I pretty much know what I want, and have always had a lucky feel for buying. I've only ever hated a small handful of games that I've bought, out of tons. I don't buy too much these days anyway, and I tend to keep up on previews and game news like crazy, so that helps, but if I'm unsure about something that seems to have come completely out of the blue I watch let's plays and amateur reviews instead of legit reviews by big games media sites.
They're easier to relate to and trust, and more straight forward. With Games Journalism having it's own award ceremonies these days and it going from a hint of Maxim to all-out Maxim, there's very few outlets or personalities I can take at face value and not question their integrity. If not that, I just see guys and gals who are powering through games, not ever really enjoying them, and not representative of my tastes and preferences... can't hold that against them, but it doesn't hold water for me.
For the most part, I just watch/read reviews for games I already own so I can either get validation or dismiss it as stupid... or watch the flame war in the comments and keep up with controversies. I'd say I'm worse than people who read celebrity tabloids.
I used to trust reviews a lot, but not really anymore. I generally read reviews after buying the game, to see how's it doing in other people's opinion and stuff
Does anyone watch Classic Game Room? Mark does awesome reviews and refuses to slap a number on a game just because he thinks numbers are irrelevant when it comes to telling about the actual experience. I dig that. He usually finds good thing in almost any game but if he says some game is bad, it must be reeeeally bad.
On the talk about IGN, those people are incompetent as hell. Well, at least some and they should definitely appoint better reviewers. Their review of Double Dragon Neon is now seen as a prime example on how not to write a review. They made a guy who absolutely hates beat-em-ups review the game and whaddya know, he gave it a shit review because he hated the genre. What?!
(03-20-2013, 05:40 AM)Mass Distraction Wrote: [ -> ]Does anyone watch Classic Game Room? Mark does awesome reviews and refuses to slap a number on a game just because he thinks numbers are irrelevant when it comes to telling about the actual experience. I dig that. He usually finds good thing in almost any game but if he says some game is bad, it must be reeeeally bad.
On the talk about IGN, those people are incompetent as hell. Well, at least some and they should definitely appoint better reviewers. Their review of Double Dragon Neon is now seen as a prime example on how not to write a review. They made a guy who absolutely hates beat-em-ups review the game and whaddya know, he gave it a shit review because he hated the genre. What?!
The Mitch Dyer and DSP-gate incident was frikkin' awesome. Hardly anyone cares about Mitch or IGN in general. As they say, you can't spell ignorance without IGN. I love Classic Game Room. Been watching Mark and his team on YouTube for years now. I also hate the point scoring system. Dumbarse gamers will skip the entire review of a game just to see the summary and the points attached to it.
I don't read reviews. I never have, for anything. Games, movies, music, tv, books.. nothing. I don't trust that most reviewers/critics aren't being paid off. Besides that, they don't have good taste for the most part.
I've realized that I usually only read reviews if it's a game I'm really not sure about getting. I've been happy I've done that a few times, most recently with Aliens: Colonial Marines. This is about the same when it comes to movies.
I don't trust them that much, and I don't usually look for reviews by IGN or Game Informer. Then again, I just found out that Edge gave 999 a 6/10 when it came out, so it has me rethinking their reviews too. Then again, when do I ever read Edge before a game comes out?
I do read a few review sites, but I haven't seen much of a difference between a lot of them. I usually notice a trend with a lot of review sites where games staring certain characters (for example, Mario) get perfect scores in just about every site, even when there are obvious flaws in a game. As well, I notice a lot of sites tend to rate biasedly against certain games or genres, as well as games staring certain characters or certain kinds of characters.