GOG seems to have an abundance of people guided by nostalgia when rating games. Given what GOG specializes in I am not surprised and it does not make me dislike the site but it's still something that that bogs you down after a while.

Which do you guys think is worse: someone giving a game 5 stars simply because they loved the game as a kid, or giving a game one star because it's the sequel to something they love and they find it insulting? I have found an alarming amount of reviews on both sides that literally start with "I haven't played the game since I was a kid" and "This is based off of my memories playing this years ago".

At the very least, one is based on experience while the other is not.

Well,this happens here a lot and you're not the only one who created this kind of thread.

it IS wednesday at least.

-___+

Technically everything is based off of memory.

The reverse is also true. I still can't understand how such turds as GTA4, DarkSouls get such high ratings. Simple answer is to look at the game yourself, reviews, scores, critic praise, fanboy shouting regardless, the only person who can tell if a game is good is you.

This is precisely why I don't place much stock in user reviews. I know a lot of people praise them to high heaven, essentially as a way of saying "fuck The Man", but honestly, user reviews are no less susceptible to bias and corruption than professionally written reviews. In fact, they're even less reliable. As you say, with old games, nostalgia plays a big role. With new products, scores are driven down by angry, bitter individuals who feel the need to shout their discontent out to the world. Averagely satisfied people seldom feel the urge to tell the world about their mild satisfaction, unless they want to raise their own profile for whatever reason. I would guess that 80% of user reviews on sites like Steam, GOG and Amazon are either fanboy reviews, astroturf reviews or rage-hate reviews.

And yes, you never know how many of the positive reviews are from astroturfers.

As for nostalgia, well, nostalgia is why a lot of people bash on sequels, prequels and remakes, because of a vague sense of rage that the film didn't make them as giddy as it did when they were children. Nostalgia is why people get increasingly bitter towards old age about politics as things change. Nostalgia is what causes people to look down upon others for preferring something new.

Of course, new is not automatically better, change is not automatically good. Every change and novelty needs to be assessed on its own terms. New doesn't necessarily make the old obsolete - we still use landline telephones despite mobile phones being a ubiquitous part of modern life for the better part of 20 years - but some people seem to find offence in the idea that some people may prefer the new and go on the defensive by attacking those people.

Here is a photo of me when I was younger.

Every photo of me is a photo of me when I was younger.

EXACTLY!

oh one of those again
will tomorrow give us an where are all the old games thread ?

Not necessarily. You could take a picture of the future. I have a camera that does it, only problem is that the moment of the photo it takes has already passed by the time you develop it.

That was an episode of the Twilight Zone, not real life.

Personally, I don't see the problem with this. If someone rates a game based on past experience, it is still the same game now that it was then. A recent opinion is just as subjective as an older one.

The information can still be useful, whether or not you actually agree with the reviewer's conclusion.

On the other hand, whether a review is based on experience from 10-20 years ago, or more recent exposure could potentially be relevant to the person reading the review, so it can be useful for the reviewer to provide such information.

I was going to make that joke, but then decided against it. In that episode, they got to see what would happen briefly before it killed them, not with the thing taking so long to develop it that it already passed by the time it would be of any use.

I'm voting for a "too niche" thread. :)