I trust forums...
it is weird but for games there is no real better alternative.

It failed me only once which is FEAR1. I hate that game and everybody seems to love it.

Another technically a failure (but i did not make my mind on that) is penumbra. It was a bit boring for what i played and it was the game suggested (i own all three) for me to play when i had trouble choosing what to do next. i think i played it for 1.5 hours.


anyhow
I agree that 'proffesional' reviews are worth sqaut these days.

Just treat game journalists as normal folks who get to play things a bit earlier than you. Works well for me.

AFAIK that's pretty much standard operating procedure in the game "journalism" industry, since getting early review code is one of those things that's almost guaranteed to bring in more page hits/ad revenue. It's been standard operating procedure for games reviewers for a long time, actually. Yes, in an ideal world, there should be an "FPS guy" handing shooters, a "strategy guy" handing TBS/RTS games, an "RPG guy" for role playing games, and so-on. But sadly, to maximize profits they often stick to having as slim a review staff as possible. Hence you get situations where a great adventure game may get slammed by a writer just because it didn't conform to what his opinion was of an interesting game.

I agree for the most part. I don't know how it turned for journalists to become companies' dogs, but it happened.

It should be profitable for the companies to make good relations with press, but it's the other way around.

They sign agreements not to discuss something in the review, not to show something etc etc. and they don't throw too much low scores because they are afraid the company will break ties with them.

It's stupid.

The real journalist always want to dig to the truth, and deliver the truth to the readers. In game journalism, you have to be gentle, to get your games to be reviewed before release. Because there will be always someone who will expose it's anus to EA, Activisin etc to get the game first. So they all show their anuses and they are in the pockets of the companies which products they review.

In normal situation, if somebody presented non-disclousure agreement to journalist, he should be laughed at hard. But not. There are always bitches who want to sell themselves.
It's not journalism to me.

Well, I think you answered yourself the question in your own post. It's all a matter of "what's inside my fridge at the end of the day? Thin air or food?". Honesty never paid, even if there are still some journalists dedicated enough to the Truth to prefer the Truth to the prospect of a steadily well garnished fridge. Whether they are sell-out or honest journalists sadly doesn't matter to the vast majority of the internet users...

Almost every 9 - 10/10 game I played didnt deserve the score, I tend to take reviews with a grain of salt, even "previews" these days are pure BS, written mostly from brochures issued by the games marketing department.

On saying that, reviews by players are just as untrustworthy, trying to find the middle ground between fanbois and trolls.

It's annoying to drop 50 euros on a steaming pile of vomit, I would imagine the lack of quality in games and misleading reviews even causes a certain amount of piracy as some people will download a game as a "try before they buy" extended demo.

Does your company provide free HIV vaccines?

Not exactly.The industry is more depending on journalism (people want reviews) than journalists depend on the industry.

At least it should be like that. If that balance of power was remained, it would be the journalists who dictate the terms, not the other way around.

The game journalism went to shit only because journalists let it go to shit.

In politics for example, it's the politician who tries to make good relations with press. In game journalism, it's the journalists who lick companies asses. For me, it's upside down...

In gaming "journalism" (and I agree with michaelleung that this term is quite ridiculous), there's a lot of reviewers, and very few critics. We all know that. But if you think the other fields are better off, you're very wrong. For any given art form, there's a tiny handful of people writing about it who actually understand it, and a grey mass that has never moved past "I really liked this, 5/5". Gaming isn't special.

Advance review copies of games are exactly the same thing as advance review copies of books and special film screenings for the press, all of which are perfectly normal in their respective industries, so claiming they are destroying the integrity of the writing is stupid. The same goes for advertising. That's the way it works; at the end of the day, someone has to pay the reviewer's wages.

Also, the internet makes it very easy for anyone's voice to be heard. Which is a blessing, but also the medium's single greatest curse. And because gamers are by definition tech-savvy and heavy users of the internet, this particular hobby suffers from this curse more than most. That I think is the source of all the hatred.

Even ? Previews are the biggest bullshit of all times, I never read them. They write down only the things developer wants them to write about.

They never try to dig up more, to criticise the idea, or whatever. They are always excited about the new game, even though they should be at least sceptical.

I used to read reviews on Gamespot when Greg Kasavin was around as lead editor, because I thought he had a good analytical process going on.

I really liked reading both his reviews and also his blogs as I thought he had some good insights.

Then, he left and I sort of lost interest in the site (except as a way to get aggregated user reviews).

To roughly quote his words (and reason for leaving): "I would put a bad game creator and a good game critic on par.".

A couple of years and a degree in Maths & Stats later, I'm now more interested in aggregated user review scores to determine how appealing a game is to your average enthusiast in the genre.

I'll also take at look at a handful of highly approved (by other users) and well written user reviews to get a feel for the highlights of the game.

In terms of "professional writers", I'm more interested about reading their blogs and get a feel for trends in the gaming industry rather than their reviews on singular titles.

Having recently bought a copy of GameStar (a popular German PC gaming mag), it makes you realise how much a heavy dependency on advertising revenue affects journalistic integrity. Sure, print magazines that have a higher proportion of subscriber and buyer income are not fallible, but the integrity of free-to-read online mags is severely compromised when you realise that a lot of them would suffer greatly if they pissed off any of their ad sponsors.

The GameSpot Kane and Lynch scenario was but one incident that only gained public attention by the fact that the aftermath spilled out onto the publicly visible website. Threats by advertisers to pull ads if favourable review scores are not given are common in the industry (in publications for every industry for that matter) and most of it happens behind the scenes.

Not necessarly True ...

Gamespot's reviews of the Final Fantasy Series has been giving more and more bad grades to games who deserves it.
It gave a game which had a smaller budget 10/10 (Chrono Cross) And I agree with the grade. It gave final fantasy XIII a 7.3 Or something similar if i recall even though Final Fantasy XIII Spent a hell lot of money to spend in advertisement and bribes.

If you take into consideration the 2 reviews of Bayonetta for PS3 And Xbox 360, you'll clearly see an important difference in the grades... Same company, same Bribes, no ?
I doubt Sony and Microsoft Bribe the video game industries and leave it to the devs and publishers.

I believe every now and then reviewers lack the time to fully review a game, and can potentially give an undeserved grade, but to say it's one of the most corrupt buisness... I Higlhy doubt it's true, as most of the reviewers are payed little compared to the work they do, and it's mainly passion that keeps them in the buisness.

N0x0ss, it was years ago. And we're not talking about bribes, nobody's giving anybody money directly.