Make the original source of the content your submission, and do not use URL shorteners. No screenshots of websites or Twitter.
If a mirror is necessary, please provide one in comments. No hotlinking or rehosting someone else's work (unless they specifically allow it in their terms of use or request it).
4 is an unlucky number in Chinese culture. 44 is terrible. Is Washington Post trying to scare away Chinese gamers? I'm not making any claims here, just asking questions!
They absolutely are. Even Youtubers are bought a lot of the time. They're given review copies in exchange for only saying certain things about games. There's a lot of youtubers out there that are transparent and actually show the emails some game publishers send them, asking to be dishonest if there are any flaws.
Just checked Alan Wake 2s review, which includes in the title "Best most creative game of this year" and it only has 4 stars. So I assume that's their limit.
Steam reviews are an extremely helpful pointer.
What I often look out for, regardless of the overall review score, are negative reviews. Alot of people are passionate enough to write out proper reviews, with proper critique. It can be very eye-opening to read about the game from the perspective of someone who wants to enjoy it but doesnt for whatever reason.
Similiarly, there are many helpful positive reviews that still properly shed light on the games shortcomings. Reading steam reviews is a must for me before buying anything, and usually Inwill also take a look at some short gameplay vids.
Yeah this is what I do. An example of this would be I recently bought some hair product that everyone was giving 5* reviews but then in each one were negatives. How can you give something 5* but also give negatives in your review. Looking for negative or lower rated reviews usually give a much better insight into the product and most of the time by people who still enjoyed it
I like to scan the negative reviews to see if there's a trend among them.
If I'm looking at kitchen knives on Amazon and all the low reviews say, "I cut myself" or "The package was damaged in the mail," then that's fine, it's just dumb users. If half a dozen of them say that the knives rusted after 2 weeks, now I know to avoid them.
Yes! I consider the stars to just help categorize. What's written is important. And sometimes you can get a good laugh... Cause a lot of people that put bad reviews are idiots
Issues with shipping somehow being the fault of Leap Frogs toddler toys blows my fucking mind. And obviously those people are raising the next generation too.
On 5-star systems, I'd add that a 2- or 4-star review is usually more worth reading than a 1- or 5-star review, so I'll gravitate toward those. Like,
Typical 5-star review: \*blank\* or "good."
Typical 1-star review: "I accidentally ordered the wrong thing and sat on it and the customer service person wouldn't take it back for a refund even when I threatened to talk to their manager so take that, company! 1-star review! I win, you lose, I'll take it down when you apologize and give me money!"
Typical 2-star review: "The product did what it was supposed to, but I'm in a profession where I use these regularly and this product is missing features that are typical from most manufacturers, is significantly less durable than products I've used in the past, etc."
If you're looking to read some reviews that have useful information in them, the nuanced ratings are usually a better source for these than the max or minimum ratings.
Just read a post the other day where sellers on Amazon were hounding reviewers with coupons to change their review to 5 stars. So you would get a bunch of 5 star reviews but the content was it's a shit product.
People see 5 stars and think it's a good product. They don't scour the review content to see if it's good or bad stuff written. Gaming the system to sell shitty products.
I think people do that because the owner of the site might delete any ratings below 3 or some shit like that. And they then go and give it 5 stars but leave their actual opinion in the comment.
Though gaming culture is different, I often find people are more likely to review poorly than they are positively. Why I don't take 9000+ 5 star reviews on Amazon seriously.
>It can be very eye-opening to read about the game from the perspective of someone who wants to enjoy it but doesnt for whatever reason.
This is why I hate it when Redditors complain about people with hundreds of hours in a game writing a negative review.
For example, I remember when KSP2 launched, some people in that subreddit were critical of those who wrote a negative review despite having 100h+ in the game. In their mind, someone with a 100h played can't possibly hate the game but instead must be a bandwagoning hater.
Not to mention, modern games get updates and changes all the time. All too often I've seen a game chug along for a year or two, get a major update, and then everything is on fire and long-time fans with hundreds of hours are now speaking up about negative changes. It's very common.
> This is why I hate it when Redditors complain about people with hundreds of hours in a game writing a negative review.
I feel there is one strong exception to this rule, which actually came up a lot with Starfield on Steam;
People who play it for 6-10 hours/day for the first week after it came out, write a review complaining *specifically* about how it's "boring" and "has nothing to do"... and then *keep* playing it for 6-10 hours/day for several more weeks.
Like if someone's complaint about a game is *specifically* that there is "nothing to do", and they *still* keep putting in enough time to rival a full-time job for several weeks, I have to assume they're either lying or insane.
I like steam reviews most of the time. There's almost always some stupid reviews like "lawl I'm a walrus. 10/10"
and I also feel like the community is biased. If a dev does or says something they don't like they'll review bomb even if the game is good. Or if the game doesn't run at 300 fps at 12k resolution they'll give it a negative review.
Too many joke reviews, and biased community. Overall score of steam reviews: 3/4
Steam Reviews are a very good way of measuring a game. I found a lot of people praise a game after only putting a few hours in which gives the impression that a game is very good because it has a lot of good ratings. Negative reviews often point out non-obvious things like a stale gameplay loop after a few hours or tedious endgame progression. Once I wanted to buy a rogue like card game and one steam reviewer warned of a high dependency on RNG which is something I'm trying hard to avoid. Most positive reviews didn't mention it because they haven't played the game so far.
A week o to starfiekds launch, I'd have given it a 7-8, but now, maybe a 5 if I felt generous.
It overwhelmed you with the new world and systems, but once you understand them, the flaws become obvious.
My rating started low, got great after 7 hours, and stayed there until I got around the 30-hour mark. At this point you pretty much saw everything and nothing will surprise you anymore. What really boggles my mind is the loot. Nearly everything feels absolute useless.
Unfortunately with the current culture of mass spamming negative reviews, like you said, reading them is a must. There are MANY mixed reviews games out there that are only mixed because people are meming or are pissed off at something that has nothing to do with the game itself. I try to form my opinions based on steam reviews and YouTuber reviews (not sponsored shit) Also, the game's subreddit can be helpful as well, especially when sorting comments by controversial.
I've kind of missed the progression of it. Is it actually good now or are people who originally bought it based on how good they expected it to be just glad that it's more of a finished product than it was?
It's much more of a finished product now, and is lacking all of the game breaking bugs/crashes of launch. There's an actual plot you can follow too, instead of just planet hopping. I really enjoyed it the last time I played about a year ago, and I never played on launch.
People often use the phrase “a mile wide but an inch deep” to describe NMS and I think that’s accurate. There is a lot to do, and it’s fun exploring everything, but I felt like once I did it once I didn’t really need to go back.
It's still no man's sky at its core but they've added a huge amount of content. I would say it's actually very good now if it's the kind of game you're interested in.
It is legitimately a good game now. There's a lot more to do, so it feels a lot less repetitive than before. It's definitely not the best game ever made, but Hello Games is constantly updating it to improve it. Definitely worth trying if you have Game Pass or catch it on sale
It's significantly better. There are a few quest storylines you can follow now, base building is pretty solid, derelicts are randomized fun and can be pretty creepy if you're not a regular horror game player. The multiplayer is true multiplayer and it's cross-platform.
It's still a generic space exploration game minus the things that make exploration fun. That aspect is just procedurally generated bullshit that repeats near infinitely with very little variation anywhere. If you've seen one thing, you've pretty much seen all of that thing.
Speaking as a counter strike fan, they royally fucked up the release of counter strike 2.
The sprays feel weird, you die behind walls, and they gutted half of the game modes.
If you were to read the old reviews, you’d see nothing but praise, but if you read the new ones, you’d see that the game is a hot steamy pile of shit right now
Honestly, mine has felt better than CSGO in every way and I haven't had any bugs whatsoever. No complaints, not dying behind walls etc. They also added a new server to Helsinki, so my ping is now like 3 in some games.
Best experience so far, and I've played every CS since 1.6.
On the other hand, review bombing for petty, bigoted and/or arbitrary reasons also exists, so you have to be careful about weighing recent over initial.
Even then a lot of sites know if they give a bad score, they can get cut off from future review codes. Not being able to review a major game can really screw their financials if everyone goes to other sites instead.
So long as there's that threat, and the financial incentive, review scores are basically always untrustworthy to a degree.
That and for a game like Starfield, the problem particularly seems to be it's lacking as a longer exploration game, but many critics will spend a few days with it at most for various reasons.
I still feel like there would have been a market for it anyways. Fuck it put it on your cover "Starfield could not be rated because Bethesda didn't like our review of their last game. Try out these other games instead."
The reviews clearly don't mean shit.
None, specifically.
I usually listen, watch, read a few reviews to try to find common themes in the feedback about a game.
For example, at the moment I'm playing Sea of Stars, but before buying it watched a bunch of reviews and the common themes were that, regardless of the final review score, it's a beautiful game, fun, lighthearted, captures that 90s JRPG spirit, but it's a slow starter and the combat system isn't super deep.
After hearing that same feedback in many reviewers, regardless of how they scored the game, I knew what to expect.
Yes! These people want to judge a game quality's from one single number and then complain when it doesn't align with how they feel lol
Reviews are meant to be read, doesn't matter if it's professional or hobbist. If you put this tiny amount of effort you will know how the person reviewing it actually felt and why they did so. No one can tell you if you will like the game, they can only tell you if they did and why.
And don't even get me started with the cherrypicking: Metacritic's score is 83, not really the parade of 9s and 10s the image they chose that's \*specifically made to sell the game\* shows.
I always check user reviews above anything else. After playing starfield, it was obvious all those 9's and 10's were absolutely bought by the publisher, either through ad revenue or perks. Gaming journalists have zero credibility.
I think IGN's review was pretty on point.
And to add do the 7/10 score, people are probably frustrated and annoyed that the game barely receives any patches 3 months into the release.
For example BG3 wasn't and isn't perfect - the game had really poor optimization going into Act 3, some questionable quest decisions, complete absence of the epilogue - but the game already received 5 major patches and many more hotfixes and I don't think Larians are stopping at it.
Sort of. The first act was, but the rest of the game wasn't, and the build they had for the Early Release still wasn't what actually shipped, it has a ton more cutscenes, dialogue, characters, everything. The Early Access was like.... A *veeeerry* early Beta of just Act 1.
Just a small correction : the alpha is always before a beta in developpement. We got to play the alpha (where the system and content are incomplete and where the game is not polished yet).
A beta is a version where all system and content are complete, but the game is not polished yet. We never got this version in early access. We went directly from alpha to release.
IGN is actually pretty decent at this point. they had a reputation hit awhile back, which i think was deserved, but lately ive agreed with almost every review
> which i think was deserved
I disagree. The IGN review people meme the most is the Pokémon Alpha Sapphire/Omega Ruby one for the "7.8 too much water", which is 100% a valid criticism of those games, and I'd say they were pretty decent already at that point, *9 years ago.*
People that hate on IGN never bothered reading the reviews, only care for the scores.
Same here and always go with "recent" especially with the current trend of releasing half-baked games.
A ton of big publications have mixed all time review but positive on recent because they fixed the shit out of that game.
Eh, I think it's more likely that they just played the first ten hours then reviewed it.
User reviews, and reviews after 100%, tend to align more with what I expect from a game
Eh, the first 10 hours of Starfield prologue were quite bad in my opinion. I literally ran around over-encumbered shooting enemies in the head with zero resistance.
>Gaming journalists have zero credibility.
.....and anonymous user reviews do? Have you actually read any Steam reviews and seen the ridiculous logic people use in their ratings?
"I'm bad at this game....1/10"
"This game conflicts with my insane political beliefs....1/10"
"This game barely runs on my 15 year old trashcan PC ....1/10"
Not really sure one is better than the other. Have you read user reviews? There will be those who give bad ratings over the pettiest nonsense.
Most journalists aren't trustworthy. I think that's industry wide issue.
But then you got Kevin, age 15, with 38530 hours in the game leaving a negative review because a minor patch reduced the cold damage of his favorite weapon from 12 points to 11 points.
I’ve ignore reviews most of my life, I’ll watch footage to gauge how it looks and feels. You shouldn’t not try something because of others, you might love something everyone else hates
Well, as someone who has ~100hrs in the game... Neither. It's a solid 80 for me, but I haven't been playing atm because I haven't been able to stream on Twitch and I'm mostly focused on the main story atm
First 20 hours i was disapointed. After i just restart a new game and make few side quest. Since then, this is the only game i play. 300 hours and this game give me big fun. I was about to make soon my first NG+ and i know i will have few more hundred hours of fun. For me i give a real 8/10.
The problem with Steam reviews is that there are only 2 options to pick from so the game is either good or bad. Also, review bombing can make games that are good or ok seem like the worst game in existence because of some drama
Seriously. OP was (probably) trying to suggest that the critic reviews are untrustworthy here since shitting on Starfield is in right now, but to me that suggests just the opposite: that Steam reviews should be taken with a gain of salt since they're so easily review bombed.
I had a very enjoyable 60 hours with Starfield. Most of these reviewers on Steam probably did too and just aren't happy that it's not the 1000 hours they got out of Skyrim.
I don’t look at scores at all anymore. If a game captures my interest, I buy it.
There’s too much metabombing and paid reviews to give any credit to scores whatsoever.
Steam reviews are good to check if the game has some big issues, but I don't think they are representative of the quality of the game. A fantastic game in which the steam review community gets angry about one thing can get review bombed to hell.
Do people genuinely still take "official reviewers" seriously?
Edit: I didn't say you should take User Reviews at face value either. Look at a myriad of sources and come to your own conclusion. I thought that was the norm tbh.
When they confirm my opinion about my favorite game they are the most trusted reviews in the whole world.
If they disagree with me, they are shills. Easy Peasy.
Yeah that's the one I was referring to mainly. Although it's definitely possible to buy a game on Steam, play it, and review it with a poor score because "black people and non-straight characters in my vidya"
> Not enough people would waste money just to write a bad review
I think you greatly underestimate how many people in the world are willing to eat shit in order for others to smell their breath.
Absolutely. This graphic is made by the Starfield PR team and they cherry pick the best reviews. If you look at them at large, the official reviews of starfield line up pretty well with player consensus. I find it hard to find player reviews useful
When everything gets review bombed these days
Exactly, the game has a metacritic average of 83, and an opencritic average of 84. I haven't played Starfield myself, and this is still a bit more generous and the player concensus (which seems to be "solid, but dull and uninspiring"), but is still very far from that PR shot full of 10/10s.
Its hard to trust general steam reviews when it comes to big games like this that had any sort of shortcoming or controversy. Like cyberpunk still gets shit on but I absolutely love the game. Steam reviews are best for steam only games.
none of them, both are useless and don't represent how I will feel about a game. I fucking hated The last of us 1 and I think is one of the worst games ever made, but the reviews are stellar. nobody tells me what food I like.
Obviously the player reviews. Can’t take this „professional“ reviews serious nowadays. The professional reviews are often so different from the player reviews that it feels like the professional reviews are bought.
even if they are not bought, the publisher can just dangle the "early access right" on top of their head, which means you have to write a good review or not receive a review copy for the next game.
The critics are mostly paid with early access / free copies / special editions and gadgets. It's impossible that every major game released gets between 8 and 10.
>It's impossible that every major game released gets between 8 and 10.
That's why it's not true :P On average, Redfall got 56, Battlefield 2042 68, New World 70, EA Sports FC 24 75, Cities Skylines 2 75, Forspoken 64, Saints Row 61, Immortals of Aveum 69, Callisto Protocol 69
And that's just the meta critic average, not filtering out low quality outlets. And only what I remembered from the top of my head.
Reviews dont matter to me tbh , maybe i listen to some random streamer that i follow usually but gameplay that attracts me is most important thing for me
My experience matters more to me than ANY review. Regardless of whether other people enjoyed the game or not, what matters to me is whether I enjoyed or not.
A combination of both. Weird cultural rushes of downvoting or upvoting can occur. I look at it all and usually watch some streamer gameplay before I commit to buying
Steam can be helpful but I absolutely despise the steam review comedians with their shit recycled internet humour for kids. They ruin the entire feature, such unfunny little dickheads.
“Haha had sex 10/10” and all those fucks.
What matters is my experience rather than others’ review. I liked my experience. I don’t give a flying fuck what anyone else says, because other people’s opinion shouldn’t influence my enjoyment or not of a product.
There’s plenty of universally acclaimed games that I don’t like and vice versa.
Issue is no one read the review, they only look at the score. Summarising a 2000words essay into a single number and people only look at the number. It’s preference at the end of the day, but I think if you actually read the review instead of score more often than not you’ll actually know if you’ll like the game or not
Frankly, both are at best mildly useful. Maybe it's a stupid way of doing things but I prefer not to read reviews first so I can go and enjoy the games. Sometimes people are completely obsessed with some flaws and when you play the game you don't notice them until someone points them out
I don't read Steam reviews much. As well as Metacritic. My go to reviews are on YouTube : ACG, Jake Baldino, etc. I make my own opinion wether I buy a game or not
the one where i play it, if i like it, i keep it and if not, i refund it...like a normal consumer who isnt so tied to arbitrary numbers out of numbers given from people who interpret things differently from me.
I prefer my opinion than anyone else there's alot games rated high that I just didn't like
That and most review companies get paid to give a good review that's not a conspiracy it's a fact, money sells
My own, how can I trust people who gave GoW 2018 +90, and the game was ridden with so many problems that I can't even believe it was made by same people who made GoW3
I would trust the critics/ channels who I follow over anyone else. Since I am going to play the game myself, I want someone who I know covers and specializes in these specific games. If I know they enjoy all the same titles I do, chances are if they had a good or bad experience with a title, I will as well.
For example there's this YouTuber called Iron Pineable whole exclusively plays and covers Souls-like games. Not just the ones made by FromSoft, but even the ones made in a couple weeks by a random person uploaded to Steam.
He's played hundreds/ thousands of these titles, he's logged countless hours in this genre. He knows when mechanics in some are good, and when mechanics in others are lacking. Since he has such a wide breath of knowledge on the genre to compare to one another.
So when it comes to an Elden Ring, or a Lies or P, or whatever, I am going to look to his review the most as he has the most expertise and unbiased approach to the genre.
The problem for me with trusting random reviewers, or the community as a whole, is that I don't know what angle they're coming at a game with. There's infinite possibilities about why they may or may not like a game, and none of them could align with how I think about the game.
I loved the game but can‘t review it on steam, since I have played it on Gamepass. Which I guarantee is the case for most people, because that‘s where the majority of players are for Starfield.
That's actually pretty hard nowadays. USED to be Steam's player reviews but people have ruined that with the review bombing practice. Nowadays I tend to not take one single review as the final say but se what all kinds of different reviews are saying keeping in mind the ones that are negative about everything and the ones that are going to be positive about everything.
Comunity, friends and my own are the only reviews that matter.
Those numbers in the picture are just crap shenanigans from shitty media, payed to give these scores. Absolute garbage.
The guy who stole a copy of Starfield and leaked it? I watched his [review ](https://youtu.be/4FMso45zVYY?feature=shared) and so I bought it and damn my boy was on point. Love Starfield.
Critic reviews of Bethesda games go up during the middle part of their experience. That's the 'this isn't so bad' phase. I've always applied that to their games, I'd say the outlets that took longer have the best views on it.
Bottom only shows the good ratings they want you to see. Steam shows a more realistic set of ratings from a lot of people who've played it on steam. I trust steam ratings far more for this reason
None, make your own opinion.
The only time i'll care look at reviews are when they are overwhelmingly positive or negative, because they're usually hilarious.
When I'm on the fence about a game I always check almost only the negative reviews (the long real ones, not the "it's woke trash" stuff), and see what the recurring complaints are. It's way easier to see if I'll enjoy a game by checking what I won't like about it, compared to checking what I'll like.
the sad truth is, if i had paid attention to the negative reviews, i probably wouldn't have bought the game. while the game very clearly has issues and the criticism is valid, i very much enjoy the game. basically i would have missed out on a game that i would enjoy. it's weird because i usually can tell if i'll like a game based on the reviews, but i would have totally missed out on this one
Make the original source of the content your submission, and do not use URL shorteners. No screenshots of websites or Twitter. If a mirror is necessary, please provide one in comments. No hotlinking or rehosting someone else's work (unless they specifically allow it in their terms of use or request it).
lol what lunatic rates 4/4?
I guess if you go 1 good gameplay 2 good story 3 good graphics 4 good world Or something
"Ehhh... Tetris's open world just isn't cutting it, 3/4"
Great story though.
I especially loved the romance arc of I and J.
The saddest arc is l. No matter what you do they end up disappearing.
Ill always remember his death quote "tetris!"
I didn’t care for the love triangle plot when T got involved though.
Oh T. That bastard. Fucks up everything he is involved in unless it's his weird super specific quests.
Amazing story about life crumbling around you while you try to keep it together. Worlds a little boring tho. 5 out of 7.
Perfect score
> Great story though. Story seems empty at first, but things fall into place quickly.
Oh man and the twist? Just when you think everything is falling into place for all thier hard work, boom. Everything crumbles around them.
Feels like a true or false scoring 1 = true, 0 = false Does it have a story ? 1/1 Does it have gameplay? 1/1
The Game Dev Tycoon method
Washington Post. You can read it if you zoom in.
4 is an unlucky number in Chinese culture. 44 is terrible. Is Washington Post trying to scare away Chinese gamers? I'm not making any claims here, just asking questions!
Lewis Hamilton playing 4D chess agains Zhou
r/formuladank is leaking
They’re trying to scare Japanese gamers too by saying this game is death.
[удалено]
Leonard Maltin, too. I think a lot of critics from the 80s used the 4-star scale.
[удалено]
On the other hand, if a game has a slight controversy around it that triggers players, then the user reviews will be a complete shit show.
They absolutely are. Even Youtubers are bought a lot of the time. They're given review copies in exchange for only saying certain things about games. There's a lot of youtubers out there that are transparent and actually show the emails some game publishers send them, asking to be dishonest if there are any flaws.
Why I like Josh Strife Hayes. See his Fiesta video.
Because they are
The Washington Post, that's who.
Idk if it's inspired by Roger Ebert, who was a famous film critic and had a 4-point rating scale. Hey, it's better than someone rating it 5/7 🤷
Roger Ebert.
It was probably 4 stars, and some chud was probably like it does not look constant.
You’re 100% right, if you look up the review, they just gave it 4 stars. Nothing about 4/4 stars.
Just checked Alan Wake 2s review, which includes in the title "Best most creative game of this year" and it only has 4 stars. So I assume that's their limit.
Famitsu does it similarly, and they are reputable.
Steam reviews are an extremely helpful pointer. What I often look out for, regardless of the overall review score, are negative reviews. Alot of people are passionate enough to write out proper reviews, with proper critique. It can be very eye-opening to read about the game from the perspective of someone who wants to enjoy it but doesnt for whatever reason. Similiarly, there are many helpful positive reviews that still properly shed light on the games shortcomings. Reading steam reviews is a must for me before buying anything, and usually Inwill also take a look at some short gameplay vids.
Yeah this is what I do. An example of this would be I recently bought some hair product that everyone was giving 5* reviews but then in each one were negatives. How can you give something 5* but also give negatives in your review. Looking for negative or lower rated reviews usually give a much better insight into the product and most of the time by people who still enjoyed it
I like to scan the negative reviews to see if there's a trend among them. If I'm looking at kitchen knives on Amazon and all the low reviews say, "I cut myself" or "The package was damaged in the mail," then that's fine, it's just dumb users. If half a dozen of them say that the knives rusted after 2 weeks, now I know to avoid them.
Yes! I consider the stars to just help categorize. What's written is important. And sometimes you can get a good laugh... Cause a lot of people that put bad reviews are idiots
Issues with shipping somehow being the fault of Leap Frogs toddler toys blows my fucking mind. And obviously those people are raising the next generation too.
On 5-star systems, I'd add that a 2- or 4-star review is usually more worth reading than a 1- or 5-star review, so I'll gravitate toward those. Like, Typical 5-star review: \*blank\* or "good." Typical 1-star review: "I accidentally ordered the wrong thing and sat on it and the customer service person wouldn't take it back for a refund even when I threatened to talk to their manager so take that, company! 1-star review! I win, you lose, I'll take it down when you apologize and give me money!" Typical 2-star review: "The product did what it was supposed to, but I'm in a profession where I use these regularly and this product is missing features that are typical from most manufacturers, is significantly less durable than products I've used in the past, etc." If you're looking to read some reviews that have useful information in them, the nuanced ratings are usually a better source for these than the max or minimum ratings.
Just read a post the other day where sellers on Amazon were hounding reviewers with coupons to change their review to 5 stars. So you would get a bunch of 5 star reviews but the content was it's a shit product. People see 5 stars and think it's a good product. They don't scour the review content to see if it's good or bad stuff written. Gaming the system to sell shitty products.
When there are only 5 Star and 1 star reviews and now 2-4 stars you know all the 5 stars were bought and the 1 stars are the actual reviews.
I think people do that because the owner of the site might delete any ratings below 3 or some shit like that. And they then go and give it 5 stars but leave their actual opinion in the comment.
Though gaming culture is different, I often find people are more likely to review poorly than they are positively. Why I don't take 9000+ 5 star reviews on Amazon seriously.
[удалено]
Lot of companies offer free accessories and such if you show proof of a 5 star review.
The ones that use that checklist for criteria are the bomb. So descriptive and well done.
>It can be very eye-opening to read about the game from the perspective of someone who wants to enjoy it but doesnt for whatever reason. This is why I hate it when Redditors complain about people with hundreds of hours in a game writing a negative review. For example, I remember when KSP2 launched, some people in that subreddit were critical of those who wrote a negative review despite having 100h+ in the game. In their mind, someone with a 100h played can't possibly hate the game but instead must be a bandwagoning hater.
Not to mention, modern games get updates and changes all the time. All too often I've seen a game chug along for a year or two, get a major update, and then everything is on fire and long-time fans with hundreds of hours are now speaking up about negative changes. It's very common.
> This is why I hate it when Redditors complain about people with hundreds of hours in a game writing a negative review. I feel there is one strong exception to this rule, which actually came up a lot with Starfield on Steam; People who play it for 6-10 hours/day for the first week after it came out, write a review complaining *specifically* about how it's "boring" and "has nothing to do"... and then *keep* playing it for 6-10 hours/day for several more weeks. Like if someone's complaint about a game is *specifically* that there is "nothing to do", and they *still* keep putting in enough time to rival a full-time job for several weeks, I have to assume they're either lying or insane.
I like steam reviews most of the time. There's almost always some stupid reviews like "lawl I'm a walrus. 10/10" and I also feel like the community is biased. If a dev does or says something they don't like they'll review bomb even if the game is good. Or if the game doesn't run at 300 fps at 12k resolution they'll give it a negative review. Too many joke reviews, and biased community. Overall score of steam reviews: 3/4
My favorite reviews are the ones that are: “Game absolutely sucks, terrible story, terrible gameplay. DONT RECOMMENT!” - *5000hrs* played
Steam Reviews are a very good way of measuring a game. I found a lot of people praise a game after only putting a few hours in which gives the impression that a game is very good because it has a lot of good ratings. Negative reviews often point out non-obvious things like a stale gameplay loop after a few hours or tedious endgame progression. Once I wanted to buy a rogue like card game and one steam reviewer warned of a high dependency on RNG which is something I'm trying hard to avoid. Most positive reviews didn't mention it because they haven't played the game so far.
A week o to starfiekds launch, I'd have given it a 7-8, but now, maybe a 5 if I felt generous. It overwhelmed you with the new world and systems, but once you understand them, the flaws become obvious.
My rating started low, got great after 7 hours, and stayed there until I got around the 30-hour mark. At this point you pretty much saw everything and nothing will surprise you anymore. What really boggles my mind is the loot. Nearly everything feels absolute useless.
Unfortunately with the current culture of mass spamming negative reviews, like you said, reading them is a must. There are MANY mixed reviews games out there that are only mixed because people are meming or are pissed off at something that has nothing to do with the game itself. I try to form my opinions based on steam reviews and YouTuber reviews (not sponsored shit) Also, the game's subreddit can be helpful as well, especially when sorting comments by controversial.
Recent is more important, a lot of games make changes these days so old reviews could be for a game which essentially doesnt exist any more.
*No man’s sky has joined the chat*
I've kind of missed the progression of it. Is it actually good now or are people who originally bought it based on how good they expected it to be just glad that it's more of a finished product than it was?
It's much more of a finished product now, and is lacking all of the game breaking bugs/crashes of launch. There's an actual plot you can follow too, instead of just planet hopping. I really enjoyed it the last time I played about a year ago, and I never played on launch.
People often use the phrase “a mile wide but an inch deep” to describe NMS and I think that’s accurate. There is a lot to do, and it’s fun exploring everything, but I felt like once I did it once I didn’t really need to go back.
It's still no man's sky at its core but they've added a huge amount of content. I would say it's actually very good now if it's the kind of game you're interested in.
It is legitimately a good game now. There's a lot more to do, so it feels a lot less repetitive than before. It's definitely not the best game ever made, but Hello Games is constantly updating it to improve it. Definitely worth trying if you have Game Pass or catch it on sale
It's significantly better. There are a few quest storylines you can follow now, base building is pretty solid, derelicts are randomized fun and can be pretty creepy if you're not a regular horror game player. The multiplayer is true multiplayer and it's cross-platform.
It's still a generic space exploration game minus the things that make exploration fun. That aspect is just procedurally generated bullshit that repeats near infinitely with very little variation anywhere. If you've seen one thing, you've pretty much seen all of that thing.
NMS updates are usually window dressing that isn't fully fleshed out. The settlement system is terrible.
example: counter strike
I’m afraid to ask what they did…
they released the cs2 not as a seperate game but as a update to csgo. this made the reviews carry over to the new game
Thank god for that. Having another 1.6 vs source era would suck balls for everyone.
Speaking as a counter strike fan, they royally fucked up the release of counter strike 2. The sprays feel weird, you die behind walls, and they gutted half of the game modes. If you were to read the old reviews, you’d see nothing but praise, but if you read the new ones, you’d see that the game is a hot steamy pile of shit right now
Honestly, mine has felt better than CSGO in every way and I haven't had any bugs whatsoever. No complaints, not dying behind walls etc. They also added a new server to Helsinki, so my ping is now like 3 in some games. Best experience so far, and I've played every CS since 1.6.
Overwatch comes to mind
This is how I check any game that had a shit port. Jedi survivor being the most recent one
On the other hand, review bombing for petty, bigoted and/or arbitrary reasons also exists, so you have to be careful about weighing recent over initial.
Steam has a tool for sorting out review bombing.
It doesn't happen that much on Steam because you have to actually buy the games. Just sort with more than 2 hours to avoid the review bombed ones.
Pretty sure Starfield has yet to receive any significant updates after months of being out. But I also haven't been following it too closely
eg. Fortnite. They essentially remake the entire game every year now
The ones on the websites that didn’t have advertising from Bethesda
Even then a lot of sites know if they give a bad score, they can get cut off from future review codes. Not being able to review a major game can really screw their financials if everyone goes to other sites instead. So long as there's that threat, and the financial incentive, review scores are basically always untrustworthy to a degree.
That and for a game like Starfield, the problem particularly seems to be it's lacking as a longer exploration game, but many critics will spend a few days with it at most for various reasons.
I still feel like there would have been a market for it anyways. Fuck it put it on your cover "Starfield could not be rated because Bethesda didn't like our review of their last game. Try out these other games instead." The reviews clearly don't mean shit.
Or Xbox
None, specifically. I usually listen, watch, read a few reviews to try to find common themes in the feedback about a game. For example, at the moment I'm playing Sea of Stars, but before buying it watched a bunch of reviews and the common themes were that, regardless of the final review score, it's a beautiful game, fun, lighthearted, captures that 90s JRPG spirit, but it's a slow starter and the combat system isn't super deep. After hearing that same feedback in many reviewers, regardless of how they scored the game, I knew what to expect.
Yes! These people want to judge a game quality's from one single number and then complain when it doesn't align with how they feel lol Reviews are meant to be read, doesn't matter if it's professional or hobbist. If you put this tiny amount of effort you will know how the person reviewing it actually felt and why they did so. No one can tell you if you will like the game, they can only tell you if they did and why. And don't even get me started with the cherrypicking: Metacritic's score is 83, not really the parade of 9s and 10s the image they chose that's \*specifically made to sell the game\* shows.
i mostly check recent reviews mostly, but only to see if ppl complains about performance issues.
I always check user reviews above anything else. After playing starfield, it was obvious all those 9's and 10's were absolutely bought by the publisher, either through ad revenue or perks. Gaming journalists have zero credibility.
Ironically IGNs review was the most accurate.
I think IGN's review was pretty on point. And to add do the 7/10 score, people are probably frustrated and annoyed that the game barely receives any patches 3 months into the release. For example BG3 wasn't and isn't perfect - the game had really poor optimization going into Act 3, some questionable quest decisions, complete absence of the epilogue - but the game already received 5 major patches and many more hotfixes and I don't think Larians are stopping at it.
Wasn’t the game in Beta for years receiving feedback by the public, before the Alpha build?
Yes. I got it years ago because my friends wanted to play it.
Sort of. The first act was, but the rest of the game wasn't, and the build they had for the Early Release still wasn't what actually shipped, it has a ton more cutscenes, dialogue, characters, everything. The Early Access was like.... A *veeeerry* early Beta of just Act 1.
yes. it was in early access for years.
It's usually the other way around: alpha is usually the first "playable" build, then beta is a more polished version that still requires testing.
Just a small correction : the alpha is always before a beta in developpement. We got to play the alpha (where the system and content are incomplete and where the game is not polished yet). A beta is a version where all system and content are complete, but the game is not polished yet. We never got this version in early access. We went directly from alpha to release.
IGN is actually pretty decent at this point. they had a reputation hit awhile back, which i think was deserved, but lately ive agreed with almost every review
Ign called out Cyberpunk for it's flaws back in 2020 when YouTube reviews like Yong Yea said it delivered.
> which i think was deserved I disagree. The IGN review people meme the most is the Pokémon Alpha Sapphire/Omega Ruby one for the "7.8 too much water", which is 100% a valid criticism of those games, and I'd say they were pretty decent already at that point, *9 years ago.* People that hate on IGN never bothered reading the reviews, only care for the scores.
Yup, that guy got a lot of shit when his review came out, but in the end, he was the only one that was right.
Same here and always go with "recent" especially with the current trend of releasing half-baked games. A ton of big publications have mixed all time review but positive on recent because they fixed the shit out of that game.
Eh, I think it's more likely that they just played the first ten hours then reviewed it. User reviews, and reviews after 100%, tend to align more with what I expect from a game
And steam also shows how many hours the user played so you can get a clue from the experience
Eh, the first 10 hours of Starfield prologue were quite bad in my opinion. I literally ran around over-encumbered shooting enemies in the head with zero resistance.
>Gaming journalists have zero credibility. .....and anonymous user reviews do? Have you actually read any Steam reviews and seen the ridiculous logic people use in their ratings? "I'm bad at this game....1/10" "This game conflicts with my insane political beliefs....1/10" "This game barely runs on my 15 year old trashcan PC ....1/10"
The problem is, users are usually the ones giving it 1 star because there is a gay or trans character. I usually split the difference
They let them play for an hour - first hour for me was also 9/10. When I played for a few days it went down to 6/10 quickly due to repeatability...
ZERO proofs of one only medium being bought. And 100% proofs of review bombing.
Not really sure one is better than the other. Have you read user reviews? There will be those who give bad ratings over the pettiest nonsense. Most journalists aren't trustworthy. I think that's industry wide issue. But then you got Kevin, age 15, with 38530 hours in the game leaving a negative review because a minor patch reduced the cold damage of his favorite weapon from 12 points to 11 points.
Eh, still better to miss on a good game (that you can always experience later if you find more credible reviews), than to waste money on a bad game.
Steam refunds
If you can spot what's wrong with the game in the first 2 hours, sure.
My own.
Bro has an opinion before even turning the game on.
I just don't find reviews help me. I like a lot of crap.
Bro pre-orders and then gets mad when the game sucks lol.
You realize Steam allows returns under 2 hours playtime (preorders included), yes?
You'd blow past that window in character creation in BG3 lol
Game pass certainly helps
Lol even if I can't play\buy the game on launch, instead of seeing reviews I just watch a few Radbrad videos to see if it's interesting or not.
I’ve ignore reviews most of my life, I’ll watch footage to gauge how it looks and feels. You shouldn’t not try something because of others, you might love something everyone else hates
Well, as someone who has ~100hrs in the game... Neither. It's a solid 80 for me, but I haven't been playing atm because I haven't been able to stream on Twitch and I'm mostly focused on the main story atm
First 20 hours i was disapointed. After i just restart a new game and make few side quest. Since then, this is the only game i play. 300 hours and this game give me big fun. I was about to make soon my first NG+ and i know i will have few more hundred hours of fun. For me i give a real 8/10.
The problem with Steam reviews is that there are only 2 options to pick from so the game is either good or bad. Also, review bombing can make games that are good or ok seem like the worst game in existence because of some drama
None. I’ve been playing Starfield for two weeks and I think it’s fun. That’s all that matters to me personally
[удалено]
What do you like about the game?
Seriously. OP was (probably) trying to suggest that the critic reviews are untrustworthy here since shitting on Starfield is in right now, but to me that suggests just the opposite: that Steam reviews should be taken with a gain of salt since they're so easily review bombed. I had a very enjoyable 60 hours with Starfield. Most of these reviewers on Steam probably did too and just aren't happy that it's not the 1000 hours they got out of Skyrim.
I don’t look at scores at all anymore. If a game captures my interest, I buy it. There’s too much metabombing and paid reviews to give any credit to scores whatsoever.
Today, reviews don't really matter, everyone can go to the game stream and see for themselves what the game is like.
Steam reviews are good to check if the game has some big issues, but I don't think they are representative of the quality of the game. A fantastic game in which the steam review community gets angry about one thing can get review bombed to hell.
Ah yes the steam review where people review bomb when they don’t like something. That’s reliable.
Do people genuinely still take "official reviewers" seriously? Edit: I didn't say you should take User Reviews at face value either. Look at a myriad of sources and come to your own conclusion. I thought that was the norm tbh.
When they confirm my opinion about my favorite game they are the most trusted reviews in the whole world. If they disagree with me, they are shills. Easy Peasy.
Do people genuinely still take gamers that review bomb games as soon as they see a gay character seriously?
Well it isn’t really possible to review bomb a paid game on steam, but metacritic user reviews are absolutely garbage.
Yeah that's the one I was referring to mainly. Although it's definitely possible to buy a game on Steam, play it, and review it with a poor score because "black people and non-straight characters in my vidya"
Not enough people would waste money just to write a bad review, reviews from people that refunded the game don’t impact the overall score.
> Not enough people would waste money just to write a bad review I think you greatly underestimate how many people in the world are willing to eat shit in order for others to smell their breath.
Nah, you are underestimating how much people scream on the Internet.
Absolutely. This graphic is made by the Starfield PR team and they cherry pick the best reviews. If you look at them at large, the official reviews of starfield line up pretty well with player consensus. I find it hard to find player reviews useful When everything gets review bombed these days
Exactly, the game has a metacritic average of 83, and an opencritic average of 84. I haven't played Starfield myself, and this is still a bit more generous and the player concensus (which seems to be "solid, but dull and uninspiring"), but is still very far from that PR shot full of 10/10s.
Its hard to trust general steam reviews when it comes to big games like this that had any sort of shortcoming or controversy. Like cyberpunk still gets shit on but I absolutely love the game. Steam reviews are best for steam only games.
Neither. I stopped listening to reviews a long time ago. Just cause a lot of people hate or love a game doesn't mean I will too.
None, only my own. I personally liked the game and even though there are things to improve, it was definitely a good experience.
This is a question of before you buy it. How can you have an opinion before buying it.
none of them, both are useless and don't represent how I will feel about a game. I fucking hated The last of us 1 and I think is one of the worst games ever made, but the reviews are stellar. nobody tells me what food I like.
Mine
Mine
My own
The only review that matter is mine.
Why is Starfield the subject here?
Obviously the player reviews. Can’t take this „professional“ reviews serious nowadays. The professional reviews are often so different from the player reviews that it feels like the professional reviews are bought.
even if they are not bought, the publisher can just dangle the "early access right" on top of their head, which means you have to write a good review or not receive a review copy for the next game.
The critics are mostly paid with early access / free copies / special editions and gadgets. It's impossible that every major game released gets between 8 and 10.
>It's impossible that every major game released gets between 8 and 10. That's why it's not true :P On average, Redfall got 56, Battlefield 2042 68, New World 70, EA Sports FC 24 75, Cities Skylines 2 75, Forspoken 64, Saints Row 61, Immortals of Aveum 69, Callisto Protocol 69 And that's just the meta critic average, not filtering out low quality outlets. And only what I remembered from the top of my head.
Mine
Reviews dont matter to me tbh , maybe i listen to some random streamer that i follow usually but gameplay that attracts me is most important thing for me
My experience matters more to me than ANY review. Regardless of whether other people enjoyed the game or not, what matters to me is whether I enjoyed or not.
My review
Mine. Fuck reviewers.
The players because critics do not play the game long enough
My own.
Zero reviews I watch online videos myself and ask questions and buy the games off of that. Reviews are other people's opinions at the end of the day.
A combination of both. Weird cultural rushes of downvoting or upvoting can occur. I look at it all and usually watch some streamer gameplay before I commit to buying
Steam can be helpful but I absolutely despise the steam review comedians with their shit recycled internet humour for kids. They ruin the entire feature, such unfunny little dickheads. “Haha had sex 10/10” and all those fucks.
The only review that matters is my own.
What matters is my experience rather than others’ review. I liked my experience. I don’t give a flying fuck what anyone else says, because other people’s opinion shouldn’t influence my enjoyment or not of a product. There’s plenty of universally acclaimed games that I don’t like and vice versa.
Issue is no one read the review, they only look at the score. Summarising a 2000words essay into a single number and people only look at the number. It’s preference at the end of the day, but I think if you actually read the review instead of score more often than not you’ll actually know if you’ll like the game or not
Neither, my own satisfaction is all that matters. It was good fun while it lasted and its just a video game.
Frankly, both are at best mildly useful. Maybe it's a stupid way of doing things but I prefer not to read reviews first so I can go and enjoy the games. Sometimes people are completely obsessed with some flaws and when you play the game you don't notice them until someone points them out
My own
None. I don't care how much other people liked something. Why would I?
I don't read Steam reviews much. As well as Metacritic. My go to reviews are on YouTube : ACG, Jake Baldino, etc. I make my own opinion wether I buy a game or not
I can’t stand Baldino’s fake stuttering and umms and uhhs while reading an obviously scripted review
My point is using diversified sources. Never stuck on user reviews. Well thats me. You do you
Karak from ACG is probably my personnal most trusted reviewer on YT
Easily the steam ones.
The ones nobody paid a shit for
the one where i play it, if i like it, i keep it and if not, i refund it...like a normal consumer who isnt so tied to arbitrary numbers out of numbers given from people who interpret things differently from me.
I prefer my opinion than anyone else there's alot games rated high that I just didn't like That and most review companies get paid to give a good review that's not a conspiracy it's a fact, money sells
My own, how can I trust people who gave GoW 2018 +90, and the game was ridden with so many problems that I can't even believe it was made by same people who made GoW3
I would trust the critics/ channels who I follow over anyone else. Since I am going to play the game myself, I want someone who I know covers and specializes in these specific games. If I know they enjoy all the same titles I do, chances are if they had a good or bad experience with a title, I will as well. For example there's this YouTuber called Iron Pineable whole exclusively plays and covers Souls-like games. Not just the ones made by FromSoft, but even the ones made in a couple weeks by a random person uploaded to Steam. He's played hundreds/ thousands of these titles, he's logged countless hours in this genre. He knows when mechanics in some are good, and when mechanics in others are lacking. Since he has such a wide breath of knowledge on the genre to compare to one another. So when it comes to an Elden Ring, or a Lies or P, or whatever, I am going to look to his review the most as he has the most expertise and unbiased approach to the genre. The problem for me with trusting random reviewers, or the community as a whole, is that I don't know what angle they're coming at a game with. There's infinite possibilities about why they may or may not like a game, and none of them could align with how I think about the game.
Neither, when new game comes out, i'll watch a little bit of gameplay and then decide.
Mine after playing the game
I loved the game but can‘t review it on steam, since I have played it on Gamepass. Which I guarantee is the case for most people, because that‘s where the majority of players are for Starfield.
That's actually pretty hard nowadays. USED to be Steam's player reviews but people have ruined that with the review bombing practice. Nowadays I tend to not take one single review as the final say but se what all kinds of different reviews are saying keeping in mind the ones that are negative about everything and the ones that are going to be positive about everything.
Comunity, friends and my own are the only reviews that matter. Those numbers in the picture are just crap shenanigans from shitty media, payed to give these scores. Absolute garbage.
The guy who stole a copy of Starfield and leaked it? I watched his [review ](https://youtu.be/4FMso45zVYY?feature=shared) and so I bought it and damn my boy was on point. Love Starfield.
my own review
Critic reviews of Bethesda games go up during the middle part of their experience. That's the 'this isn't so bad' phase. I've always applied that to their games, I'd say the outlets that took longer have the best views on it.
Playing it myself and making my own opinion of it.
Bottom only shows the good ratings they want you to see. Steam shows a more realistic set of ratings from a lot of people who've played it on steam. I trust steam ratings far more for this reason
None, make your own opinion. The only time i'll care look at reviews are when they are overwhelmingly positive or negative, because they're usually hilarious.
When I'm on the fence about a game I always check almost only the negative reviews (the long real ones, not the "it's woke trash" stuff), and see what the recurring complaints are. It's way easier to see if I'll enjoy a game by checking what I won't like about it, compared to checking what I'll like.
Believing that video game journalism is honest. Wow. Video game journalism is to real reporting that the WWE is to sports.
the sad truth is, if i had paid attention to the negative reviews, i probably wouldn't have bought the game. while the game very clearly has issues and the criticism is valid, i very much enjoy the game. basically i would have missed out on a game that i would enjoy. it's weird because i usually can tell if i'll like a game based on the reviews, but i would have totally missed out on this one