Do Reviews Still Serve a Purpose?

Via Voodoo Extreme, a post on the Sony-sponsored ThreeSpeech blog asking if game reviews are a thing of the past. Post author 'Azz Hassan' opines that the proliferation of blogs and easy access to game trailers has made the 'biased views' of reviewers a thing of the past. Responding via the Ars Technica Opposable Thumbs blog, Frank Caron offers a rebuttal to the piece. 'The argument presented in the article seems to come with the very slant that it so viciously protests: one of a negative view towards a medium that the writer feels is inadequate. Yes, there is a ton of available media on the net that can help you get a look at a game as it develops, but the problem with videos and pictures is that often the intangible elements are impossible to understand simply from seeing the game in motion--only the written or verbal communication of a person can adequately capture these details.'

Absolutely they do

[tttonyyy]

...but maybe not as individual reviews.

http://www.metacritic.com/ [metacritic.com] is a fantastic site which does weighted averaging of scores from many reviews. I use it for games in particular - it's useful to check the reviews that give a high score against the reviews that give a low score to see what is good and what is not about a game before buying. The "averaged" score almost always corresponds with my experience of the games too, so the system seems to work.

So reviews do serve a purpose, but, as with many things in life, to get a balanced opinion you need to sample from a set great than 1.

Re:um

[apoc06]

you point out the key issue with reviews. usually they revolve around a single users' experience. if the reviewer that plays the game has a penchant for say... FPS games, if he has to sit down and play a roleplaying game that is generally overlooked in light of its mod community, he is going to score the game lower. a reviewer that prefers tekken will be harder on a title like DoA [IMHO he should be]. whatever that users preferences are come into play.

what i think game magazines/ sites need to do is outline each reviewers tastes and have multiple users review the games. that way readers can find a reviewer whose tastes align more closely with theirs.

Re:Not to me

[famikon]

just wait until you get married and she will stop touching your wii altogether.

Aggregate all the way

[Vacardo]

I find reviews tend to reflect the bias of the reviewer more than the aspects of the game itself. I believe an aggregate site (e.g. Metacritic) that collates a number of scores and provides an average is much more accurate.

You also have the option of reading each closing comment of each site to see if there are consistencies in what each review reports, such as if there are flaws in camera or if they mostly praise a great control setup.

How it should be done....

[kn0tw0rk]

.. is the way the Retro Gamer magazine articles on "Why you must play ..........."

What they do is gve a detailed break down of the what gameplay elements are used in the game, and how those work to enhance the gaming experience and make it an enjoyable experience. Also they give some history of how they game came to be and the situation of the gaming market it was released into.

As the games mentioned are not being sold in retail stores, there is no $$$ coercion factor that you get with current games.

I've tried several of the games and have discovered some worthwhile divertions of my time.

Cheers

These opinions are all very important, so thanks!

[StarFire2258]

As a future (read: aspiring) videogame reviewer myself, I wanted to thank all current and future comment contributors to this thread. It is the duty of every publication to serve its audience. It's good journalism, and good business sense as well. Every person commenting here who cites a problem with current videogame reviews shows that there is a disconnect between that audience (you) and those publications, and I for one will not let that disconnect go unnoticed. I plan to improve the state of reviews, starting with my own and hopefully inspiring others by example. Therefore, I've saved the current comments to this thread, and will return in one week to do so again, collecting more recent comments. I'll then integrate their ideas into my future reviews, to better serve you all. IMHO, reviews serve an incredibly important purpose, that of informing consumers not as information-savvy as all you /. readers as to which games are worth the money and which should be best avoided. For those who have the time and interest to track new games as they are developed, they are perhaps not as important... but I for one will not purchase a game without reading the review of at least one reviewer I trust.