AA the latest victim of IGN

Their negatives are what make it actually interesting.

Pretty much this.

While I can agree with the note, I don't agree with reasons.

Choices and failures have a consequence in AA campaign, something that pretty much doesn't exist in modern games thanks to save/load exploiting.

Fun fact:
The same thing that is negative here, was a huge positive in UFO:EU.

Accidentally voted yes
It's not a bad review but yeah the negatives they listed are actually positives.

IGN reviews are pointless because the reviewer rarely puts enough time or effort into the game to have something insightful to say about it. Hence, one of the most frequent negatives is "the game was too haaarrddd." Hence, games like Skyrim get extremely high scores because they're easier.

Not completely the fault of the reviewer, mind you. Review cycles give them far too little time to meaningfully engage with the game. How on earth can someone write a useful review of a (for instance) 80 hour RPG game meant to be played over a few months after playing it for a week? It's like giving someone a copy of Moby Dick, giving them 3 hours to read it, and then getting a review back saying "story was way too slow, writing was very hard to get through."

I think those are perfectly legitimate complaints about moby dick though I mean seriously

ORAS having too much water, sure....

Hmm, did IGN complained Assassin's Creed 2 Venezia having too much canal?

I really want to buy this but not for $40. I will just wait for the Steam winter sale!

I agree with their score but honestly, I would give it a 6.0 or 6.2. It has decent value if you're a single player fan(If we're not counting Relic's horrible work effort into VA and the actual units themselves(Stormtroopers being direct copies of Jaeger Light Infantry) but the bad AI and linear design leaves a lot to be desired.

But that's just the thing. It's literally impossible to write an objective review of a piece of entertainment. Anything you can possibly say about a video game that a person would care to read is going to be opinion, and opinion is subjective.

That's why the straight-up consumer report "Should I buy this game?" reviews are so useless. I don't know if they still do now, but I know back 7 or 8 years ago that Gamespot legitimately believed their reviews were objective, and it didn't make any sense at all. I have friends I can ask that question to. When I read a review, I want to read an interesting piece on the game in question by a person who has clearly put a lot of time into writing something stimulating.

The review I linked is a perfect example of this approach. It takes the game and looks at it in a way that you might not have considered yourself and it uses other forms of media and other, similar, games as a springboard for discussing the game and its place in its genre in a new and interesting way. It's exactly what I want in a review: a different and compelling outlook on a game that I'm already interested in. Not a bullet-pointed list of pros and cons constructed in the hopes that I might find it useful when making a buying decision.

If you're going to score a game and offer up a review, it should essentially be a buyers guide. It needs to answer the question of "Should I buy this game? Why or Why not?". The vast majority of people who look at reviews when a game comes out are trying to answer that question.


I don't really think a review is a place for a discussion of a game, I think that is better served by proper critiques that go into far more detail than possible in a review. A proper write up of their thoughts and experiences of the game, a breakdown of the mechanics and themes and what clicks about them etc. Something like for example.

I don't find buyer's guides very useful, but then again I also rarely read reviews since I generally know if I will enjoy a game or not just by seeing a little bit of gameplay footage.

Would you say the same about movie, music, or book reviews? Should they also be about informing the reader on whether or not the writer believes the piece of entertainment in question is worth their time/money? Because, with the exception of exceedingly terrible content, they rarely are.

A proper review that discusses, in a novel and interesting way, the title in context with others in its medium is going to be drastically more stimulating and engaging, and it's going to have a recommendation implicit in it simply by virtue of the level of the writer's enthusiasm in discussing it. It's a hell of a lot harder to write something like that than it is to give a "This but this, this but this, this but this, conclusion" pros-and-cons list and an arbitrary number, but the end result is a better read and a review that's still relevant even after everyone has played the game.

The current state of video game reviews is dominated by laziness and boilerplate stock-standard writing. I don't think it's unfair to expect more from people who do this sort of thing for a living.

After the ludicrous reviews that Rome Total War 2 received from the major gaming websites, how on earth can any same person believe what they say?

IGN has no credibility. Halo: The Master Chief Collection Review 9/10

MULTILAYER DOESN'T FUCKING WORK. Period.

IGN, Gamespot, Gamespy.

They're all as bent as FIFA.

Would you say the same about movie, music, or book reviews? Should they also be about informing the reader on whether or not the writer believes the piece of entertainment in question is worth their time/money? Because, with the exception of exceedingly terrible content, they rarely are.

A proper review that discusses, in a novel and interesting way, the title in context with others in its medium is going to be drastically more stimulating and engaging, and it's going to have a recommendation implicit in it simply by virtue of the level of the writer's enthusiasm in discussing it. It's a hell of a lot harder to write something like that than it is to give a "This but this, this but this, this but this, conclusion" pros-and-cons list and an arbitrary number, but the end result is a better read and a review that's still relevant even after everyone has played the game.

I'd argue that games are fundamentally different from movies, music and books. Games have technical aspects to consider. Online connectivity, framerate, features like VOIP, AI etc. If these things are flawed, regardless of the content a game should be given a low score.

Likewise, games also costs significantly more. $60, plus season pass/DLC etc is a far cry from the $15 it takes for a movie ticket, or $20 for a book/cd. More people care about knowing if a game is worth buying than for movies/music/books, which is why those reviews focus on content rather than value.

I'm not saying you can't provide anecdotes in a review to justify why certain features are good, or why they are bad. I'd make a comparison to table top gaming. I don't care about the reviewers experience with D&D, I just want to know if the new release is worth it. If an ancedote helps me imagine situations where certain features of the game are fun, then by all means. Otherwise, I just want an estimation of whether or not it is worth the cost of admission.

It's telling that I can honestly say I have never read a review of a book/movie/album until after I had already experienced them and wanted to see what others thought. Word of mouth recommendations are more than sufficient for those mediums.

With games the most valuable part is not what the writer thinks of the game. It's the summation of features and highlighting of problems that are most useful to me. It's the same with user reviews, all I need is a very quick analysis of value and performance and I'll decide for myself. I don't really care for reviews that gloss over the actual content/performance of a game to focus on the one or two thematic issues the writer had with it. (Like Polygon's Bayonetta 2 review for example, or Carolyn Petit's GTA V review on Gamespot last year.)

The current state of video game reviews is dominated by laziness and boilerplate stock-standard writing. I don't think it's unfair to expect more from people who do this sort of thing for a living.

That's true, and why I think dedicated reviews writers are a thing of the past. Gamespot fired most of their staff earlier this year and you can bet such cuts are coming to all the other sites eventually. Video is infinitely more important in todays environment than written content.

As I said though, more long form analysis is great. But a review isn't really a great environment for it.

IGN has no credibility. Halo: The Master Chief Collection Review 9/10

MULTILAYER DOESN'T FUCKING WORK. Period.

How is that their fault for making a bad review? They had early press access and review was probably already done before the game released and servers went to shit.

How is that their fault for making a bad review? They had early press access and review was probably already done before the game released and servers went to shit.

Wasn't IGN one of the publications that wasn't going to score the game until post-release? Or am I thinking of a different game?

I guess I just don't understand why you'd go to a game review to read about things like performance or value from a stranger when you could just as easily get that information from friends and other, more reliable, sources. The price difference over books and movies is another reason I'd rather listen to someone I trust than a reviewer I know little about. People don't read consumer report game reviews anymore because they don't provide anything you can't get from other sources you trust more, like friends or internet communities. I don't think it's because people aren't interested in game reviews in general, I think it's because people aren't interested in the particular game review style that 99% of press outlets publish. If book and movie reviews were written like game reviews, I bet you people wouldn't care much about them either.

I also disagree that game reviews have no future. The quick analysis of performance and value that you talk about is exactly the sort of thing that a review shouldn't concern itself with, because those aspects of a game you can judge much more easily by talking with friends and reading forums. I have friends I can talk to who I trust a whole lot more than some random reviewer when it comes to that kind of thing. If that's all game reviewing is about, then yes, I agree that it won't be around much longer.

But why should that be all game reviewing is about? There's nothing stopping game reviews from turning into in-depth looks at titles that you seek out after you've finished the games, just like movie and book reviews are now. In order to do that, you need people who are willing to work hard and put some serious effort into formulating interesting discussions that attract people who are looking for something a bit more than your standard forum conversation when they've finished a game. Shawn Elliott's S.T.A.L.K.E.R. review that I linked earlier is a perfect example of this approach, but it's an approach that's risky and that involves difficult, time-consuming work, which is a big negative in an industry that isn't exactly known for its writing quality.

Consumer report game reviews are dead, and rightfully so, because people have enough sources to draw from these days that they don't need reviewers telling them what is and isn't worth their money. But I'm willing to bet that, just as there are people who consume book and movie reviews in droves as a way of furthering their immersion, there is a large audience of people who would support a more studied and sophisticated style of game reviewing. It's just unfortunate that there are only a very small number of writers in the games press right now that would be able to pull it off.

I asked a friend if he said Destiny was good and he said it was amazing. I read some reviews too and the general consensus was fun gameplay terrible value. Two weeks later my friend traded it in because after he beat the story there wasnt much left to do. You can't let some reviewer tell you whether or not to buy a game, but some of the information they give can be useful in making that decision for yourself.

Honestly, I saw ten miles away that Destiny would be a "bad" game. It was so obvious. And I did not need to read a review to know it.

Sad thing is that the German Amazon article only has 3 reviews.
Could be an indicator of the public's interest in the game.

Honestly, I saw ten miles away that Destiny would be a "bad" game. It was so obvious. And I did not need to read a review to know it.

Yea, same with me. I love Halo, but this one looked unappealing to me.

Sad thing is that the German Amazon article only has 3 reviews.
Could be an indicator of the public's interest in the game.

Or an indicator of why actually having a marketing team is a good thing for sales?