Your opinion on critic reviews

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Do critic reviews influence your decision to buy a game?

  • Yes

    Votes: 3 42.9%
  • No

    Votes: 4 57.1%

  • Total voters
    7
  • Poll closed .

The GemiKnight

Clan Centurio Member
Nov 11, 2016
137
119
35
Durban, South Africa
#1
This is a topic I've always though about and since I don't know many actual gamers, I've never really been able to ask anybody this. Being a part of this community though, I figured this is a good opportunity to find out how gamers think. So, I'd like to know what you think about critic reviews. Do you always look up the review before buying a game and how important is that score out of 10 to you?

Personally, I don't rely on critic reviews/scores. I look up gameplay videos and read about a game's features on the web but critic scores have never been a deciding factor for me. I respect the role that game critics play but I prefer the decision to be mine alone when I buy games. I once bought a game based on nothing more than reading the back of the cover. That game was Nier and I enjoyed it a lot. It was only afterwards I found out that the game did not achieve outstanding reviews but it didn't matter to me or change my opinion of the game.

Anyway, I'll now leave it to all of you to give me your thoughts on this topic.
 

Guitar (pseudo)God

Blitzball Champion
Aug 14, 2016
519
649
All over
#2
Personally, I exclusively read reviews. My gaming time is quite limited, so if there's a game that interests me I'll do my due diligence before purchasing.

There are a few sites I frequent, but more to the point I'm looking for something well-written and coherent.

Avoiding hyperbole is a must as well - witness the lavish praise heaped on Fallout 4. While it certainly was a good game, I didn't think it came close to warranting the scores it did. (Of course, others may think differently.) I've read articles about publishers tightly controlling the review cycle - from press junkets to supervised play sessions.

For my money (and it IS my money), I like @APZonerunner's reviews. I was introduced to Simon Parkin's work with the Edge FFXV preview. Jeremy Parish also comes to mind.
 

Lulcielid

Warrior of Light
Oct 9, 2014
3,826
2,826
28
Argentina
#3
I tend to read reviews for the curiosity of what the "consensus" is about a particular game I'm interested in but generally speaking they only influence my purchase only if the reviews constantly describe the game as being messy from a tech perspective (heavy FPS dips, glitches and bugs, poor resolution and rendering, etc).
I also tend to hesite in picking some games that score below 6/10 (or any equivalent score), for me that numbers mean good enough.
 
#4
My general answer to that would be "no". To be more specific, I do not look towards critics to confirm or rationalize my opinion on something I have decided to spend money on and not spend money on. A lot of people unfortunately do that and I think this attitude (also dubbed confirmation bias) hurts game criticism as a whole - critics should, ideally, inform opinions that lead to decisions, not create an (often artificial) consensus that in turn ought to confirm decisions already made. I may look for at least some opinion - be it that of a professional or a peer - when being undecided, but that's a rare case.

Where opinions come in handy the most for me is in finding obscurities (though the degree to which these titles are actually obscure might vary) that, under normal circumstances, may have eluded my sight. A recent example was REIGNS, a game I really liked but if Jim Sterling hadn't given it a positive review, I would've never thought of even looking at it. Sometimes listening to others might yield good results, but I prefer to go with my gut feeling even if it is sometimes inconsistent or I need a second attempt at something to fully appreciate it (like the Neptunia series).

Scores on the other hand I do not care about in the slightest. Breaking down a sometimes more complex opinion into an arbitrary number (which may not even work with the ideas presented in the text, considering how scores tend to be inflated in this day and age) just bugs me on some level as does the notion that critics need to be 'objective'. Yes, saying that a game is a piece of shit without reasoning isn't professional, but, to me at least, neither is the near-technocratic zealousness by which opinions are demanded to adhere to some very vaguely defined standard of objectivity. Maybe its just me, but I'd rather read a review that represents the critics's own honest opinions instead of the bland, descriptive texts that may as well be used as advertisement. Some may say that sways people. Yes, it may but I think not being swayed by every other person's opinion is sign of a sound mind. And after all, critics are also just people, we should let them be wrong at times.