"So I was trying to write reviews of a bunch of hit indie games I played recently. Then I got overwhelmed by the pointlessness of video game reviews these days and had to take a long nap.
And, I mean, pro reviews are pointless, right? If a game has a big enough budget or following and isn’t actively on fire, it gets a 9. If it is a competently made but low-budget indie, like mine, it gets a 7. If you read the actual review (nobody does), it’s a collection of facts about the game you could easily get from watching the trailer. Throw in a couple of comments from the reviewer about whether they like this genre or not, mix in 3 or 4 ham-handed political comments, and you got a review! Hit send!"
Or You Can Just Read Steam Reviews
Every indie dev at some point gets supermad about Steam reviews. However, 99 times out of 100, skimming the reviews on the game’s front page will tell you everything you need to know
And mostly read the negative one to see if there’s any issue with the feature or lack thereof, or whether there’s any performance issue or bug, anything you won’t tolerate. Dev will tell you the stuff is good anyway. I rarely read from review site these day, and i find Yahtzee being very helpful in that he will be very enthusiastically tell you how some part of the game don’t work, which is exactly what i’m looking for.
I used to think yahtzee was amazing then I realized he’s stuck in some late teen angst phase and can’t stand his content. Watching someone just play the game has always been the best way for me to assess. Streams and non famous YouTube videos are so good for this.
That’s understandable! He got the reputation of “hating all game and being cynical” for a reason, but if you can vibe with that and make it work for you it’s very reliably consistent. After all, he’s been this way for decade, so in one way or another i expected a jaded brits.
Yeah, I usually just read 2 or 3 positive and 2 or 3 negative reviews and look at the % score of the game. It’s all you need to know if a game is for you or not. Also, follow people who have similar taste to you, in my case, that’s Force Gaming and Iron Pineapple, whatever they play and really like, there’s a good chance I’ll like it as well. On top of that, I now have the habit of playing Steam Next Fest demos as much as I can to discover new games.
The moment you see a pokemon or a cod title get a 9/10, you understand how these reviews are shit.
Oh god yeah. I LOVE Pokémon but the highest a Pokémon game has gotten from me is a 7/10 (Smoon, Bwhite) in many years. bwhite had a great story with great mechanics and great QoL. Smoon had EVERY Pokémon in it and was the last game to do so. The beginning was an awful slog, but I loved all the locations, music, QoL features, and the endgame was incredible. Loved Battle Tower and how simple the game made to see the IVs of your Pokémon, while still keeping it challenging to breed a near perfect or perfect one.
The Switch main line games are mediocre to abysmal (ScarVio are neigh unplayable on the Switch) and the Legends game are good: 6/10 for Arceus and I just started ZA or whatever on an emulator and don’t have an opinion at all on it yet, other than it sure does look nice at 1440p/60 hahaha
This was a pretty dumb read. Lots of things just slightly wrong and mostly complaining.
First of all game reviews have always been about finding a core that you can connect with your audience about as with all reviews. Maybe its the game genre, it maybe it is a style or an emotion you have at your core.
And to that there are new trusted reviewers all the time, you just aren’t personally hearing about them.A new one that has gained following is IronPineapple who set their core to darksouls like games but because of their willingness to flub the definition a bit they have character and people have flocked to them for trusted takes about skill based games.
RyeGames is becoming a trusted voice in acting as a living games historian.
No new reviewers? Bullshit.The one thing I agree on is how useful steam reviews are. Yes or no and show the percents and see what people said. Almost always there is a synopsis review and a more emotional review to tell you if its for you or not.
Came to say this.
One of my favorite review sites are just blogs that review games regardless of release year. They don’t give a shit about whatever bullshit new fortnite skin is out or trying to chase after ad dollars.
They just play the game that looks mildly interesting, give their take, post it and go pick another game.
https://the-point-n-clicker.removed/?m=1
My favorite: he’s reviewing games from 1980s-1990s.
https://crpgaddict.removed/
IMO due paid reviews and companies being too scared of getting sued for defamation or similar reasons I also do not trust “professional” reviews any more and stopped reading them. But while less professional and more subjective, I almost always read user reviews on plattforms that allow them like Steam on PC or the Play Store on mobile. At least you can tell if there are some issues that most people seem to hate and then you can judge for yourself if that is a dealbreaker to you or if you’re gonna gice it a shot anyway.
Way better than any review is a free demo for an actual hands-on experience. Or I also often look for some gameplay on YouTube, especially if there is no demo available.
There’s demos for every game on the high seas
Every indie dev at some point gets supermad about Steam reviews. However, 99 times out of 100, skimming the reviews on the game’s front page will tell you everything you need to know.
I think I get both sides of the matter. Some devs seem to be mad simply because the review is not under their control, and the player isn’t shy saying what’s wrong with the game. But some reviews are like, “2/10 Chinese restaurant, there were no burgers”.
Dude discovers tastes are subjective and hard to describe with numbers.
read the article, there’s other points raised
The main point seems to be that individual reviewers don’t have recognizable voices anymore, but honestly I don’t really buy the idea that reviews ever “worked” in the way that this writer seems to want them to. Any individual number was always meaningless except for knowing whether a specific person liked the thing at a specific moment in time. Maybe some people were lucky enough to know a reviewer who reliably predicted how they’d feel about the product, such that they could just look at the number and be good to go, but IMO the “feature list” has always been the most interesting part of the review, and it hasn’t gone anywhere.
I do think the author missed an opportunity to study how critics work and how they’re perceived in other fields, media literacy is a lot more prevalent in other art forms like cinema or literature, which leads to more value being given to reviews, which is lacking in the video game industry imo
I think a big part of the problem is the time investment and the fact most people really vibe with only a few types of games.
On time investment: in order to say anything interesting about the game, anything you couldn’t get from watching someone play it for two minutes, you’d need someone to take the time to finish it, often 50+ hours, and probably more to digest it and to play stuff around the sides (achievements, collecting. Given an 8 hour work day, and reasonable breaks, that’s easily a week or more of just playing before you start writing. Then you’ve got to write with better insight into mechanics, design etc than the average guy, which a lot of critics fail at. Not just what mechanically does the game do, but clearheadedly why is that different, what makes that good and bad, how do they reinforce or work against the games themes.
On subjectivity: I could not review a first person shooter. I could not review an RPG like Skyrim. It’s not because I couldn’t play those games, or even derive some enjoyment. But rather that I know my mind, and I know that I have a strategic optimizing mind that left alone would rather play spreadsheet simulator stuff like rule the waves or dwarf fortress or football manager. Complexity is my god. But that’s not the route to good design for most people. Similarly, guy who only plays CSGO probably shouldn’t be reviewing disco Elysium.
All of this put together means an ideal reviewer would be working on a narrow selection of games, taking weeks or more for each one. And they’d be competing with people making excellent video essays for free on YouTube or whatever. Text is already a niche (hence declining film/book reviews also)
Why do you assume I haven’t?
To be fair, you may have read it, but I bet most of us didn’t.
My complaining might just be sadness. When I was 25, I had the time and energy to dig into a game like this and find all the cool secrets everyone swears are there. Now I’m old, which is not great.
Same here :-/
Reviews and rating systems are by and large shit everywhere at this stage of capitalism. I’d actually say I trust Steam review sections more than most websites that have them anymore… It almost feels like a boomer af thing to leave a review on something, so I have to question the sanity of the people leaving the reviews, and if they can’t be trusted, why would I trust their opinion of the product?
It’s always been like this. The pro reviewers get wined and dined by the publishers and consider themselves part of the industry (Dorito Pope!), so it’s not in their interest to rock the boat. The days of renegade and experimental reviews are long gone.
That, and let’s plays and streamers ate the bottom out of the review market. People would much rather watch some gameplay by a neutral party (a person just playing the game, not writing a review) and judge for themselves whether they want to play it or not.
The other issue with reviews (solved by LPs/streamers as well) is the problem of taste. Even if you had a perfect world where reviewer corruption didn’t exist, you’d still have to find reviewers whose tastes match your own. If a game you were anticipating gets a poor review, you have to decide whether it actually deserved that review or if the reviewer just doesn’t like the style of the game, but you might like it.
This last one might seem easy enough to overcome with genre-based expert reviewers but I don’t think it is. There have been a lot of times where someone told me “Oh you like Roguelikes? You should try ___” and I really didn’t like their suggestion. There are a million different dimensions to game design and many of them cross the boundaries of genres, blurring the lines. Thus it becomes extremely hard to find other people (never mind expert reviewers) with matching tastes and get trustworthy game recommendations from them.
I’m sure some members of the community flipping their shit when the game gets a review “it didn’t deserve” also plays part in that.
I want a game review site where there’s a number and it’s legit. Like
1/10 - Irredeemably bad. The music is terrible, the sounds are grating (or missing), the visuals hurt to look at (or are completely boring, which might be worse.) controls make it frustrating to navigate. I also give this to bland games with extremely predatory monetization, where the goal of the game is “make as much money as possible from whales”. Usually a mediocre mobile game skinned to a popular IP, maybe with some of the same aspects as that other game, but a huge wall where suddenly it’s spendin’ time.
2/10 - this is rough. Like, really rough. Something about it is either unique, funny, or novel, so it gets a point for that. Overall, you’re proooobably gonna want to skip this. It’s going to be tough for even big updates to fix the flaws in this game.
3/10 - this game has some redeeming qualities, but huge flaws as well. Worth it to try if you can get a deal, but needs a lot of work, and won’t be for everyone. Probable skip for most folks.
4/10 - A good game with many flaws, but worth picking up if you’re really into this kind of game. Maybe this has been done better by other games, or maybe there’s glitches. It’s not terrible, but below average.
5/10 - a perfectly serviceable game. If you like this series, you’ll certainly be playing it. If you like this game type, it’s worth checking out. A lot of CoDs and BF games have fallen here since BF4 for me.
6/10 - A good game. It’s good! Above average, and definitely worth playing if you like this type. This is the most stacked category for games I’ve played overall.
7/10 - Pick this game up, it’s very good. If this is on a console with a smaller library (N64, Dreamcast, 32x, GameCube) deeefintiely pick it up.
8/10 - A True Great. Few or no flaws, very fun. Great controls, interesting graphics, fun story, overall just a stellar game. Play this.
9/10 - almost perfect in every way. Maybe perfect, but a genre that might limit people. Or incredible but very difficult to play without spending a lot of money (Alyx comes to mind when I say that, but that’s an eight for me)
10/10 - Should almost never be given out. Incredible flawless perfection that everyone in the world with most of their limbs, sight, and vision in tact MUST check out. I have very few games (or movies, shows, books) that get a 10. We don’t need to grade things like their parents are getting a report card, some 10s I see given out are baffling.
Angry Joe uses a system like this. I quite like his long form reviews because he does seem to be pretty fair and will point out redeeming qualities in games he otherwise did not like.
I like reading the RockPaperShotgun reviews. Nice writing, no score, usually some interesting points about the game going deeper than what a trailer shows.
RPS is one of two video game sites I subscribe to, the other being Jank, which is a direct, independent spinoff of RPS. They have a consistent house style that values the fun and creativity of good prose (even if they sometimes fail to reach that standard). I imagine some people would find their style hamfisted, but it feels authentic to me in a way that almost every other publication doesn’t. They don’t have that homogenizing tone to their voice that’s reaching for the superficial cultural moment and SEO optimization that outlets like IGN have.
I used to love reading their video game diaries. They do them seldomly these days, if at all.
Stuff like this.
this writer desperately needs a vacation and needs to stop writing gaming reviews cause apparently it’s made him an overly dramatic, cynical weirdo.
"*Can There Be More Professional Game Reviewers Again?
It’s hard to see how. That takes money, and we’ve all been trained to not pay money for reviews. I used to actually subscribe to game magazines, with actual dollars! I haven’t done it in a long time.
So whose fault is it that game reviews are pointless now? It’s mine. And probably yours.*"
just because you’re tired and jaded doesn’t mean everything is hopeless. the bit about the steam reviews was extremely telling, honestly. this is a whine-piece. nothing more.
Man, i just finished reading a review that spent half the time complaining that this top down merchant sim wasn’t Kingdom come deliverance 2. Professionals really suck.
Ultimately it’s entertainment people just have fun reading them, and yeah that’s like 90% of the economy. Mcdonalds burgers aren’t better than any other burger, it’s just a fun psychological experience that’s why it’s a huge business.
I just watch some gameplay videos on YouTube if I’m vaguely interested.
This. And a few different people too if it looks interesting but maybe the person playing is bad.
Some of my favorite games had amazing and fun core gameplay but we’re panned by reviewers.
So many different opinions so trying yourself is best
