Wii Warm Up: The state of reviews

I think the game review is still important. I may not always agree with them, but on the whole they provide a valuable service, preventing people from buying poor games and encouraging them to buy good ones. Thus making it harder for developers to get away with making rubbish.

I have always consulted reviews and I have always trusted them and generally agreed with them....until now. I bought SSX Blur expecting the controls to be a horrible mess. Some of the so called "professional" reviewers just hated them and didn't have enough bad things to say about them. However after having played it for the past week now, it's an amazing game and the controls just couldn't get any better, they're great.

So while reviews generally made a good guideline on whether or not a game is good, sometimes they're just dead wrong.

I think it's good, cause there's games that I thougt looked awesome but then I've seen on gamerankings that they're torture to play.

I think that the metareview is important. It lets you see a range of reviews at once, which allows you to average them or weed out ones from snobs (ign-matt) and zealots (nintendo power)...

Once they make demos available through the Wii shop, however...
That's when reviews may become irrelevant.

This is a topic my friends and I have been discussing a lot recently. We have come to the consensus that reviews provide absolutely essential information to the consumer for whom $50 is too much to waste on a mediocre title. However, we all seem to agree that we desperately want more thoughtful reviews based on longer experiences with games and containing more explicit pros and cons.

When Matt C. and Bozon over at IGN are trying to review every single title released for Wii and post their write-ups before the retail releases, they end up being a bit hasty, a bit vague, and a bit pithy. I like the idea that more reviews available means more opinions to aggregate before making a purchasing decision, but I'd really love to find one or two consistently trustworthy reviewers on whom I can count to finish a game and break it down meaningfully.

I don't take reviews too seriously. They vary too much depending on people's opinions and I find there isn't always a lot of consistency among them. A lot of times the reviewer takes off points needlessly for things that most gamers would never even notice (or particularly care about). There have been many games that received poor reviews, but I bought anyway and absolutely loved.

Additionally it seems like certain websites seem to play favorites with systems. GameSpot, for example, seems to rate Wii games lower than most other sites and often finds issue with the controls when most other sites praise them.

Most of the time I find myself disagreeing with the reviews. For example, in GameSpot's ExciteTruck review they wrote "Not enough here to keep you interested for long". I disagree. I am addicted to this game and have probably played this game more than any other Wii title. I love it.

With all that said I still find myself reading reviews, although they rarely, if ever, influence my purchasing decisions. I generally read reviews from Matt of IGN-Wii, Nintendo Power, and N-sider.com. N-sider.com, in my opinion, has the best review format. They use a 5-point system and also provide a short list of plus and minuses for the game.

The best way to judge a game is to play it, not read a review.

Reviews are not necessary, but very nice to have. Well that was until the wii.

I think the majority of reviewers are stuck in the conventional controls. Couple that with the fact that reviewers don't spend enough time with a game before reviewing it, and we got problems. Read 1ups review of blur, then play it for an hour. You will see what I mean.

There is a japanese magazine that shows their score of the game across the hours they played it. By hour 4, thier score may have gone down 2 points, then creep back up. Not only does it show that they played the game for hours, but gives you the impression of what depth the game offers.

I wont even get into how the vast majority of reviewers are hardcore gamers who could wax ecstatic about a game that would be too involved for 99% of casual gamers to bother with.

In an ideal world, the reviews themselves would remain but the scores would be killed. There's still too much emphasis on the score, and that includes the roundup sites like gamerankings.

The fact is, people have different tastes and no scoring system reflects that. All you can really do is read a couple reviews to get an idea of what the game is about to see if it would fit with your taste.

The DS and Wii have made this more clear than ever.

Ok, I have an idea:

How about we do a poll every other day or so asking us Fanboys what we think about a particular game? That way, we can get a pretty good review from people who actually like the control scheme of the Wii. It could go something like this:

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT "NEED FOR SPEED CARBON"?

A. Buy it!!!!!
B. Could use some work, but worth the $50
C. Great game to rent, but don't spend the money
D. I puke every time I see someone playing it

Anybody agree with me?

---Germ

I use metareviews to help make buying/renting decisions. I don't have enough time or money to not rely on them. Sure I may miss a few gems that got unfairly criticized or picked up a well reviewed title that I didn't like, but I still think it's safer than blind buying or trying to search blogs and posts for individual impressions. BTW, that generally only works for newer games anyway.

I got duped with Elite Beat Agents. I'm not sure what people liked about that game. I bought it based on the reviews and the fact that I like Guitar Hero. The game was boring. I didn't get the praise at all.

But still.. What else can I do? I'm looking at buying and renting old Gamecube games (I never owned a GC). I need to use reviews, especially metareviews to help make decisions on what to check out.

I think game reviews are pointless and always have. Think of it this way. What makes you think someone can match your taste??? What if you were to review the Rush Album "Presto". Most probably dont even know who Rush is, But I can almost guarantee if you listen to it you'll give it really bad reviews if your the younger generation. Also If I (who cant stand rap music), were to review any rap song, i'd give it really horrible reviews even if I tried to give it the benefit of the doubt. It's all about opinions. I dont need an opinion from some organization to decide what i'm going to buy or like. I like what I like, end of story. The things that would help me in reviews are just not there!! For instance, why didnt any review mention that Bubble Bobble DS was broke before i bought it!!!! Why dont reviews mention that Grand theft auto has inappropriate hidden seens (known as hot coffee). These are the only helpful things you could possible get from a review and the current review industry seems to ignore them. They choose to flaunt their egotistical opinions instead.

Another issue I have with reviews, especially ones with point values is that they often don't judge a game for what it is - instead they are often judged in relation to every other game out there.

I believe games should be judged in relation to other games in their genre. If a racing game is the best one out there, it should be given a 10, because its the best. Obviously this 10 is going to be different than a 10 given to Ocarina of Time, but it deserves the 10 because it is the best in what it does.

This issue is becoming more apparent with some sites and new games like Brain Age, etc. that aren't typical "games".

Good idea germ, but the problem is that the poll is by no means scientific. People who hate the wii could vote, people who havent played the game could vote. How do you eliminate that?

It would be cool to have a free website that I could get quick and dirty reviews on my cell phone too. How many time have you randomly stopped by the store and happen to come across the money to buy a game, but can't remember which one you should get. Or, there happens to be a game that looks interesting but you can't remember if it had good reviews or not. If your like me, you don't feel like driving home and checking out the reviews only to go back and buy the game you want. Nor do I generally agree with the employees opinions either.

As good as reviews are to look at they are still the opinions of the individual reveiwer. I have seen two icedents so far where the same game scored way diffrently when it was reveiwed by some one else. One incedent was the Ghost rider game on Gamespot. One reveiwer gave the PS2 and PSP version around a 4. But someone else did the GBA reveiw and it got around a 7.

http://gamerevolution.com/features/mind_over_meta

I actually prefer the days of no reviews, no internet rumors, and no trailers. These days we get so many leaks that the game becomes dated before it even comes out. Doesn't it feel like Mario Galaxy for the Wii is so 2006?

I do not know too many that bother reading reviews anymore. Recently though thewiire.com came up with a different way of reviewing a game that is very in depth and takes more time to do as well as showing what was good and what was bad in a list format that is easy to read. I have found all their reviews to be in line exactly with my experiences. In the end even that site will not agree with everyone's opinions, which is why they are bad to begin with.

reviews from websites like gameFAQs are handy, but pro-reviewers that have lots of experience are invaluable. I depend on reviews to make educated game purchases.