Topic: Yahtzee's review of Super Mario Maker left me feeling oddly conflicted...

Still, many big sites are responsible for the increase or lack of sales, even if those sales represent a minor part. So, the least they could do is to review a game in the most objective way possible, not just bash games for the sake of it.

@Harvan: I'm sorry I couldn't help you with your level! I feel bad but I just ran out of good ideas and I'm just recovering.

@Freeon-Leon: It isn't the job of the reviewers to increase sales of a game. It is the job of the developers to make a worthwhile experience. Reviews are opinions, good or bad. So rarely do I see a respectible review bash a game for no reason. Objective reviews don't exist because video games are delivering an experience and that experience will be different for every person that plays it. Love him or hate him, Jim Sterling did a pretty good 100% objective review. I am on my phone so I won't post a link. Reviews are there to inform consumers, but companies wear good reviews like badges, when they should be wearing good games like badges. Reviews shouldn't effect your experience with a game, they should inform you about the experience you are going to have.

@DefHalan: They don't have any effect on my experience at all, I'm just talking about the moral responsibility that these guys have. And although a review can't be completely objective, reviewers can at least try to see certain things in the most objective way possible. So they can inform consumers... who affect sales.

Anyone who decides what to purchase based on Yahtzee's comments will buy next to nothing

With that said, I absolutely loved his review of Smash Brawl and the subsequent responses

@Freeon-Leon: A reviewer's responsibility is to explain their opinion about a game. They don't have a responsibility to make sure the game gets a fair chance on the market, they are there to inform the market. A reviewer has a responsibility to themselves and their fans. If a reviewer is known for bashing game for no reason, then people will not listen to them. If a reviewer is known for giving their honest opinion (good or bad) then people will listen. It is in a reviewer's best interest to have people listen to them because that is how they get paid.

Oh, I have the perfect response to an "objective" review. I'll let Jim Sterling take this one.

(warning: there may be foul language and nsfw moments)

Reviews are NOT objective at all. Reviews are meant to be opinionated because the reviewers tells what he/she thinks of the game. Sure facts can play a role in the review, but ultimately the opinion is what dominates

If you want objective, look at specs and game descriptions. These are not what reviews are for.

YAAAS QUEEN.

Staying out of the debate of what reviews are "meant to do," I personally look for reviews that are more objective. When I want to find out more about the game, I'm less concerned about the reviewer's overall opinion, and more concerned with things such as amount of content, how original and unique it is from previous installments, difficulty, how the modes work, and other concerns. I like it when they bring up specifically what they thought was enjoyable or unenjoyable, and I can pick and choose for myself which are fine and which will bother me. These things are all still opinions, but they lean more on the analytical side. The overall opinion (and for that matter, the review score) doesn't matter to me at all, other than curiosity.

I have a couple of thoughts.

1) It's not the reviewer's problem if their review leads to fewer sales of the product. If anything, this just demonstrates that the system works. Not everything deserves a sale just because, for example, it's attached to a strong, beloved IP. Star Wars: Battlefront this year... could be a rather light affair with arguably little content shipped for the $60 price tag. Consumers deserve to know that and deserve to have that information given to them before they commit to a purchase. EA does not deserve to sell a Star Wars game to the billion Star Wars fans on planet Earth just because of the name and legacy of the brand.

2) Objective reviews are useless. They should be subjective, and it should be up to consumers themselves to familiarize themselves with reviews and develop a sort of relationship of trust. Don't just read a review and take their word for it. Read their other reviews to see if your tastes more or less line up with theirs on other games. Read several reviews to see if there's any flaws repeated by several people. Once you have a small handful of people that you know you can rely on to speak to your personal tastes, follow them. Ignore the site they write for, as even writers for a single site like IGN or Polygon will have greatly varying tastes. Ignore Metacritic, since all it is a weighted score of all reviews that you may or may not give any value to.

Nobody bashes games "for the sake of it" and maintains a readership. Haters, or whatever you want to call them, condemn themselves to irrelevancy by not having an audience of consumers. They write glorified blog posts and are not rewarded with trust.

My review of this post is that your opinion is wrong.

Okay, I suppose reviews shouldn't be that objective, but still, the more informative it is, the better. I want to know what problems the reviewer found in as specific of detail as possible, so that I can start to form my own opinion by deciding whether I would have the same problem. If Star Fox Zero's frame-rate dips during cut scenes, I might not care. If Tri Force Heroes' single-player is tedious because of having to control 3 players one after the other, then I know to stay away from single-player. Those are really basic examples, but my point remains: they're still opinions, but because they're analytical and detailed, they become useful to me. In no way am I blindly basing my opinion off of theirs.

I feel like framerate issues and glaring technical flaws are always brought up in any review anyway. It kind of goes without saying that performance issues would negatively impact the reviewers opinion of the game.

So someone's favorite reviewer can change their opinion on a game they already enjoy? That's some real party line mentality there. If Yatzee isn't praising a game I enjoy then he can kick rocks while I'm having fun. Simple as that. As someone said earlier, if you based your gaming on the games he likes then you're really narrowing down your selection to about 5 titles.

Again, those are just examples I came up with on the spot. To use a better example, I bought Chariot about a month ago. A few problems brought up in Nintendolife's review were:

• the enemies are easy to take care of and only break up the gameplay and exploration. I've known myself not to view regular occurrences as annoyances; if it's offering difficulty in the current situation, than it's more of a challenge than an annoyance.
  • The map is on the menu screen, and is tedious to keep flipping back and forth during gameplay. Again, I found this inconsequential.
  • It's reasonably difficult. I was looking for a challenge to play with my partner.
  • Solo mode doesn't work as well. I was planning on playing co-op anyway.
  • The campaign is lengthy. Again, I don't mind.

Since I had no problem with any of this game's apparent flaws, I went ahead and bought it, and I would have even if Nintendolife gave it a 3/10. There are reviews you don't find details like this in, that simply say a game like this is frustrating and suffers from poor level design (a commonly used blanket-phrase), without going into exactly what the reviewer had frustrations with. The ones I read regularly nowadays have these details. That's one of the great things about Nintendolife reviews, actually. Gamexplain reviews are nice, too, as they add visuals along with their commentary. Although they tend to "like-a-lot" every game they review, it doesn't matter to me, as long as they explain in vast detail what worked and what didn't.