Topic: Do critics really matter?

I guess what he's getting at is that users aren't paid for reviews, while some major websites possibly are. An example which springs to mind is the discrepancy between professional and user reviews in the latest Call of Duty games on Metacritic.

Note that I don't agree entirely with that (especially because user reviews have their own set of problems).

Solution –> let's print more money!

Honestly though, I don't believe reviews ought to be just opinions of people familiar with games, they need to be well based opinions and must take to consideration the current state of gaming.

For example when reviewing Irate Fowls 2, it must be compared to both its predecessor and other, similar, games. Questions like "How does this differentiate itself from Irate Fowls 1 and Vicious Turkeys 3.5? Are the changes for the better or the worse? Is it perhaps too traditional?"
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What I'm (slowly) getting at is that reviews can't be solely opinions, they also need to be based on facts widely accepted by the industry and it's the reviewers job to form a coherent opinion from both of the factors.

I'll say this: I've seen more honest critics being accused by fanboys of being paid off, than actual critics that were paid off.

Well, I don't know actually. What happened?

@ricklongo answered your question. But also that "professionals" are so incompetent that it's sad - when I can't learn about important technical things, like framerate and instead I get some crappy one liners or painful moralazing or something as pathetic as "this game on hard is hard, there is no pay2win, so it sucks", then I'll rather go with unpaid user giving his honest opinion and actual info, like framerates, screantearing, poor optimalization etc.

@Dave24 Day One: Garry's Incident was a notoriously horrible game on Steam. However, the developers, Wild Games Studio, didn't want reviewers letting people know that it was bad. They posted false user reviews on Metacritic praising the game and awarding it very high scores, which was strangely contrary to the highly critical reviews below.. In addition to that, they temporarily took down Totalbiscuit's video where he reviewed the game and heavily criticized it, AFTER they gave him the A-OK for reviewing it! Wild Games Studio did all these things to try and get people to buy their game (which was bad), causing many gamers to hate them, which, in my opinion, they have every right to.

@Dave24 I've seen far more info about framerate and optimization issues on professional reviews than users review, far far more. I also don't really see the pathetic reasons you cite, I see them far more in user reviews than professional reviews.
@Ricklongo Call of Duty is a terrible example. The reason it has low a user score is because people like to hate on COD, these are the people that wrote their review for the PS3/360 game on the DS version of the game. They don't care about actually looking at the game. The reasons they give for their one's are usually pretty bad too. The give fanboy scores, not honest and fair scores.

Like I said, user scores have their own set of problems, some of which are fanboyism and general lack of professionalism. For example, I've seen user reviews on Metacritic that enumerated several benefits of the game, only to then cite how they are not enough to make it good and give it a zero. Or, alternatively, reviews that said a game is fun despite its flaws, and give it a 10.

That said, I think the user metascore for Call of Duty: Ghosts is spot on.

1) Technical information is what things like Digital Foundry are for.
2) Like Jaz007 said, you'll see those problems just as much, if not more with user scores and reviews, especially unhonest opinions. You really think those people giving Mass Effect 3 Zeroes are being honest about the quality of their overall experience?
3) Most people don't care about little technical things like that unless its a big issue, hence why a lot of reviews don't bother mentioning it.
4) Seriously, even IGN frequently brings up technical flaws, even when they aren't a big deal. What reviews are you reading?

I could go on and on, but that's enough for right now.

@Jaz007 show me in GS review where there is a mention about FPS in Arkham Origins review, only bunch of nothing like "gamebreaking electrig gloves", even though I still don't know how they are game breaking - it is life saver on higher difficulty settings, but that only shows reviewer played on easy, and on easy most of the things are one hit kill. Or PS3 version of Skryim being atrouciously bad - instead, they copy-pasta it. No mention of pretty bad bugs in both IGN and GS reviews of The Last of Us, even no mention about pretty bad framerate. Nothing about it in SC: Blacklist on GS too, even IGN says it is only screentear, even though framerate is god awful at times.
I can agree with that CoD is bad example - people hate because it's hip for some reason. I don't say "user score is 100% right", because it's not, but it can give you more clear picture about the game.

"1) Technical information is what things like Digital Foundry are for."
umm... you know that framerate is kinda, sorta... essential, right? It can make game pretty hard to play, but you right, it doesn't matter at all.
"3) Most people don't care about little technical things like that unless its a big issue, hence why a lot of reviews don't bother mentioning it."
Framerate is not important or worth mentioning. Same with freezes.

@David24 They might have had less problems than you or something, there are also a lot more critics than GS and IGN you know, expecting every critic to say something about a specific problem like that is dumb. I don't think every user review says something about them either. Just read multiple reviews.

So can reading reviews from many different professional sites. You just gotta look around and find the right ones.

And I can't quite tell what you're trying to tell me in your edit, but just because you find something to be an issue doesn't mean everyone finds it to be an issue. Again, this is why it's good to get a wide variety of opinions - so you can see the broader picture, and get a sense for which opinions might better match your own.

Pretty much - both with pro and metacritic, but metacritic could be more helpful. You have all the opinions in one place put in the nutshell. But who are the "right ones"? It could be pretty much not pro you know.

@Jaz007 from what I gather, those two are the biggest sites, so, at least I think, should expect more from them, some standard.

I've got burned more times by pro paid reviewers than opinions of other players. That's my experience, I most of the time just get the game after seeing trailers/gameplays or demos or when I'm not sure just wait for price drop to find out myself if I'm interested. That's what I do.

Critics can provide some good perspective when you take their experience into account - generally speaking, they are critics because of the large amount of experience they have with a certain field or product. In general, they tend to have seen more and have more access to the "inside" of an industry, which can sometimes provide color that someone like you or me would be lacking in a review we would put together.

I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
_{also, just saying, this thread now ranks among my "stupidest thread" list. congratulations, OP}

Not unless other people's opinions matter to you. In a perfect world reviews would be unbiased and look at things objectively, but alas that's not possible.

Don't confuse instinct for opinion. I'm sure you've bought a game you were unsure about only to find it very enjoyable and on the flip side being very excited for a game only to be disappointed. So no, I don't agree.

Of course. You know when I got disappointed the most? When I played lots of games with no reviews or info whatsoever, only to find most of them to be really bad. Never underestimate the power of personal research. Nothing is 100% accurate, but some things still work better than others, and I at least have found that 99 times out of 100, if I do research, I'm going to know whether or not I'll enjoy the game. In fact, it's been years since I've been disappointed by a game I researched beforehand. I still go into a few games blind and I usually regret it (and most were recommended to me by Waltz...).

Do I miss some good games? Sure. But we all do, and we always will, because no one can play every good game. All I can do is try to play as many enjoyable games as I can without wasting money on games that aren't, and doing research goes a long way in ensuring that.

the critic's job is to voice an objective opinion of a game. in the end, the critic always has a preferred gaming-style in mind, so their opinion is just that; their opinion. its the developer's job to entice you to buy the game (with trailers, interviews, gameplay, etc.), not the critic's job.

Oxymoron. But otherwise you're right (I think the term you're looking for is "educated opinion" or something of that nature).

what i meant by "objective opinion" is that the critic shouldn't be putting their personal preferences into the game. for example, a critic shouldn't deduct points from a game because its against their religious beliefs, or they shouldn't deduct points because they don't like the genre the game is (like for example, if a guy doesn't like space shooters, he shouldn't give Namco's Galaga a bad score). does that make sense?