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[Hohenheim]

I give zero fucks about user reviews, and only sometimes read max 1 review for games im insure about. Reviews are often full of minor spoilers and stuff I don't want to know before I play the game. I generally want to know as little as possible going onto most games.

Steams two hour playtime return policy makes them totally useless. If a game looks cool, I'll get it. If it's not good enough i'll refund it.

 

[Joel Was Right]

Critic reviews are only significant because they often appear BEFORE a game is released, meaning they are the first 'preview', or window, into the game. If game reviews were published after release of the game, they'd have zero weight.

 

[Imru’ al-Qays]

The problem is that YouTube reviews are far more influential than written reviews from the legacy games press in terms of audience reach, but they're harder to reduce to a numerical score so Metacritic doesn't capture them that well. Also the prominent YouTube reviewers are in a state of constant flux and you never know whose review will take off (for example: Skillup's DATV review dominating the discourse). Some channels specialize in very specific genres or even individual developers where they have a lot of influence but basically don't cover anything outside of their wheelhouse.

This wouldn't be a problem if YouTube reviewers and legacy reviewers were more or less on the same page, but it's obvious this isn't the case: YouTube is a very competitive environment that incentivizes reviewers to take audience feedback seriously, whereas for whatever reason the legacy reviewers seem extremely vulnerable to capture by liberal groupthink and seem to actively hate their audiences. YouTube is also much more lucrative, so any talented legacy reviewer is likely to make the jump to YouTube/Patreon as soon as they've established an audience, leaving the least competent people to staff the legacy outlets.

I think Metacritic has to seriously reëvaluate their methodology to prioritize YouTube reviews, and the YouTube reviewers need to play ball by giving Metacritic (and Opencritic) numeral scores.

 

[kevboard]

embargo day reviews (the ones that make up 99% of numerical ratings) are shallow nonsense that are rushed to be published, and therefore worthless.

user reviews are almost entirely done out of either famboyism, or mob mentality, and therefore also worthless. the actually useful user reviews often get drowned out by the aforementioned worthless types, due to being severely outnumbered.

so, to me, it's entirely irrelevant how anyone would go about making sense of the discrepancy, because in the end it's all just worthless nonsense that is worth less than even watching a 5min gameplay video on YouTube, or watching someone stream the game for a couple of minutes

 

[Crayon]

They're different things. Both a little useful in their own ways. I don't expect them to line up.

 

[Saber]

We don't.

The disparity serves as a flag for a person to say "ok, theres something wrong here. Maybe I should see for myself whats going on".

 

[rm082e]

I found value in the reviews coming from GameSpot back in the old days when Jeff Gerstman, Brad Shoemaker, Ryan Daivs, Alex Navarro, etc. were still there. I didn't always agree with their takes, but I felt like I could look at a score on their website in the days before YouTube and get a good sense of whether I was going to feel like I wasted money on a game or not. I probably bought 30-40 games over a few years of following GameSpot, and only a few of those did I feel significantly different from the reviewer.

But once we got YouTube and you could just watch the game being played, reviews became antiquated and I stopped bothering to look at them. Now, I only ever hear about reviews in the context of how out of touch they are with the audience.

 

[kubricks]

Easy. Disregard all critic reviews then take user reviews with a grain of salt.

 

[Reizo Ryuu]

don't read any kind of gaming "journalism"

 

[AngelMuffin]

We have devs with potential bonuses being tied to high metascores, critics over scoring DEI titles and a flat out rejection of all this pollution except in the 'too big to fail' titles.

We just get the usual cycle of love bombing and review bombing. I'm pretty sure everyone is tired of it so how do we move on in a meaningful way?

Game reviews are more useless & irrelevant than they’ve ever been. More entertaining than anything.

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

Critic reviews are useless. Many “professional” reviewers are barely gamers, and often incompetent ones. Plus, too many factors influencing critics’ scores that have nothing to do with the games themselves. I mainly look up reviews to know what a game that has piqued my interest is actually about, not to know if it’s good.

 

[jason10mm]

Legacy media and news outlets are dead, they just haven't begun to stink up the place much. They sold out their integrity loooong ago.

Now it's youtube influences that develop relationships with their audiences. Won't be long (already starting) before we see them succumb to being bought out, bribed with exclusive access and perks, and otherwise controlled if they don't toe the line. Youtube as a free for all anyone can get ahead place is ending.

 

[Melfice7]

reviewers are lying little shits and user reviews usually blow everything out of proportion, both are equally crap and the way to meaningful move on is to ignore both

 

[DGrayson]

I only trust GAF reviews TBH.

 

[chokotoureiki]

I haven't read a critic review since the days of PS2/Xbox/GC. Now I just mainly read user reviews on Steam (though some of them can be trolls), download a demo if there's one, or watch a streamer do a playthrough.

 

[FinalBossWithTheMostPower]

Y'all actually read them?

I thought we all just scrolled down to the score.

 

[NecrosaroIII]

Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven hasnt even gotten any reviews from several major outlets yet has some killer user reviews. Its gonna be my GOTY

 

[RCX]

Ignore them and just read user reviews 4-6 weeks after launch.

 

[kiphalfton]

never felt the need to reconcile it

This.

To reconcile something means you have faith in the other source. Not even worth trying to understand what bias the critic has.

 

[Kacho]

 

[yogaflame]

The bottom line. Dont trust reviews especially from gaming journalist in this era with woke agenda are force and push. Trust your conscience and instinct.

 

[Lorianus]

Gaming got too big with too much money involved, when publishers can hold reviewers hostage with excluding them from events/early review codes, then everything we read from the gaming press is meaningless because non of it is unbiased.

 

[MLSabre]

"Professional" reviewers are views are worth less than dirt. Actually, worth even less than fertilizer.

User reviews only marginally worth more than the so called "professional" reviewers but are still not to be taken at face value.

There's nothing to reconcile over.

 

[Windom Earle]

Reviews will lose all importance for devs and publishers when the scores no longer result in sales. And we see this happening now. Traditional gaming media is irrelevant. There is no need to reconcile with soy filled loser journos.

 

[SHA]

There are retarded users on metacritics website, you could tell from their poor judgment, I prefer the users from xbox store, somehow, what they write aligns magically with my thoughts, I just can't turn them away.

 

[AmuroChan]

Read the actual review and not just look at the score.

 

[ExtendEmbraceExtinguish]

Return to actual game reviews. This would require paying folks an actual wage due to the need to hire older reviewers.

Example: tales of vesperia

My opinion; great for beginners but not for rpg veterans wanting a great experience.
Tales fans would enjoy it. This creates a situation where a beginner would be hooked

 

[hinch7]

Most reviewers these days are just echo chambers by them from publishers; with vested interests in keeping positive in their review, hence why some review scores don't really reflect the actual final product. And are usually higher than they should be. Particularly if they are reviewing a big release from the likes of EA, Ubi etc. Like we've seen reviewers can easily be blacklisted from just talking negatively about a game in the DA: Veilguard previews.

On the other side user review scores are on a whole meaningless due to trolls and review bombings. But chances are you may find a lot more honest opinions from non shills between all the trolls and bots.

 

[Bumblebeetuna]

lol @ over scoring DEI titles. Even if that were true on a grand scale, it would be offset by the people who praise games just because they don’t have any of that stuff they hate in the games, like minorities or strong womenz.

Also, you reconcile it by understanding they are critic and user reviews and not giving a shit. User reviews have never mattered, critic reviews are way less important now that they were generations ago.

 

[Soodanim]

I watch a walkthrough to understand, if I like gameplay or not. Only my opinion matters.

Reviewers and "kind" players praised such SHITTY games as Perfect Dark 1, Conker, Bioshock 3 and Titanfall 2.

Calling PD shitty is so antithetical to everything I stand for that it makes me not want to agree with the first line, no matter now right it is.

 

[Heimdall_Xtreme]

I am a video game expert and video game fortune hunter.

I won't listen to IGN.

.

I will not listen and see them.

 

[vaibhavpisal]

Gamepass is the obvious solution.

 

[Fbh]

Outside of a few outliers I don't really think there is that much of a difference?
On the few instances where we do see a big split between critic and user scores it's easy enough to spend 5 minutes online figuring out why that is the case.

It now should be pretty obvious when to have your guard up. Good examples being Hogwarts Legacy and Veilguard.

Hogwarts legacy was fine though.
Some people seem to have convinced themselves that critics had this big conspiracy to shit on it and give it unfair low scores, but it ended up with an 84 metascore with is perfectly reasonable.
The game was good, great even if you are a big HP fan, but it wasn't a 9/10.

 

[Stu_Hart]

I actually bought veilguard to check it out for myself. It's a 7/10 for me after finishing it. At least I know now how the game actually is. Anyone saying it's great is exaggerating. It's just good. Anyone saying it sucks is lying because it doesn't suck.

 

[March Climber]

• Look at footage
• Read/Listen the review itself instead of just the score and bullet points
• Figure out from the above two if you want the game or not
• Don't follow hype and don't get caught into FOMO unless you were already certain you were getting the game ages ago (Like many here with GTA 6)

 

[Generic]

We have devs with potential bonuses being tied to high metascores, critics over scoring DEI titles and a flat out rejection of all this pollution except in the 'too big to fail' titles.

We just get the usual cycle of love bombing and review bombing. I'm pretty sure everyone is tired of it so how do we move on in a meaningful way?

Ban user reviews outside of stores. They aren't trustworthy anymore.

 

[Tams]

• Look at footage
• Read/Listen the review itself instead of just the score and bullet points
• Figure out from the above two if you want the game or not
• Don't follow hype and don't get caught into FOMO unless you were already certain you were getting the game ages ago (Like many here with GTA 6)

With multiplayer games, there is an issue, especially with the last point.

The first month is probably going to be the best a multiplayer game will ever have.

This struck me the most with BF1. The first month was incredible, but by the half year mark you couldn't play a single operations match.

 

[March Climber]

With multiplayer games, there is an issue, especially with the last point.

The first month is probably going to be the best a multiplayer game will ever have.

This struck me the most with BF1. The first month was incredible, but by the half year mark you couldn't play a single operations match.

Multiplayer is different because today's multiplayer games are ever-changing things. It makes it hard to even review them because they could change the next month or next year.

Another thing is that more and more modern multiplayer games are simply going free with MTX or having betas, free weekends, and free trial periods. It makes it easy to not have to worry about reviews because anyone can simply download one and try it out.

 

[killatopak]

I only trust GAF reviews TBH.

 

[poppabk]

By reading. Crazy I know but most reviewers write about what they like and dislike about a game. You already know what is important to you.

 

[xenosys]

I don't think you really can.

However, the only time I take aggregate sites seriously without watching gameplay/more video reviews is when the user and critic scores are within a few percentage points of each other. If they both agree that the game is equally average or equally excellent then that's normally good enough for me.

 

[Majukun]

you just watch gameplay and decide if a game is for you..doesn't always work, but better than a number

 

[Wolves hunt in packs]

Outside of a few outliers I don't really think there is that much of a difference?
On the few instances where we do see a big split between critic and user scores it's easy enough to spend 5 minutes online figuring out why that is the case.



Hogwarts legacy was fine though.
Some people seem to have convinced themselves that critics had this big conspiracy to shit on it and give it unfair low scores, but it ended up with an 84 metascore with is perfectly reasonable.
The game was good, great even if you are a big HP fan, but it wasn't a 9/10.

No conspiracy, it did have an unprofessional reviews to say the least, I'm sure Wired giving it a 1 out of 10 was all professional, also Eurogamer never reviewing it was also an act of pure professionalism, even sites that reviewed it fairly like IGN.. had to put an unrelated paragraphs into the review itself.
It ended getting about fairly scores but the whole thing was pure shit.

 

[Housh]

I think it's a generation thing. A lot of reviewers are half my age so why would our tastes match up? I know what I like at this point so reading a game's description and genre is a pretty good guess. All I value in a review is whether the game is broken or not. Everything else is subjective.

 

[chakadave]

Ignore it all.

 

[The artful mincer]

Lol this is nonsense!

Gamers and and the press agree WAAAYYYY more than most of you are willing to admit.

Has a 70 rated game ever won people's choice award or game of the year on this site? Bollocks it has! It's the games getting 92+ metascore that are also loved by the general public. I.e Elden Ring, Baldur's Gate 3, Astro Bot, Breath of Wild, God of War 2018, Bloodborne and on and on and on....

Users reviews on metacritic are bullshit and could easily be influenced by some dipshit influencer sending his retards to review bomb a certain game.

 

[Wolves hunt in packs]

Lol this is nonsense!

Gamers and and the press agree WAAAYYYY more than most of you are willing to admit.

Has a 70 rated game ever won people's choice award or game of the year on this site? Bollocks it has! It's the games getting 92+ metascore that are also loved by the general public. I.e Elden Ring, Baldur's Gate 3, Astro Bot, Breath of Wild, God of War 2018, Bloodborne and on and on and on....

Users reviews on metacritic are bullshit and could easily be influenced by some dipshit influencer sending his retards to review bomb a certain game.

You may be right but as a player who cares?

I played and enjoyed very much so games that had low then 70 games.
So to me all this review system is a cool way of seeing what others think, also a review might contain valuable information like performance or game mechanics, but at the end of the day it's still just an opinion.

 

[Come On Tars]

Same with rotten tomatoes. Both critic and audience scores have their place and value.

 

[The artful mincer]

You may be right but as a player who cares?

I played and enjoyed very much so games that had low then 70 games.
So to me all this review system is a cool way of seeing what others think, also a review might contain valuable information like performance or game mechanics, but at the end of the day it's still just an opinion.

That's cool Individuals can definitely have different opinions from the mainstream press.

I find opinions like this threads so eye rolling. E.g. Last years Neogafs top 5.

1. Baldur's Gate 3 metascore 96
2. Tears of the Kingdom metascore 95
3. Alan Wake 2 metascore 89
4. Resident Evil 4 metascore 93
5. Starfield metascore 83

The next 5 I'm pretty sure are above 80 as well.

The OP said disparity like what disparity lol. Collectively everyone's in agreement.

 

[Grildon Tundy]

BlackRock fund the games and own the gaming media parent companies.

Wow. Look how good this product is that we made.

It’s impossible for this to change as they are all in step with one another and have the same shared goals and ambitions.

Only thing you can do is find independent reviewing channels on YouTube etc whilst they’re in their early stages before they sell out.

The corruption in the video game industry of the late '00/early '10s shaped my larger worldview: Jeff Gerstman's firing from GameSpot and GG.

It's like a microcosm of the world at large.