Game reviews have been pretty much worthless for years: no-one who's paid to review games on sites or in magazines which rely on game advertising is going to say 'GTA5 sucks, don't buy it'. Back when I still read reviews even games where the review itself mentioned big problems often seemed to get a rating of 80-90% at the end and games that barely worked would still get 65%.

Still, it could be worse: I was reading an article a while back by a car reviewer who said that back in the 70s they were driving a new sports car around a test track and when they hit the brakes for a sharp corner the brake pedal snapped off. They didn't mention it in the review, of course, because the manufacturer assured them that the brake pedal bug would be fixed before the car was sold to members of the public.

Which is probably also one of the problems with game reviews; the reviewers get buggy pre-release versions of the game but the publisher assures them the bugs will be fixed before release, so they don't mention that half the game doesn't work.

Anyway, all of this is why I hadn't bought a single game at release for about five years before I bought Witcher 2. I've learned to wait six months or a year until the user response is clear rather than buy a game based on reviews.

And that's why Giant Bomb gave it two stars?

Just that they pirated most likely since it was available 2-3 days before release. Not that a complete playthrough would be needed to see just "how good" DA2 was. And are you suggesting that reviewers who gave it a 10/10 and the guy at Bioware who gave it a 10/10 were correct? Talk about fanboyism.

ehhhh the sites I visit actually mentioned that the multiplayer is laggy, and the game isn't exactly getting rave reviews from them, so ....I'll still trust them.


Don't really get all the comments about "paid reviews" in this incident. It's not like this game has a score of 90+ on metacritic

Are you really serious here? You honestly don't see a problem with an employee from the company that made the game reviews his own product and then hide the fact that he works for Bioware? What did you expect him to say in his review - "sorry we just made the worst game ever, now go buy it to support us". It should go without saying that people from a company cannot review their own products because it's a HUGE conflict of interest there. This was nothing more than a sneaky attempt from EA/Bioware to get people to buy a flawed game to increase their profit.
Now I do agree with you that user reviews can be flawed aswell based on "hate campaigns" against a company like we saw with Spore on Amazon. But at the very minimum these hate campaigns are not motivated by greed but with more or less genuine complaints with the game. Yes the fanboy's nerd rage can skewer the ratings but a company's employees must NEVER review their own games.

Here's the thing guys. Metacritic is a shithole.

Any form of publication that relies purely on giving a numerical value to what is an Individual Experience is flawed in every way. As are the people that rely on said numbers to make points and cases, or to make a decision for them.

Are you going to go out to a restaurant and say 'I give this steak a 6/10' no, you'll say 'well that steak was a bit dry' 'Well this wedding is certainly 8/10' no 'that was a fun wedding, the DJ played some pretty cool songs and the beer was pretty cheap'

Reviews in the Game Industry tend to be bad I agree, but that's just because the reviews we get at the forefront are from IGNorance, or the Offfical Xbox Magazine. Look around, search on the internet for Reviews by REAL people, people you like, people that have similar opinions as you then make your decision. But above all else nothing can confirm whether you'll like a game more than playing it.

First you're claiming reviewers are corrupt, which is just offensive. Then you're backing it up with what? An example of some poor sod from BioWare getting frustrated with the moronic 0/10-reviews and countering it with his own 10/10-review (stupid, but hardly evidence of corruption), and some stuff about overzealous PR-people from EA. How is that backing up your claim that reviewers are corrupt?

And what's your argument? That anyone who disagrees with you about the quality of the game must be bought by EA? Well, there's nothing new there. That's the angry internet men's answer to everything.

A review score is higher than the metacritic average? The reviewer is bought by the publisher! Corruption! A review score is lower than average? The reviewer is being paid by the competition! (the favourite argument of console fanboys everywhere). The review score is in line with the metacritic average? Great! The reviewer is still corrupt, but this time he gets to share the shame with the entire games media, because they must ALL be corrupt if a game can get such an undeserved metacritic rating. There's no way to win.

Here's more food for thought guys. And i've heard this from a person in the industry, from an actual Journalist.

Most reviewers from big publications don't play the games. They are given a set number of screenshots videos and documentation about the game, they then read through, watch some videos and make a review. This is why games don't get low scores anymore, because nobody is playing them.

The indie Journalists don't have this problem though, they usually play the games with their hard earned cash.

Well not all reviewers are like that.
For instance Canard PC journalist (a french mag) won't hesitate to tell you if they got a bugged version and to wait if that's the case. They also refuse to review a game when they only receive a console version and postpone the test to after release.

You are accusing me of bullshit then you say you have to play 60 hours to fully review a game? You only need 2 or 3 hours with a game before you know the important stuff like how it looks, how it plays and how well written it is. You won't find a bigger BioWare fanboy than I am and I was incredibly open minded about the game before it was released. It sucked, BioWare made a bad game deal with it.

Also I was playing the game 2 days before it was released because it was available for pre-loading and it had a staggered released date. A quick proxy unlocked it.

And if you think games reviews are not paid for or bribed then you are naive in the extreme. Quite often reviewers are given a PR sheet they have to review to. They don't just get games for free but the publishers pay for advertising on their site, advertising the big websites dont want to do without by pissing off a publisher. As Aningan said the lowest score a game can get from a big publisher is a 7. That shows you just how corrupt games journalists are.
They are corrupt. They get their games free and they are paid indirectly by publishers through advertising. It's a conflict of interest that has existed ever since magazines have. Reviews are nothing but a PR tool.

I agree the 1/10 reviews were a joke and should have been removed but the 10/10 scores should have been removed as well leaving the rest between 4 and 6 which is around what Dragon Age 2 deserved as a lazy, underdeveloped and underfunded cash in deserved.
He did try to hide the fact he worked for BioWare. No where in his review was it stated he was an employee of BioWare and it was written in a style designed to make you think it was a customer. He simply wasn't smart enough to know his name was so easily googled. It wasn't his BioWare account it was his Linked In account.

GOG talk freely about The Witcher 2 which is FINE. Mike Laidlaw and David Gaider talked plenty about DA2 before it was released as well and that's FINE. If you find a GOG employee posting a 10/10 for The Witcher 2 then we can talk.

Here we go with the fanboy again. I feel you do not quite understand the word. You seem to know it's an insult but you are not applying it correctly. The opposite of a fanboy is a troll and that seems to be what you are calling me.

you have managed to convince yourself that you dont even need to play the fucking game to write a review for it

Wrong I said you only need to play it for a few hours not 60. Buddy, let me let you in on a secret, most reviewers don't spend more than 2 hours playing a game. I also didn't say they only get games free I said they are paid indirectly as well. If you get your income from advertising by the very people you review products for then that represents a conflict of interest.

And again he did try to hide he was a BioWare employee. He is not allowed to add a customer review for a game he helped to create. He simply had a derp moment and forgot how easy his Linkedin account was to google.

Most people read the score, when they should be focusing on the text.

Because you only need to see the first 10 minutes of Psycho and Citizen Kane to be able to fully review the movie.

Why are you comparing a game to a movie? If a game looks like shite and plays like shite but has a great story then it's a brilliant game is it?

If they said look, this game was so atrocious that I gave up after a couple hours and you'd have to tie me down and force me to continue because no amount of money is going to get me to, I'm all for that. Otherwise, it's piss poor work ethic, it's lying to the audience, and it's just pathetic; you can't compartmentalize things that make up the game and then try and justify ignoring it by saying some other part is mediocre or sucks or is so awesome in itself that you're just not going to bother with the rest.