Game Reviews Are DUMB!

Hi, and thanks for watching 😍 Even if it was a bit of a crazy ramble session

The dragon's dogma 2 fiasco and its reviewers reminded me for the fiftieth time why no early copy review(ers) should be trusted even if they seemed trustworthy in the past.

Nah mate it makes sense. As an older gamer nowadays I try to research as much as possible before playing/buying a game , as in look at people playing not only from my usuals but as far and wide as I can , so can gather a broader picture of the game ; except video game journos , those people can go to hell. Also due to age I can kinda figure out if I will like a game or not just by the preliminary info ,as now I have my tastes very refined. In example, I know I hate online gaming so no live service game , no matter how inovative or cool it gets , I wont like so I dont even bother etc.

One thing you might also consider aside from getting games for free is the amount of disposable income the person you're watching has. This is probably impossible to know, but would likely make a large difference in perspective for many. Like when I was a kid, I would get like three or four games a year. Now if anything looks interesting, I'm in a good enough career field that I have the money to buy whatever I want. I'm definitely not as critical about things like length/amount of content per $ as I used to be, and it's most likely due to my income. Most big name reviewers are probably also similar since they likely all have decent disposable income.

When I'm looking to buy a new game I look for gameplay videos to see if it'll be up my alley, everything else is subjective and I'll make up my own mind on the art, story and whatever else if I like the way the gameplay looks/feels.

I like the Steam thumps up/thumps down method. You either like a game or you don't.
And you can say why you think like that it takes the fokus to the perspektiv.

Honestly modern game reviews are the whole reason I only ever listen to word of mouth or just YouTubers who do game reviews. At least then I'm given an honest opinion from someone who doesn't have some form of bias or at the very least is completely honest as to why they do or don't like the game. As opposed to giving some of the most arbitrary reasons I've ever heard to dislike a game.

I might be the only one who thinks this. I HATE DEMO disks. Solely for I didn't have money to get the luxury for them. Save for whatever I found in a garage sale or pawn shop

I realized reviewers were mouth breathing glass shard Mac and cheese, because I played Pokémon mystery dungeon a ton and found it dynamic and fun but the reviews I was told were that it was slow and clunky

Game reviews are often dumb even in the past of the 80s to 2000s, it's just that online environment somehow worsen it by amplifying the amount of international markets that now can make excuses from not having specific consumer and developer standards

Not to mention the democratisation of the video game industries are double-edged sword in regards of how everyone now have varying standards of what "good reviews" (and even what constitute game developments) are, it can be frustrating especially in AAA and perhaps even in AA scenes, where developers are growing frustrations separated from consumers growing separate frustrations yet the global environments makes the observation of changes happens every day, if not every hour, if not every minute, if not every second, video game have a lot of parameters to have standards being way higher than movies according to those sensitive enough to sense how a game have high quality in terms of delivery, or the quality of the development life, or so on

Indie reviewers and developers have way so much more control over how quality of game standards pertains to be, yet ironically, we never compare indie developers on steam with the current trendsetters and I'm not exactly talking about AAA video game, I'm talking about the equally notorious mobile game industries which are known to be consumer-wise being very predatory of money, time-spent (FOMO, live service retentions) or both, where even the best examples of gacha games have set precedence of terrible culture of video game development

Ironically there's a lot of undertalked side of culture war (and no I'm not talking about anti-SJWs vs SJWs), I'm talking about how the snobness of indie news outlets like Yongyea that prattles about how AAA game is in constant doom or decline, all while would take the big money if he can get the chance to voice characters in one of the biggest gacha games that promote the very system he criticises on, yep I'm talking about how Indie game industries will always be at the shadows from how mobile & gacha games influences the higher ups/bottom feeders, and it's goes beyond both Western, Eastern European and most of Japanese full-priced/Early Access games, you have a looot of homework consisting of rabbit holes to dig and going deep into if you want to look at how gacha games influences AAA game on financial-decision making in the past 4-5 years or so (even Konami's game division became what it is since 2014-2015 to the point of kicking Kojima Productions out because of newfound mobile gacha game formats), yet gacha games' fandoms are also biggest source for indie artists to get creative under their shadows, separated from indie games which forced to operate mostly in Itch.io or Steam catalogues

Nice video dude!
I personally look at the Steam reviews or "user" reviews of a game to see what's going on. I never trust a big journalist review as I don't want a BS review because they were paid and got the game for free.

I used to get the demo discs and often there were "indie games" on them (at least here in Germany). Also I would look at the demos and try to change ingame content, because back then quite a lot was done in simple text config files. In Carmageddon for example I would take the car models from the Addon and put them in the base game etc. These were very different times. Also the concept of Demos were nice, because you had a slice of the game and you could sift through a lot of Games and find one that stood out or was your thing.

Thank you for explaining to me a thing I didn't know I was confused about.^^
Now I understand why people care in a weird way about game reviews.

Off-topic question:

I don't recall Dawn of War having shadows like what's shown in the footage used for this video. Was a mod in use here? Or am I misremembering the graphical features of the game?

In an world where day 1 live gameplay is visible to gain crucial information on varying platforms like twitch or youtube before making an purchase (server stability/capacity in multi player games, perfomance and bugs in any game etc) has made reviewers truly irrelevant, not only due to reviews like any person having an biased opinion also because an random number or not recommend doesnt make an game bad. just because blue haired 300 pound activst gives stellar ass low score due to it projecting ''unrealistic expectations on woman'' doesnt make it bad videogame.

I don't use reviews for confirmation of my choices, but I do like hearing reviewers opinions and seeing if they picked up on anything that I didn't – like there were deeper themes or something that I may have totally missed whilst just enjoying the surface level stuff. Even if a reviewer hates a game I liked, it's interesting to see why that's the case (assuming it's not for vapid 'political' reasons), was there something I was totally willing to overlook that was a massive problem for others?
It's also nice knowing that some reviewers tastes just match up very well with yours, and you can almost guarantee that if they're recommending a game, you too will like it.

Also, I have a fairly modest sized steam game library… but my wish-list is getting got bulky. On the bright side, when I want a new game, something I'm interested in is always on special.

Another great video.
Keep 'em coming, my man.

If you don’t know lorerunner and his review systems, you are missing out on the single best system for reviews ever made

I generally watch reviewers that are entertaining and have similar tastes to me In general. But if I was gonna score or pay attention to scores, I prefer percentile scores in a vacuum, which is to say how ppl score games against each other based on how they have scored other games. Then you can learn the system and develop a “more” objective idea of the quality of the game to that one person you are familiar with. I did not intend on saying so much

i love the x-ray vision song

game journalist are the ones that are not picked up by mainstream media, but they are smart enough to not make their own media network because they will be blacklisted from the industry, so we have to deal with them because they can't get the job they wanted and their contacts will do anything to keep them on that job.
Game journos are the equivalent of the youtuber comentary nutjobs like alex jones, they are the other side of the coin.

Steam reviews are as useful as youtube likes/dislikes, e.i. only useful when something is bad. The problem with other reviews are the activist/access journalists.

I've heard this take before. I agree.

It's best to look for personalities with similar tastes and biases as you. Or close enough to it. That'll get you reviews you can actually parse.

My personal examples;

Fully Ramblomatic by Yatzee – If he likes a JRPG, you know it's something special. The man generally hates them.

Indiemaus – He does heavily edited videos of games. If it's on his channel, assuming you share similar tastes, it's likely worth checking out.

Lastly, if you want the best way of knowing how good a game is before paying for it…

You have to sail the high seas. The try before you buy option. This used to be a common thing known as demo discs.

You may argue it unlawful and unethical. But I don't weep for the billion dollar corpos that have no care for laws or ethics.

Game reviews ARE dumb. That's why I do accessibility reviews and don't score the games. I just play the game and let the devs see what they can do to make their game more accessible and the users see if they can play the game in the first place.

I trust my tiny audience to make up their own minds.

And this is why I do try to watch YouTubers that are ethical in their reviews. luke stephens is one of those guys i have found. I was really hoping the Hellblade 2 was going to be good. I trust his review. But I don't really look at the number. I very much pay attention to what is being said. Another example was Cyberpunk, everyone said it was shit on a technical level and that slanted their reviews. I had one side gig glitch on me. That's it. So I didn't understand the hate. The story was great and I enjoyed the gameplay. With 2.0 release I still enjoy the gameplay. But at the time of release no one was actually talking about the storylines, how it made them feel, what the themes of the game was. That happened much later. After all the buzz had died down. Do I think CD Project Red should have waited to deliver? Absolutely. Am I going to be skeptical of their next release? 100%. But I also know that when I buy a game from them I'm going to have a fun story to play, with interesting moral decisions, and hard hitting consequences from those decisions. So yes reviews are important, but also as important it to understand where the reviewer is coming from.

I think Alanah said it best, Video Game reviews are always subjective they are not an objective truth, it is not a statement. I think the problem with IGN as an entity is that, it subconsciously removes the persons from the reviews. So people who will say "IGN said…" instead of "This reviewer said…", do not think of the reviewer's interest, what that reviewer prefers etc., that's why the scores for each game can be ALL OF THE PLACE

I enjoyed that. Also, stick with the number system. I can't count how many times I've heard people say move away from it, but I find it useful just for comparison. If one guy gives a game a 9, it means nothing. But if a lot of nines are popping up, well, maybe they're on to something. It's hard to find a single review or reviewer you can trust, mostly for the reasons you give. Free games and access in exchange for good review scores. I love to hear from gamers about people they trust as reviewers. Recommendations are welcome!

The point of the car breaking down or stopping is good, my car got a free fix by the manufacturer some 7 years or so later because it had some airbag issue. The warranty was way out but they still offered it to me for free. Sure it's not a stoppage, certainly isn't a day one patch, or multiple patches, but I think in scale it applies. Many products get called back if they have some issue in the batch or whole line of products.

breaking news! youtube actually can send you a new video notification. wow