Topic: Why do gamers go on about "bias" in games reviews as though it's a bad thing?

Who cares about scores? It's the review itself that matters.

_{And don't throw that "But you said yourself NL gives out too many 9s" crap at me. I was too lazy to thoroughly explain that Nintendo Life's reviews praise Nintendo IPs to an ungodly status. I was only using the 9s concern as a point.}

If you're writing a review and it's not your opinion of the game, then your words have no meaning. You're essentially writing a press release to tell someone to go and buy a game.

Congratulations.

This too.

I wish I could write press releases to tell someone to go and buy a game for a living, I'd be so good at it. Then again, so would everyone.

Agree/Disagree. I do agree that the most important part of a review is the words that are written inside them. No undoubtedly, you're going to get a much better understanding of the reviewers experience with the game when they go into detail with it.

My disagree (though it's in rare cases) is when they may praise certain aspects of the game, but it's brought down by something, hence bringing down the score. It's impact in the words may not be as apparent, but the score may tell otherwise.

_{and totally agree}

Sometimes scores can get pretty confusing.

.... I give up....
It's too late here final score of COD Modern who's still even paying attention
4/10 because I find FPSes repetitive

If I had this power, Metal Gear Solid 1 would have three remakes by now.

@Aviator

I totally see where you're coming from. Especially if the reviewer has a hard time explaining his/her final thoughts in the conclusion. Of course, that's not always the case. lol

Scores also tend to annoy the heck out of journalists. You have no idea how depressing it is to know that, after writing 1000+ words deeply analysing a game and breaking down its strengths and weaknesses, some punk is going to come in and trash your intelligence (and probably question your sexual orientation) because you dared to give the game a "bad score"

The main issue I have with scores is how easy it makes it for people to complain about the review without actually reading a word of it. It's sickening to see so many serious comments saying "it should've got a 9," "it's an 8 at least," "this game is a 7 at best," etc. etc. For that reason alone I'd rather not have review scores. They're handy, and like you said may even add clarification to the review, but more often than not they're just an excuse for people to be lazy.

There. I can respect that. As much as I can respect five word reviews, that is.

Build that out into a 1000 words piece and I'll have a heck of a lot more respect for your review than you going "it's not for me but 9/10" for 1000 words.

I write ranting reviews on my Tumblr (not really trying, just having fun writing about my favorite hobby), and if anyone skipped my Zelda II rantview to say anything about the score and solely the score, I'd be very... upset.

Really, all I'd have to do is slap a number under the title and call it a day.

Off-topic, but please buy me a PS1/PSP/PS3/PSV so I can play Metal Gear Solid. It pains me so much to not be able to experience more of that series.

Edit: I should probably go to bed. Goodnight everybody.

You lost me at that fact you have never played MGS.

Expectations from an individual are easy to find. But what expectations did the developers try to meet? Why? How well did they do it?

I think most people like their own impressions (via playing) a lot more than those of others. Instead of impressions, I want a review that gives me what to expect (which is hopefully the three questions above). I like reading all the reviews here, but honestly I'm going to use the site that helps me the most for deciding what to buy.

A review overlooks the things that myself and others want to know before buying? Okay, it's useless, but unfortunately I'm literally the politest person in the universe so will just call it "biased."

I'm glad this story was happy end. For a moment there I thought it would become a FPS thread.

I'm seriously contemplating buying you a PlayStation 1 and a copy of that game.

_{I would seriously do it, too.}

I don't know, it bugs the hell out of me. I would assume you don't need to take a journalism course to realize that a review is an OPINION, meaning it is impossible to give an unbiased review. Even if we try to strip a review down to "how does it improve the genre and where does it fail to live up to the genre", there will always be bias, and it's not like a consumer doesn't have biased opinions. It's human nature, we're not robots. Honestly, I only see the complaint that a reviewer is "biased" crop up from people that are hurt that the reviewer disagreed with their own opinion. In that sense, when people say "biased" they often seem to mean "this reviewer has different biases than me." Except these people act like they themselves are unbiased.

In short, if a reviewer has a different opinion, people should just ignore it. Find a reviewer who has more similar tastes. Or, failing that, ignore the opinion parts of the review, read about the gameplay, story, etc, and form your own opinion.

Brilliant summary. That there is the sound of me clapping with both my hands and feet.

But if you ignore the opinion part of the reviews, you're going to be reading the same things every review.

Opinions are what the undecided look for.