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Topic: Review Scores - Do you agree?

Posts 21 to 40 of 91

theblackdragon

@Mac: I kinda see them as a visual aid, almost like screenshots or something. a high average on Metacritic will likely have me take closer looks at the reviews, same as pretty screenshots. If the screenshots or score are unflattering or uninteresting, i may pass it up for something else I'm more interested in until I have the time to go back over the reviews and really give the game in question the consideration it's due. i don't bother trying to agree or disagree either unless there's a gigantic storm brewing in a comment thread someplace and I feel the need to toss in my two cents' worth, but even so it's not something i'd bother fighting to the death over like some people do, lol. i've got too much on my plate to get bogged down over something that silly :3

to be absolutely honest, if I had to nail down the thing that would sway me the most to purchase a game I'm kinda on the fence about, hands-down it'd be what my friends are playing and whether they like it. I've been persuaded into buying all kinds of games just because i had nothing else to play at the time and a few of my friends had picked it up and were talking about it, reviews be damned.

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noname001

I think people are too concerned about how 5 should mean the game is average. The way I see it, if a game is in fact a playable, inoffensive game, 5 fits it. If it has issues, 0-4.If it excels in any manner, 6-10.

So the fact that a lot of games are getting around 7 just means that a lot of games are quite good in some way. 7 becomes the average because the majority of games are that good.

But that all just depends on how you view the 0-10 rating scale should be used. Saying 5 should be average is like applying games to a bell curve.

(I'm certain someone is going to tell me that is in no way what bell curve means )

Edited on by noname001

noname001

Eel

Wll, it should be more like a bell curve with 5 right in the middle and less like a school grade.

But I guess that would mess the metacritic score or something.

Edited on by Eel

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Pokefanmum82

i personally will still buy a game no matter what the review score is if I am interested in the game. Like Epic Mickey Power of Illusion and Moshi Monster Theme Park. I personally love those games. I only get games if I think I will like it. I take reviews as gospel....I take them with a grain of salt, since I am the only one who is going to know whether I will like a game or not.

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Andyv01

Peach64 wrote:

I don't pay much attention to scores from most places. I've always hated how 7 or 8 is treated as average. The only place I've seen get their scoring scale right is Edge. They really do use the whole thing, and when they give a game a 5, it's bang on average, and still worth a play if you're a fan or can pick it up cheap.

Quite true with Edge, It's always going to be harder for the multi-platform sites to score fairly without bias in mind of "that other game over there also has that function" and they generally always hit the mark... the number of 6's they've given recently to otherwise well-reviewed e-shop titles had me in a spin but upon consideration are absolutely correct, a 6 by their standard being considered above average but not pushing the boundaries in the grand scheme of things.

I find Metacritic does serve a purpose in gathering reviews in one place for ease of forming an opinion but that yes, attaching our entire purchasing decision on a number means we may miss out of afew gems... ignoring afew of the highest and lowest scores and then READING the others reviews generally gives a well balanced impression of a game.

Due to time and money constraints people might not even entertain the notion of purchasing software below a certain %, which can be rather sad for the small developers trying to get some decent ideas across but shunned if its not otherwise perfect by the reviewers standards...

In the end it's our research and decision to make, it the concept interests, the reviews are positively toned across the board and it's reasonably priced... i'll bite

Edited on by Andyv01

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kkslider5552000

I think the last time I cared about review scores was Kid Icarus, and that was only because as the definitive first killer app for the 3DS it deserved to sell more than no effort Mario sequels.

I'll be honest, while I don't like people's overreactions to meh scores, I kinda get it because who wants to pay full price for an average game? If it's average, I'd usually have no reason to get a game, thus it might as well suck, especially with so many great games out there.

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CanisWolfred

kkslider5552000 wrote:

I'll be honest, while I don't like people's overreactions to meh scores, I kinda get it because who wants to pay full price for an average game? If it's average, I'd usually have no reason to get a game, thus it might as well suck, especially with so many great games out there.

While I enderstand that philosophy, not every game has to be great to be highly enjoyable (see: Monster Hunter), and one man's meh might be another man's fantastic. The idea I'm getting from people's reactions to "less than stellar" score is that they honestly believe they'll enjoy the game more than the reviewer did (in which case, I think their time would be better spent just playing the game themselves, but I digress).

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kkslider5552000

Oh wait, the lesser scores to New Little King's Story are still terrible and everyone is terrible

Yay more jobs loss over one of my favorite new games, I'm sure

Edited on by kkslider5552000

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NinChocolate

10-15 years ago before You Tube I only needed to check if RPGamer or Gamespot gave a game an 8 or up and then if so watch the video review to see if it looked like a game for me in gamespots case. It was very reliable for me and my tastes back then. Now I'm older and that doesn't work so well so I pretty much just hunt down all the gameplay and gamexplain videos I can find and decide myself.

In short, review scores used to mean something to me when the internet didn't have enough footage of new games. Now there's You Tube and most of the time I rely on watching the gameplay to know if I'll like it and I don't turn to a site's scoring. For me that's just how it worked and now works.

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Happy_Mask

I've never bought a game for myself I didn't think I would like. Regardless of reviews.

Edited on by Happy_Mask

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DreamyViridi

Most scores for reviews are incredibly biased. We're all different individuals after all. I don't rely on them at all.
In the case of Nintendo Life, I take small note of the score and focus more on the review itself.

In the end, if it's a game I've been looking forward to, I'm getting it regardless. I can think for myself unlike some people.

Edited on by DreamyViridi

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iBazly

I think @Blaze said it best:

"Nobody is ever going to agree with every single review score because everyone has different tastes. People seem to think everyone should universally love/hate a game whether it scores a 10 or 1 respectively, but that's not the case. Video games are a lot like music; some people like rap, others hate it, some people like classical music, others don't, etc. Really, a review is just someone's opinion written down - you shouldn't take it as gospel."

Generally when I read a review, I look for what the major points were: how they felt the game controlled, what their perspective was on the plot, or what are some other games they would compare it to. Whether they liked it or not or what score they gave it doesn't really matter to me: I look for WHY they did or didn't like it, or WHY they gave it that score. Someone might play a game and not like it for the very reasons I WOULD like it. I think the information is more important than the scoring in the end.

That's part of the reason why I love coming to Nintendolife: very few gaming websites talk about Nintendo's eShop games. This is the only site that gives any sort of glimpes into the many games available on Nintendo's online stores!

Edited on by iBazly

Fiv3Score

I usually just read the review itself. After reading it I'm able to decide for myself, and a lot of the times is easy to point out any bias within the review.

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Geonjaha

The score given at the end of a review is just a show of how much one person enjoyed the game. While a reviewer is more experienced at writing about a game than just a random consumer, their opinion out of 10 points is not any more valid, because they're simply stating how much they enjoyed the game - and that couldn't be more subjective.

At least in the written review the points actually have to be backed up - allowing readers to actually decide if the supposed negatives outweigh the positives. When it comes to review scores they're useless when just provided by one person (And no amount of experience in the gaming industry makes your score more valid), as how much they enjoyed the game rarely applies to everyone else. When provided by many people review bombings and weighted scores mean that the score is once again, useless. Scoring systems need to go.

Edited on by Geonjaha

Geonjaha

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KeeperBvK

Geonjaha wrote:

The score given at the end of a review is just a show of how much one person enjoyed the game. While a reviewer is more experienced at writing about a game than just a random consumer, their opinion out of 10 points is not any more valid, because they're simply stating how much they enjoyed the game - and that couldn't be more subjective.

At least in the written review the points actually have to be backed up - allowing readers to actually decide if the supposed negatives outweigh the positives. When it comes to review scores they're useless when just provided by one person (And no amount of experience in the gaming industry makes your score more valid), as how much they enjoyed the game rarely applies to everyone else. When provided by many people review bombings and weighted scores mean that the score is once again, useless. Scoring systems need to go.

Nope. A reviewer is supposed to leave out his own subjective opinion as much as possible, trying to see into the game itself and into what people might enjoy in it. Otherwise, I for example, would rate any Monster Hunter game a 4 or something around that, but I can totally see why OTHER PEOPLE would love them and as such, I'd rate them higher than a 4. That's what makes a reviewer a good reviewer.

KeeperBvK

Geonjaha

KeeperBvK wrote:

Geonjaha wrote:

The score given at the end of a review is just a show of how much one person enjoyed the game. While a reviewer is more experienced at writing about a game than just a random consumer, their opinion out of 10 points is not any more valid, because they're simply stating how much they enjoyed the game - and that couldn't be more subjective.

At least in the written review the points actually have to be backed up - allowing readers to actually decide if the supposed negatives outweigh the positives. When it comes to review scores they're useless when just provided by one person (And no amount of experience in the gaming industry makes your score more valid), as how much they enjoyed the game rarely applies to everyone else. When provided by many people review bombings and weighted scores mean that the score is once again, useless. Scoring systems need to go.

Nope. A reviewer is supposed to leave out his own subjective opinion as much as possible, trying to see into the game itself and into what people might enjoy in it. Otherwise, I for example, would rate any Monster Hunter game a 4 or something around that, but I can totally see why OTHER PEOPLE would love them and as such, I'd rate them higher than a 4. That's what makes a reviewer a good reviewer.

Key words there being 'supposed to'. Often though you'll read reviews (Yes, even on this site - shock horror) where the review and score seem completely separate. Any time you read a review and then look at the score and are surprised by it is when what you said hasn't applied. Either that or they're just really bad at writing reviews - which brings into question why they're doing it in the first place.

Geonjaha

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Bankai

KeeperBvK wrote:

Geonjaha wrote:

The score given at the end of a review is just a show of how much one person enjoyed the game. While a reviewer is more experienced at writing about a game than just a random consumer, their opinion out of 10 points is not any more valid, because they're simply stating how much they enjoyed the game - and that couldn't be more subjective.

At least in the written review the points actually have to be backed up - allowing readers to actually decide if the supposed negatives outweigh the positives. When it comes to review scores they're useless when just provided by one person (And no amount of experience in the gaming industry makes your score more valid), as how much they enjoyed the game rarely applies to everyone else. When provided by many people review bombings and weighted scores mean that the score is once again, useless. Scoring systems need to go.

Nope. A reviewer is supposed to leave out his own subjective opinion as much as possible, trying to see into the game itself and into what people might enjoy in it. Otherwise, I for example, would rate any Monster Hunter game a 4 or something around that, but I can totally see why OTHER PEOPLE would love them and as such, I'd rate them higher than a 4. That's what makes a reviewer a good reviewer.

Nope. That's not how game reviews are meant to work at all.

Critics should stop pretending to be objective, and simply present their subjective take on a game. The readers find critics who share tastes similar to their own. Everyone wins,

The only community in all the arts that insists that their critics be robots is the games community. The film, literature and high arts communities understand how criticism is meant to work. About time that gamers did the same.

Slapshot

Chrono_Cross wrote:

The majority of reviewers are gamers, not critics, so when the new Zelda releases, and their nostalgic value of that franchise comes into play, it receives a better review than it initially would.

Talk about hitting the nail on the head. @Chrono-Cross, you just gained a ton of respect (that you I didn't have respect from you before) from me.

@Scollurio Calling Colin Moriarty (who wrote IGN's Castlevania: LoSMoF review) a "fanboy" only show just how little respect you have for individual reviewers. One review that you don't agree with makes another a "fanboy?" That's quite the short-sighted view - eh? If you did you homework, you would know that Colin is the largest Castlevania at IGN and the reason he gave the game such a low score was because of technical issues within the game.

IGN's Colin Moriarty and 1up's Jeremy Parish (another huge Castlevania fan) put together a video that details in length the faults that are found within Castlevania: LosMof:
http://www.ign.com/videos/2013/03/05/dissecting-the-many-faul...

I'm in no way discrediting Damien's review here at Nintendo Life by posting/saying all of that either. Damien felt that the game was indeed a good game and I respect his opinion, just as I do Colin's. As a gamer who hasn't played Castlevania: LosMof as of yet, I take all of this, analyse the good with the bad, and make a decision: do I want to purchase this game knowing what I now know form all of this information?

As for review scores here at Nintendo Life - this is a "Nintendo" fan site. If you come here expected to not see first party Nintendo games getting above-average scores - you should reconsider where you're getting your information. I'm don't crave first party Nintendo games much at all, so when a "Nintendo" title get a 9 or 10, I know that for me, this gaming experience will fare much lower in my personal opinion. This is also why I never even tried my hand at reviewing a first party Nintendo title when I wrote for the site either.

Edited on by Slapshot

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Andyv01

Regarding "score bombing"... is this where a public review section gets overwhelmed with negative/positive scores to either discredit or undeservabely promote (say from the publisher itself)?

Yes, Nintendolife is a fan-site but in a good way, I would be surprised if the reviewers here had the time to play major games on all/other platforms thus 1st party Nintendo games are reviewed from the basis of previous iterations in the franchise. No bad thing i'd say.

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Scollurio

Really interesting discussion here, thank you all for participating.

My point is that no matter how good a game scores (or is described in the review if you want to avoid the numerical score all together) if its not a genre/game im generally interested in I'll avoid it no matter what.

If a game is in a genre that I like I look at the review score and no matter if it is a 4 or an 8 Ill read the review and most likely not from one single site. Even though Nintendolife is a good indicator for me.

Why do I READ the actual review of a score 4 game:
Because I want to know whats SO BAD about it.
Why do I READ the actual review of a score 8 and up game:
Because I want to know whats SO GOOD about it.

At the bottom line I think if you're ONLY looking at scores you might miss out because a score never can capture the difference between the reviewers taste and your own, but gameplay videos and full reviews can.

Take Castlevania for example.
It's less than the old games and more like a bit of fresh air.

For the IGN reviewer it's a horrible thing to do.
For NIntendolife it's still worth checking out because it's a rather good game.
For me PERSONALLY after a demo, 3 different reviews and some gameplay videos it's worthwile and I will pick it up sometime soon.
I'd never have gotten it if I just looked at IGN's score.

So all in all I think NOTHING EVER can replace PERSONAL research about a game you actually care for.

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