Support NeoGAF

[Margalis]

The video game industry is traditionally unlike the movie industry in that video game reviews correlate very strongly to audience impressions. Is that changing?

In movies "people pleasers" often get low marks from critics. It seems like in gaming almost the opposite thing is happening, where people pleasers receive unanimous praise from critics and mixed reviews from players. It's almost as if the randomly-chosen gamer is more discerning than a professional reviewer.

This seems like a relatively new thing to me. Right now it feels that for the most part if a game is hyped before release and has strong production values it will get high marks, period. And not only high marks but review text that will either completely ignore any problems or point to those problem areas as strengths.

Some examples:

1. "Refined climbing and shooting are better than ever, but it’s the way your actions merge with the story that impress." This is just factually false, the shooting in Uncharted 3 was broken and required a patch.

2. Nearly every bit of post-release content (podcasts, etc) discussing U3 mentioned things like how the chase sequence was trial-and-error and annoying, something I barely saw mentioned in reviews. (I think it's worth mentioning that two of the lowest U3 reviews come from Onion and Wired, non-gaming sites)

3. Civ 5 is almost universally considered a large step backwards by fans with stuff like the hex combat and horrible AI breaking the game, while hex combat was usually positioned as a plus in reviews and AI problems barely mentioned.

4. Complete silence about ME3 ending, almost as if reviewers had played a completely different game.

5. My impression from podcasts and boards of Arkham City is that many people thought the open world detracted from the experience (or was a wash) and that the phone calls / sidequests / etc got annoying. (PA even did a comic about it) Reviews almost universally praised these features.

6. Everyone seems to agree that the Mexico bits of RDR dragged and made you go out of character, something that reviews mostly glossed over.

7. Games that are overlong are almost never called out as such, including GTA4, LA Noire, etc. (And let's get real, at least some of that is because reviewers stopped halfway)

At the same time I'm seeing a lot more reviews where reviewers decide to go to town on a title (nearly always a title without much hype or chance of publisher blowback), although maybe that's a slightly different topic.

Is there another medium where reviewers and critics are bigger fanboys than actual fans? At this point it feels like for a high profile game you are better off picking out random reviews on Gamefaqs than relying on "professionals" in that the average Gamefaqs reviewer has a stronger critical filter and can spot obvious flaws that professional reviewers are willfully blind to.

Edit: The purpose of movie reviews is to provide info for more "discerning" fans. Is the purpose of video game reviews to provide info for people LESS discerning than the general populace? Is there any value in reviews when anyone invested enough to read a review is probably more discerning than the reviewer?

 

[GK86]

Moneyhats reviews.

 

[timetokill]

Game reviewers are in large part just fanboys who took the time to write enough stuff to get a job doing it. The bar is so incredibly low for these sites that practically anybody that can string a sentence together can get a job.

It's not like a lot of these guys are studying the format or the medium, or even know how to do basic critique. Or if they do, they sure aren't showing it in their work.

Furthermore games are not as established as movies. You can slam a hyped up movie for being trash without worrying about "setting back" the medium, and movies are considered to be culturally "for" basically everyone in the world. Games haven't matured yet, so ultimately reviews are for the hobbyist set, nothing more.

3. Civ 5 is almost universally considered a large step backwards by fans with stuff like the hex combat and horrible AI breaking the game, while hex combat was usually positioned as a plus in reviews and AI problems barely mentioned.

While the AI is pretty messed up, I still prefer the hex system. But oh well.

 

[epmode]

Hexes for life.

 

[bigdaddygamebot]

Edit: The purpose of movie reviews is to provide info for more "discerning" fans. Is the purpose of video game reviews to provide info for people LESS discerning than the general populace? Is there any value in reviews when anyone invested enough to read a review is probably more discerning than the reviewer?

For some sites...not all, but for some, the purpose of a "review" is nothing more than an advertisement.

 

[chriskun]

I actually completely disagree with what you are saying. I think the mistake that you are making is confusing public perception with the vocal minority of the internet, they are not the same.

 

[vireland]

Moneyhats reviews.

I don't know that that's it. It's more that, whereas a movie can be consumed in 2 hours, many games take 5, 10, 15 or more hours to complete (not counting multiplayer) and reviewers often get a "taste" of the game and write the review. Then you have the ones that are moneyhatted (or swaghatted). Finally you have the ones pressured to turn in something good to preserve the site/magazine's relationship with the publisher for future exclusives or stories. It's a broken system.

 

[bhlaab]

Film critics come from a background of study and formal analysis.

Game critics come from a background of "I played a shitload of Earthworm Jim when I was a kid"

 

[Coxy]

I don't know that that's it. It's more that, whereas a movie can be consumed in 2 hours, many games take 5, 10, 15 or more hours to complete (not counting multiplayer) and reviewers often get a "taste" of the game and write the review. Then you have the ones that are moneyhatted (or swaghatted). Finally you have the ones pressured to turn in something good to preserve the site/magazine's relationship with the publisher for future exclusives or stories. It's a broken system.

For RPG fans, the "I played a couple of hours and tried to guess the rest" reviews are really painful to read.

 

[alstein]

Reviewers are rarely experts in the games they are reviewing.

 

[Dresden]

 

[bigtroyjon]

I actually completely disagree with what you are saying. I think the mistake that you are making is confusing public perception with the vocal minority of the internet, they are not the same.

100% spot on.

 

[bhlaab]

Game journalists work for a magazine that is sold by Gamestop and has ads for Gamestop and reviews products that are sold in Gamestop and which have exlusive content for people who preorder at Gamestop.

The only time they get "paid off" is when they get their salary checks

 

[GK86]

I don't know that that's it. It's more that, whereas a movie can be consumed in 2 hours, many games take 5, 10, 15 or more hours to complete (not counting multiplayer) and reviewers often get a "taste" of the game and write the review. Then you have the ones that are moneyhatted (or swaghatted). Finally you have the ones pressured to turn in something good to preserve the site/magazine's relationship with the publisher for future exclusives or stories. It's a broken system.

Admittedly, I am tired, and skimmed through his post.

So a better answer: Reviewers don't want to piss off publishers with negative remarks/reviews. Or publishers not letting anyone post a review that is below a certain score. Which leads to the publishers not giving them review copies of the game. Forcing them to have to wait until it hit selves, and losing readership in the process.

Some of the blame has to be shared with the gamers as well. God forbid a game they love should score .5 lower than some other game, without throwing a hissy fit.

It is all very stupid, and it is a broken system. I don't pay attention to reviews anymore. Relying heavily on gameplay videos, and GAF.

 

[duckroll]

If all movie reviews were comprised of stuff from Empire and Entertainment Weekly, then I would imagine movie reviews in general would be a lot like game reviews. The problem with game reviews is that they are all from outlets which depend heavily on both fan support and industry support to keep going since they exclusively cover just games. It's an interest group problem.

The most respected movie critics tend to write for newspapers. Newspapers don't give a crap about the movie industry at large, and are not beholden to them or to the support of movie fans to keep their business running. A reviewer can say Transformers 3 is total crap and give it 1 star and it would mean nothing to the newspaper.

That's the difference.

 

[Lancehead]

Ignoring the high-pressure environment these reviewers work in, to deliver constructive criticism, one needs to understand game design properly (See: Old Man Murray). Very few, if any, in the press seem to have that insight.

 

[Margalis]

I don't get the "vocal minority" bit. That ME3 has a disappointing ending or that GTA4 dragged is not a minority opinion. Anecdotally 95% of people agree that the ending of ME3 was bad. Yes, there is a vocal minority that is filing FCC complaints and such, but just thinking that the ending was bad seems almost universal.

For fun I looked up the old EGM reviews of Super Metroid and Metroid Prime. It's interesting, even the tiny capsule reviews of Super Metroid find space to mention flaws, and the review of Metroid Prime spends a great deal of time on the flaws and explicitly says "we would normally dock a game for this control problem, but the game is just so good that even with it it's still better than other games."

That's very different from the "everything about this game is perfect 10s for every category" reviews of today.

The old EGM method was to point out problems but then review the game as a whole, rather than simply pretend that flaws don't exist or are actually plusses.

That Uncharted 3 review didn't read "the aiming controls are a bit wonky but aren't problematic enough to detract from an otherwise stellar game." It actually said the shooting was better than ever.

 

[vireland]

For RPG fans, the "I played a couple of hours and tried to guess the rest" reviews are really painful to read.

Having been on the receiving end of that many, many times, I know exactly what you're talking about.

 

[Grayman]

Video game reviews are very much in the buy this game now territory compared to any type of criticism. I tried to adjust my expectations to hyped games getting high scores but I find it works better to not read reviews at all.

I haven't followed scores in sometime but it used to be very clear what was going on with score based embargoes.

 

[toddhunter]

The most respected movie critics tend to write for newspapers. Newspapers don't give a crap about the movie industry at large, and are not beholden to them or to the support of movie fans to keep their business running. A reviewer can say Transformers 3 is total crap and give it 1 star and it would mean nothing to the newspaper.

Yep this is pretty much all there is to it. Any other parts to the OP are just personal opinion.

 

[Coxswain]

Your site needs to print opinions that agree with people before those people will become regular users of your site (leading to ad revenue, leading to staying in business). With hyped-up games, you just sort of guess that people are going to be incredibly enthusiastic about them, and will tend to agree with (and be more likely to visit) your site if they read a glowing review that validates the opinion that they already hold. Note that this doesn't involve lying or being bribed or whatever (though that can't possibly help and almost definitely does harm), but can just as easily be a matter of putting the guy who is most excited for the game onto that review.

Most of the time, it works. The fans who are hyped up for the game will usually ignore the same things that the hyped-up reviewers do, and the people who immediately express dissenting opinions tend to get drowned out. By the time the afterglow wears off and those flaws become somewhat apparent even to the game's fans, it doesn't really matter whether it turns out that the review ignored a bunch of stuff or not, because everyone is paying attention to the next review, and whether or not that validates their new opinions.

And then of course, there's the ever-present worry that you'll be seen as a "soft" reviewer, who never dips below a 7. So the games that don't have heavy mainstream hype (but often have a more dedicated, cult hype) get passed to people who don't really know or care about the genre/franchise/whatever, and they're free to savage those in reviews, so they can point to the big list of reviews and go "See? We use... most of the scale, anyway." In those cases, you hear "divergence" because through the lens of the game's niche fanbase, the game should be topping the charts because it's so brilliant - whereas nobody else really gives a shit whether the game scores high or low.


When you get a case of actual, honest-to-god clear-cut divergence during the game's opening couple of weeks (like the stuff with Mass Effect 3), that's pretty damn rare. I'm sure the backlash caught most of them off-guard, and that's why you're getting this weird defensive stuff out of them (You gamers are entitled -> Artistic Integrity! -> Fuck off, Forbes -> Whatever they say tomorrow). With Rockstar games in particular, you don't start seeing real 'divergence' between reviews and the more public fan opinion until weeks or months after the game is released.

 

[Apophenia Overload]

Amazing, it seems like game journalists often give credibility to big name studios and high production values, when usually the masses are the ones who are supposedly sheep who are easily distracted by good graphics.

 

[Replicant]

This is exactly why I refuse to trust game reviewers anymore. Their credibility has been compromised by promises of moneyhat, exclusives goodies, early game access, cameo appearance. etc.

I also doubt that with games like ME3 which can take up to 20-50 hrs depending on your play style, a reviewer can honestly churn out reviews in matter of days after receiving the game. Hell, even the official guide for ME3 itself has many things wrong stated within it. Therefore, I doubt many reviewers even completed the game or have seen all of the ending to understand the clusterfuck of the situation.

I find message boards like GAF, despite its tendency to over-hype or over-criticize is often more accurate in representing the various opinions of the real people who have played the game.

 

[Dacon]

I liked Mexico in RDR :/

 

[bigtroyjon]

I don't get the "vocal minority" bit. That ME3 has a disappointing ending or that GTA4 dragged is not a minority opinion. Anecdotally 95% of people agree that the ending of ME3 was bad. Yes, there is a vocal minority that is filing FCC complaints and such, but just thinking that the ending was bad seems almost universal..

I'd be willing to make a large wager that 95% of people who bought Mass Effect haven't even gotten close to the end, so that's where the vocal minority stuff is coming into play.

I'd be surprised if 10% have gotten to the end.

 

[Bluefist]

Pick your poison:

1. They are seldom more than fanboys who can sting a few words together. Which is why you see alot of them using "big fancy words" to in a attempt legitimise themselves as some sort of professional.

2. Playing games has become a job for these people. It is not fun for them anymore, its work.

3. Many reviewers who go to town on decent games seem to have a predefined idea for what they want the game to be. So rather than review it on what it is they compare it to what they want it to be. This is particularily noticable when they have odd tastes.

4. There is also the point that today, games as a whole are better quality than they were 10-20 years ago. For example, movie tie in's often are much more competent games these days, i.e Wolverine Origins is very good and nothing like the mess that was ET (to take a extreme example). So low scores and differences between platforms can often be mindless nitpicking.

5. Pressure from publisher/developer contacts whose bonus's are determined by review scores.

 

[NateDrake]

ME3 is a tough game to use. Perhaps some embargo was in place that said don't mention the ending? That is the key issue with game reviews that publishers will ask to now disclose certain details post a certain point of the game.

 

[duckroll]

I'd be willing to make a large wager that 95% of people who bought Mass Effect haven't even gotten close to the end, so that's where the vocal minority stuff is coming into play.

I'd be surprised if 10% have gotten to the end.

That doesn't change anything. Anyone who has not completed the game would have no valid personal opinion on the ending. If 95% of the people who have beaten it dislike the ending, that's no a vocal minority of people who have an opinion on the ending.

 

[Grayman]

Your site needs to print opinions that agree with people before those people will become regular users of your site (leading to ad revenue, leading to staying in business). With hyped-up games, you just sort of guess that people are going to be incredibly enthusiastic about them, and will tend to agree with (and be more likely to visit) your site if they read a glowing review that validates the opinion that they already hold. Note that this doesn't involve lying or being bribed or whatever (though that can't possibly help and almost definitely does harm), but can just as easily be a matter of putting the guy who is most excited for the game onto that review.

Most of the time, it works. The fans who are hyped up for the game will usually ignore the same things that the hyped-up reviewers do, and the people who immediately express dissenting opinions tend to get drowned out. By the time the afterglow wears off and those flaws become somewhat apparent even to the game's fans, it doesn't really matter whether it turns out that the review ignored a bunch of stuff or not, because everyone is paying attention to the next review, and whether or not that validates their new opinions.

And then of course, there's the ever-present worry that you'll be seen as a "soft" reviewer, who never dips below a 7. So the games that don't have heavy mainstream hype (but often have a more dedicated, cult hype) get passed to people who don't really know or care about the genre/franchise/whatever, and they're free to savage those in reviews, so they can point to the big list of reviews and go "See? We use... most of the scale, anyway." In those cases, you hear "divergence" because through the lens of the game's niche fanbase, the game should be topping the charts because it's so brilliant - whereas nobody else really gives a shit whether the game scores high or low.


When you get a case of actual, honest-to-god clear-cut divergence during the game's opening couple of weeks (like the stuff with Mass Effect 3), that's pretty damn rare. I'm sure the backlash caught most of them off-guard, and that's why you're getting this weird defensive stuff out of them (You gamers are entitled -> Artistic Integrity! -> Fuck off, Forbes -> Whatever they say tomorrow). With Rockstar games in particular, you don't start seeing real 'divergence' between reviews and the more public fan opinion until weeks or months after the game is released.

GTA IV had divergence within the first day. The what is wrong with GTA IV thread was very large day 1. Generally though you are right and there is a long enough buffer zone where the public opinion of the game gradually falls and by the time it settles the review does not matter.

As an aside bioware must be putting on a show because after a few games in a row they should know that "the internet" is getting angrier with each release.

 

[Margalis]

If all movie reviews were comprised of stuff from Empire and Entertainment Weekly, then I would imagine movie reviews in general would be a lot like game reviews.

Is this actually true though?

Right now the EW front page is all about the Hunger Games, but the review score is an A-, the same as 21 Jump Street and LOWER than The Deep Blue Sea.

EW seems to recognize that Hunger Games is the big hyped release and is making it highly prominent but the review itself is not highly compromised or hyperbolic. It reads like an honest review.

 

[sp3000]

My hatred is reserved for people like the Uncharted 3 community that made a hissy fit over the one honest reviewer giving their garbage game the score it deserved. That only perpetuates this cycle of moneyhatting

 

[Grayman]

Is this actually true though?

Right now the EW front page is all about the Hunger Games, but the review score is an A-, the same as 21 Jump Street and LOWER than The Deep Blue Sea.

EW seems to recognize that Hunger Games is the big hyped release and is making it highly prominent but the review itself is not highly compromised or hyperbolic. It reads like an honest review.

I think you just described a 3 point review scale were A- is low.

 

[SuperAngelo64]

Stopped paying attention to all gaming media once the 'Japan-hate' fad started.

I haven't read a review in years.

 

[Lancehead]

I don't quite understand what "vocal minority" is supposed to mean. The way the term gets used in arguments, it seems to assume that those who aren't being vocal have opposing views to that of the vocal segment. That's a baseless assumption.

 

[bigtroyjon]

That doesn't change anything. Anyone who has not completed the game would have no valid personal opinion on the ending. If 95% of the people who have beaten it dislike the ending, that's no a vocal minority of people who have an opinion on the ending.

It does change something. If most of the public doesn't have an opinion on something, how can a reviewer diverge from that opinion?

I don't quite understand what "vocal minority" is supposed to mean. The way the term gets used in arguments, it seems to assume that those who aren't being vocal have opposing views to that of the vocal segment. That's a baseless assumption.

It means that internet gaming forums like this one make up a teeny, tiny portion of the overall gaming population but they make up a huge portion of overall gaming discussion we are exposed to.

 

[Balb]

GTAIV was the breaking point for me. I can't remember any other game that was propped up to such a high degree, only to fall short in many ways. A lot of the reviews were even hyping up the multiplayer to high hell and that's something most people gave up on after 1 or 2 days.

I'm not exactly sure why stuff like this happens and I won't pretend to know but it needs to stop.

Since then, I've largely ignored reviews and rely on podcasts for true gaming discussions.

 

[ElectricBlue187]

Hex combat is way better than combat in Civ 4 I don't know how a person could really say otherwise. The AI is awful yes, but it's not the fault of the design

 

[Jimrpg]

There's a few problems with game reviews system

- people buy into hype, in particular game journalists, especially when you get free holidays out of the thing
- people have different tastes
- people lie and don't play the game, but some games are way too long to properly play them
- game reviews are subjective
- many game journalists try to second guess what the audience likes and dislikes in their review
- game journalists can't cater for the entire crowd, there's going to be someone who hates the game and someone who loves the game.
- game reviews sometimes are too objective and not subjective (picking way too hard at flaws i.e. something like dark souls, when the 'art'/style/philosophy of the game design does not get enough mention, but objective things like framerate, difficulty, voice chat will get marked down)

to me the games that stand the test of time are the ones with creative, innovative, inspired game design, game art, game philosophy. There's just too many reviews that hype up the latest call of duty, sky rim, need for speed, the flavours of the month.

 

[Margalis]

I think you just described a 3 point review scale were A- is low.

Unfortunately your attempt to be pithy completely ignores reality.

EW reviews do not bottom out at A-, and even if they did you would expect Hunger Games to get an A+ in that case, not the lowest possible score. (If A- was the lowest, which it isn't)

The problem with saying "game reviews are just like enthusiast reviews in other mediums, look at EW" is that it just isn't true.

EW gave Avatar a B.

The difference there is that EW converts their front page coverage over to a big movie, has a lot of interviews and pieces and graphics and such, but still manages to keep the reviews themselves relatively honest. Whereas in video game reviews the actual review is a key part of the hype puzzle. EW is not full of reviews that fall all over themselves trying to call the next big movie one of the greatest movies ever.

 

[Coxswain]

I don't quite understand what "vocal minority" is supposed to mean. The way the term gets used in arguments, it seems to assume that those who aren't being vocal have opposing views to that of the vocal segment. That's a baseless assumption.

It's a way of simultaneously saying "Not many people agree with you, so you're probably wrong" and "You're being really whiny and you don't deserve to be able to talk this much" without actually saying either of those things. I've never seen an example to the contrary.

 

[zroid]

My hatred is reserved for people like the Uncharted 3 community that made a hissy fit over the one honest reviewer giving their garbage game the score it deserved. That only perpetuates this cycle of moneyhatting

You were about to make a fair point here, and then it was wasted by some hyperbolic opinion statement treated as fact. Good grief.

 

[DiscoJer]

I think part of it is also giving the audience what they want.

People just love Bioware. So there is probably a temptation to give it a higher score than it deserves.

Obsidian doesn't have that repution, so they often get knocked more, even if they produce similar quality games.

Another example would be Naughty Dog & Uncharted. Despite a lot of fans thinking Golden Abyss was one of the better (not the best, but better than 3) entries in the series, it scored the worst critically. Because it was from Naughty Dog and hyped a lot, I think U3 probably scored higher than it should, while Sony's Bend effort probably is closer to the truth, or on a couple occasions, docked simply because they weren't Naughty Dog....

Personally, I just gave the PSP/PS3 Minis version of Canabalt a 7.5 and I have people angry at me because they thought it should be higher. I thought it was reasonable - it's a lot of fun, but ultimately it's a straight port of a flash game...

 

[SapientWolf]

GTAIV was the breaking point for me. I can't remember any other game that was propped up to such a high degree, only to fall short in many ways. A lot of the reviews were even hyping up the multiplayer to high hell and that's something most people gave up on after 1 or 2 days.

I'm not exactly sure why stuff like this happens and I won't pretend to know but it needs to stop.

To my knowledge, GTAIV never dropped off the top 20 most played XBL. Someone out there likes it.

 

[rdrr gnr]

I think it's a time dedication thing. One can gauge a film in one to two viewings with relative confidence. Games don't work like that. Take Gears of War 2. Imagine if people knew of the matchmaking and lag issues before the reviews were handed out. You need time to put things into perspective, but given the nature of the review cycle, this almost never occurs. Plus, you have awful, unintelligent, barely coherent writers who claim to be journalists. Cynicism and pessimism need not be relegated to the realm of parody and entertainment in gaming reviews (like Yahtzee). A reviewer could -- in theory -- approach reviews in that manner and still be accurate.

 

[Iksenpets]

I really don't think it's anything as sinister as moneyhats, or even any sort of bias amongst game reviewers vis a vis the typical gamer. I think it's just that reviewers don't really have the time needed to develop fully formed opinions on the games they're writing about. Most of the time they're pressed for time and have to rush the game, and while I believe them when they say that they do finish the games they play for review, playing tat quickly changes the experience. Then they have to write up their review pretty much within a day or two of finishing it without taking much time to think it over. In the long run, listening to comments they make on podcasts, reviewers who write these glowing reviews typically come around to popular opinion after a month or two.

Mexico in RDR doesn't stick out when the whole game was a blur that you forced yourself through at maximum speed. Something like the combat in Civ5 takes a long time to really get a handle for all of the nuances. It's just not possible to have a fully formed opinion on these things on release date.

This doesn't happen in movies because a reviewer can get an advanced screening a week before release and have several days to mull the film over in his head after watching. He watched it at the exact same pace as everyone else watching. The movie is a static thing less affected by the situation you're in when you watch it.

 

[Margalis]

I think it's best to ignore the "vocal minority" charge given that it's complete nonsense with zero evidence.

Do the majority of people like the ME3 ending? There's no evidence of that and plenty of evidence to the contrary. So I'm going to go with "probably not."

 

[SolidSnakex]

Obsidian doesn't have that repution, so they often get knocked more, even if they produce similar quality games.

I remember people pointing out the Obsidian was killed over how buggy New Vegas was while Bethesda seems to get a free pass.

 

[Orca]

1. "Refined climbing and shooting are better than ever, but it’s the way your actions merge with the story that impress." This is just factually false, the shooting in Uncharted 3 was broken and required a patch.

There were a whole lot of people here who defended the shooting, even after they started looking into it.

 

[Sir Abacus]

3. Civ 5 is almost universally considered a large step backwards by fans with stuff like the hex combat and horrible AI breaking the game, while hex combat was usually positioned as a plus in reviews and AI problems barely mentioned.

Leonard Nimoy not coming back to do the tech tree quotes too. But yes the AI is fucking terrible and diplomacy is basically a write off.

I still prefer Civ IV all things considered despite Civ V being more advanced in some ways (cities being able to defend themselves for instance).

 

[rdrr gnr]

My hatred is reserved for people like the Uncharted 3 community that made a hissy fit over the one honest reviewer giving their garbage game the score it deserved. That only perpetuates this cycle of moneyhatting

I'm glad you're levelheaded.