up, it is forever lost on page 2, 3, 4, or beyond. The first reviews get marked as "useful" even if they are only mildly useful, and since the reviews are sorted by most "useful" votes, the front page is usually the same 3 reviews that first went up, unless a reviewer really sucks.

This seems like kind of a broken system. There should be some way to shuffle these up or something so that you get useful reviews, but not always the same three. Like a simple algorithm perhaps that the default page view shows a random sampling of reviews that have received more "useful" votes than "not useful votes", so that some of the really well written reviews we have on this site don't get lost due to not being one of the first three posted.

The first reviews for any game are either reeking of nostalgia - with people not having played them again since they became available again; let's be honest, some games just don't stand up to the test of time - they're spamtastic one-liners, or they down/uprate a game due to something that has very little to do with the actual game itself, i.e. price point.

That's why I always only look at the more recent reviews if I bother with user reviews at all, since that'll cut out most of the garbage. Yes, that may have me miss out on some of the better reviews in the middle, but, then again, I usually find the forum a much better indicator for quality than any given user review.

The issue is that it seems to be sorted by total number of "helpful" votes, rather than a ratio of "helpful" to "not helpful." Since the early reviews get more votes, this can make it really hard to push the review off the front page even if it's got a pretty low ratio.

Probably unpopular opinion here, but I always thought they should just scrap the reviews section and just let people rate the game. Discussion on the game should just be in the game's sub-forum imo.

But whatever, I don't really read them in the first place.

Agree, had the same thought some time ago. Randomizing would be a neat idea (maybe with the chances being influenced by the "usefulness" ratio). Also the Metacritic approach isn't bad where you instantly see one positive, one average and one bad review - one could combine this with the "usefulness" + randomness. I like reading the reviews. Even if you can't always trust the reviewers' opinions you usually get a lot of additional information from the reviews, IMO. It has helped me decide upon several purchases already. But I understand that many people won't base their decisions on other users' opinions.

Yeah, I'm sure many people do like reading them. Either way it doesn't affect me really, it's slightly annoying some of the most useful have false info in them tho.

But it's possible already. Due to fanboyism sorting by usefullness usually happens to result in the same order as sorting by rating. :B

They should have most recent reviews up as the default option, rather than most helpful.

Also, I get the sense that people downvote mediocre and negative reviews of games they like (or want to like), even though the review itself articulates very well the reasons for the score. In other words, it was a good review, they just didn't agree with the conclusion. That doesn't mean it wasn't helpful.

I'd love to be able to read more than 3 reviews per page.

I've never understood why they allow people to review games they haven't bought here and why they allow any reviews in the first week or so after a game goes on sale here.

Neither proposition is particularly helpful for those that are thinking about buying the game as you get a lot of garbage reviews like the OP is complaining about.

It would be good to hear from gog whether this is something they intend to change. The reviews system has been criticized 1001 times but nothing is ever done about it.

I know that gog's perspective is that they shouldn't tamper with user reviews in order to bias a purchase, however, the current system doesn't self-regulate itself either.

Well, to address your first statement, I certainly wouldn't buy a game again just to post a review here. If I already have it but I didn't buy it here, I don't see how that would make my opinion any less valid.

And a lot of people - I'm not one, by the way - apparently buy a game and do nothing else until they finish it, so what takes them two or three days may take me forever, so I don't think putting a time frame on it would be very effective either.

That said, I agree that reviews that essentially say nothing are useless. "I liked this game; it was creepy and fun" - not a direct quote, but when you can't even be bothered to write more than one or two sentences, why bother?

The thing is that under those circumstances you're not reviewing the product, you're reviewing a different product which may or may not have the same defects. What's more if you haven't bought the copy here there's no way of the rest of us knowing if you've played it recently.

Reviews are for helping people to decide whether or not to buy a copy here, not so that people can push their nostalgia onto other people who may or may not be in the mood for it. If you want to know if a game is generally good there are tons of review sites out there that will give you that information, reviews here are supposed to be about the copies that GOG is selling.