I hope you write a convincing review why RE4 >>>> Gears, or rather, why Gears sucks.

Seriously, I'd easily give RE4 a 10 (even if it was the PS2 version), but Gears? It's a 5 at best. I really can't put it better than "because the gameplay is slow and shallow, just a repetition of cover -> shoot -> cover".

Odd how you're limiting the scope of this problem to merely reviews, as it applies to everything that everyone human says and does:

"If it doesn't end, then anyone can say whatever bogus comment they want and not have to verify or back it up."   

People haven't figured out how to ban snake-oil-salesman for 2000+ years, but just WRITING ABOUT IT will somehow recode our entire Human DNA so our future babies won't be able to tell lies. 

Hurry up and create a new race of super humans already, because this shit needs to end!

Where's Jodo when you need him?

All of these threads have basically turned out the same, can anyone else keep them straight? Trouble I have.

Don't know why, but that review of Sin and Punishment 2 made me want to play it. Also, reviews on IGN etc. sites can suck my balls. Give me reviews on paper when you do have to moreso think what you're gonna tell, because usually you do have somekind of word limit. Unless you're just a mindless "FIRST EVER PREVIEW ONLY ON THIS MAGAZINE" dronemag, who can go drown themselves. Sadly, seems that most of the mags are following that principle and not having any balls.

Too bad sarcasm really doesn't translate to the internet extremely well. That certainly didn't come across as sarcastic.

I didn't say the thread wasn't worth making. There is a fine line between being controversial, disagreeable, and in the heat the moment argumentative and just rubbing people the wrong way. I find most often in your threads it is the latter. If anyone wants to correct me on this one please feel free to tell me. I don't want to speak for people who don't agree with this.

I'm glad I am partially right sir. I guess the thing that really gets my goat is how you seem to have an over arching knowledge that is inherently more correct than anything I say.

I believe McNamara did do that review and I enjoyed his opinion. I disagreed with it but I enjoyed somethings he wrote. Ultimately I bought and played the game anywho and enjoyed it. This of course means that his opinion was only second to mine. Somethings were accurately said. Its called filtering the bullshit.

I hate EGM to be clear. When I did read it Shoe was my man. Right now Game Informer is most interesting to me. The first issue I bought had Azurik on the cover.

If you want another place to do things like insomnia I believe that its up to you. Unfortunately requesting for content that you would like to read is not very possible so the only fix I would say is make your own site. If people like what you do then the site will live and if there is truly no interest in a review as you would have it be then I guess it dies.

Well the teacher example was a horrible one at best. I stand by it matters on perception but the concept of getting a grade or specifically making something for someone limits you to one audience and one perception. In the realm of your grades your teacher's perception is the only one that matters.

You didn't ask for anything but its clear that you want to read more thoughtful reviews. Honestly the word review is even flawed. Its just a comfortable word to use. Lets go with a true term like Personal Assessment

per·son·al   [pur-suh-nl]  Show IPA
–adjective
1.
of, pertaining to, or coming as from a particular person; individual; private: a personal opinion.

as·sess·ment   [uh-ses-muhnt]  Show IPA
–noun
1.
the act of assessing; appraisal; evaluation.

Yep.

Sometimes reviews aren't even needed. You know what I do when a game I'm looking at comes out? I watch the gameplay vids on Youtube. I watch several to see what the game encompasses and then from that, I can decide if the game's a good fit for me. It's how I decided that several games like Vagrant Story, Okami, Geometry Wars Galaxies, etc. were perfect for my gaming needs. When a now dead site used to exist (Call out to CHV.net!), they used to post live gaming playthroughs/sessions on their site. I happened to catch the final boss fight in Vagrant Story, got curious about the battle system and the canceling out of status debuffs, and that led to me borrowing the game and then buying my own.

Reviews are fine and all, but your own subjective judgment will tell you if it's good.

We might be talking about different threads here.
In the Rockman Zero Collection thread you complained about a review not coming down hard enough on the fact that the (optional!) easy mode was too easy.

I then pointed out that I think videogames do not require challenge or difficulty to be fun, which you quoted and replied to with "this discussion is now over", which is an incredibly arrogant and douchy thing to say.
You say you come here to discuss, but when someone offers an opinion that you cannot fathom you declare the discussion over. Yeah, good luck with that.

If you behave like a cocky know-it-all asshole people are not going to be kind and open towards the discussions you raise. The same thing goes for those insomnia articles. The guy who writes those sounds like a very similar kind of person (I still have a nagging suspicion that you ARE him) which is why few people here on this site bother to take it seriously.

Or in other words:

This.

If you want to discuss these matters so much, which I welcome, at least have the common decency to listen to other people and not declare their opinions moot because you don't like them.

Whenever this subject comes up, and it does, I've found that the whole issue of words, content, opinion, review, not a review and so on only serves to obscure the cause of the rant. Because, more often than not (though few may admit it), the cause is very simply that some reviewer gave a game a 7 when the ranter thought it deserved an 8. Everything else is an attempt to rationalise and justify the outrage.

May not be true here.

But it ususally is.

edit: I have moved that commentary on difficulty to the other thread.

First of all: The opinion was not offered in that thread. It was made in a declarative way as to contradict or disprove what I was saying--none of which was accomplished. You have an idea that I cannot fathom your "offered opinion". That is incorrect. I found the opinion to be so idiotic that I refused to discuss it. Now I am back to talk about it because you will not shut up about it and bring it up in this thread, rather than trying to figure out why your opinion on that said topic was not worth responding to; like Carl's opinion here that games are trivial (basically a big fu to every gamer out there) and that reviews are for bored gamers (basically a big fu to every person who values reviews and to reviewers).

I changed my mind on how to deal with absurd statements not backed up by anything here (the typical one sentence responses). I will simply devote my time to disprove them depending on how much I am annoyed by them. However, if I do not respond to a comment in the same thread it is in, there is a chance that I am giving your comment a developed response with an article.

Don't talk down to me about decency. You come in my thread about a topic of reviewing games and bring up something off-topic about what I said in another thread and start personal attacks. Not only that, but you make poor assumptions on my motives--you put words in my mouth. You think I don't like people's opinions, so they don't matter? Of course your opinion matters. That doesn't change the fact that I have every right to tell you that I find your opinion on what you said so absurdly ignorant and confident that you had dissuaded me in further talking to you in that thread.

I have no problem with someone disagreeing on what I write. I do have a problem when someone posts a response that lacks depth and is one sentence. When you mocked games needing challenge (by saying "as if they need challenge"), you demonstrated to me your complete misunderstanding of video games. As I have explained in that thread, games not only need more challenge, but they cannot exist without challenge. Games have rules and rules bring about challenges.

edit:

It is quite obvious that I am responding to GoldfishX's post about "top 10" gaming lists and not the Megaman thread. The reason being (1) context and (2) the second part of my second sentence. You simply saw the words "opted out" and decided that was enough to bring up the Megaman thread.

There is nothing odd about it. I am adhering to my thread's title and the forum section I am posting in. My prior examples of the benefits of experts (specialists) were something I wished to be read, so that I would not have to deal with the above statement. I am starting small and focusing on a topic of game reviews. I am not here to solve all the world's problems as you over-exaggerate every sentence I say, which in no way benefits anyone on this topic.

You take one sentence out of the paragraph it was in and then distort it by ignoring context. Congratulations.   

I should not be dealing with you misguiding people into thinking I am creating a utopia instead of trying to improve the quality of reviews.

Notice that I never said you said this. I said "This thread was worth making".

I am way too tired. I will get back to this thread in probably a week.

Truth, you never said that I said that. But you were replying to me at that point in time. To say that "The thread was worth making" implies that I somehow conveyed to you that this thread is a waste of time. Thats how stuff like that works. I don't believe that from this kind of thread that any more people will be inclined to write in a different manner. For this much the thread serves as a soap box and a professional bitching area. How do we get people to upgrade the standards of reviews? How is it possible? I don't believe you can change anyone else's standards as far as reviewing goes. This is why the forum environment has a review like appeal. Someone makes a thread to a game they are personally interested in and then they discuss in whatever kind of depth they would like. Then some more people post and either contest their opinion or agree with the opinion. It gives me a very fair idea of what to expect from games. In this they successfully review a game by having a conversation and I can safely just read other reviews simply for fun. I am an old enough gamer to know when something can be good without hanging onto every word a reviewer speaks. When Kirby Epic Yarn comes out (delightful as it is) and a mag review labels it as kiddie I will promptly discard that particular sentence. That game will have a sense of wonderment and magic and is based upon an honored platforming, Nintendo tradition.

So reviewers are inherently bad at reviewing but just what do you intend on doing about it now?

I'll tell you this much, most the time I don't even read reviews very much anymore. For a new game that comes out I watch the gametrailers.com video reviews. You'd be surprised in how through it is. Give it a try and get back to me on how much you like/dislike it.

EDIT:

This is where we get into trouble. I won't claim to know most of the people who post on here but we all co-exist on here in some kind of relative friendship. Everyone who has talked to me has been extremely nice and if we had different opinions respectfully disagreed with me but understood why I said what I said. When you write that someone's opinion was idiotic it is belittling, it gives me a holier than thou feeling, and you are essentially implying that in fact Amazingu is in fact, an idiot. I rather enjoy Amazingu's opinions.

Ah and I will take note that you never actually called him an idiot.

If Carl said that games were trivial thats fine. Its a respectful disagreement here. Games for me have been a very important part of my life. The stories told in each game, the challenging gameplay, the music that opened up the skies for me. It allowed me to become interested in different cultures. I played as Hakan in SS4 and the concept of an oil wrestler tickled me so much I had to research it. Now I am extremely interested in a national sport called Yağlı güreş.

I was playing Real Bout Fatal Fury one day and got to Wolfgang Krauser. His song was so hauntingly beautiful that I had to have it. I bought the OST and found that the song was called Lacrimosa. My mom is Italian and a nurse and when she heard it she explained that Lacrimosa meant to cry. Extremely interested I poked around and found that Krauser's other theme Dies Irae was apart of a bigger event called The Requiem Mass in D Minor K.626. Once more expanding my horizons.

My point is that my value in games is different than Carl's. Carl might look at starving people, possible war, oil in the gulf, political corruption, becoming green in a more substantial light than games. I respect his opinion just as 'm sure he respects mine. This is the part that separates people here. If the comment was not quite up to snuff for you, you decide that it is below you to address it instead of asking if that person could please clarify in a non-threatening way. Its just insulting overall and shows your lack of respect for other members on this board.

Some time in future, universities will offer degrees in video game theory. Then we will be able interpret reality in terms of video game jargon, we'll analyse how the controls and palette of the game reflects the minds of the developers, look on games through a feminist perspective (I've not seen a single feminist game thus far; does this mean that the next generation, soaked in video games, won't respect women at all?), and we'll be able to serve the people reviews in journals, all built on references and our own, solid knowledgebase of video games.

I especially look forward to comparisons between the real world and fictious game worlds, and all the parallells that can be drawn, and perhaps even someone will reach conclusions of wonderful and imporant implications, such that, perhaps, the world is in fact best regarded a subset of a video game world?

I sure look forward to it. I enjoy high quality reviews! (Especially with lots of jargon I don't understand. It makes me feel like a pro when I read them.) But I prefer reviews with a moralistic edge. I hate it when critics throw good grades at all of those "deep" and "thought-provoking" books that in fact are unethical perversities. Not too long ago, you know, literary criticism wasn't only a medium to express opinions about taste, but also about politics. And that should be the next step of video game criticism.

Man, I never thought I'd miss the arguing....

I came across this article which discusses the different problems of review credibility with great insight: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/article … -Out-of-10

One snippet that especially rings true:

Yup. No doubt in my mind why this explains why so many new titles are sequels (or in the case of Ico/Shadow of the Collossus or even Final Fantasy, "close cousins"). The drawback here is simply if you don't care about the first 5 entries or so in a series, the 6th and 7th isn't likely to catch your fancy (sorry Tekken...6 was just as bad as 2 and 3 to me).

Right now, I'm at this kind of point with Super Street Fighter IV. I love the style of gameplay (Capcom SF-style), but I find myself liking SSFIV less and less the more I play it. Last couple weeks, I've spent much more time speculating on Marvel vs Capcom 3's details than playing SSFIV with any degree of interest with people (I enjoy watching the match streams more than actually playing). On the flipside, Blazblue...I drooled over this game for months (due to the pedigree and overall style) and less than 3 hours of play later, I was done and had written it off as a poor man's Guilty Gear (an opinion I haven't come close to budging on). So while I'm lukewarm on both warms, I'd be likely to review SSFIV semi-favorably and Blazblue very unfavorably.

On the other hand, there's the mess the Guitar Hero series de-evolved into. When after 2 lackluster entries, then they go back and mess up ALL the good notecharts from 1, 2 and 80's in Smash Hits, then screw up a Van Halen entry...Good lord, just SHOOT this franchise dead already!

With Final Fantasy, I wish we could go back to the times where we got one main FF title we got every one/two years. Fat that chance that ever happening again....

I don't mind the protracted development time between games so long as it results in a game I wanna play, let alone buy. I haven't felt that for FF in a very long time.

I wasn't really talking about the development time, I was talking more about just having one game with the name Final Fantasy come out instead of having fifty million spin-offs/remakes filling the void inbetween them.

Seriously, The Third Birthday is one of the most recent SE titles I'm actually looking forward to if we get it because it's an IP that hasn't seen an absurd amount of action.

Point is, you have to determine the credibility of a person's opinion yourself.

By saying that a person shouldn't write reviews, or that they ought to write better reviews, is an opinion in itself; no matter who you are, there are going to be people who think you have a credible opinion, and those who think you have an unjustified opinion; if "Shitty" reviews became ILLEGAL, no one would be allowed to write reviews AT ALL, because, like I just said, every reviewer is going to have people who think that they write "Shitty" reviews. I think everyone already knows my stance on law...

This sounds like a cop-out, but if you don't like reading (a) particular/certain review(s), then, don't read it/them!

Yup. Game reviews from official publications and other news outlets are little more than outsourced marketing, these days.

However, even if I was a professional...ahem *professional* reviewer, I'd find my euphemisms for "Crappy," so that I satisfy the company's desire for me not to lambaste one of their crappy games, but still communicate to the public that they ought to avoid the game. Gotta find a happy moderate in life!

That all said, I still believe all manner of reviews still have their place; there's a lot of things I wouldn't have known about if it hadn't been for reviews; just browsing the inventory at the store is one thing, but actually being told, "Hey, you oughta check this game out, and here's why..." still tells you a whole lot more than the description on the back of the packaging.

Beyond Good & Evil, I never would've looked twice at, much less even seen once, if it hadn't been for the short paragraph in EGM. I remember having to pull it out from behind a bunch of other crap when I was looking for it on the shelf after reading the review...it had already gone down to $20 by then, too, so it was getting phased off of shelves! I would've gladly paid $50 for it, too; short yes, but, MAN, was it ever a sweet experience...

There ARE reviews that DROP the ball, like EGM's review of Drakengard for the PS2, and the guy rated it down for the suggested incest that was part of the plot; now, I'm against incest and all, but that's a part I can ignore; it's not like the game was PROMOTING incest - the world of Drakengard was SUPPOSED to be messed up, and that's why I enjoyed it; it really was along the lines of a Greek or Renaissance era tragedy. Not everything can be candy land, y'know?

For the most part, I often read reviews for THE WRITER'S OPINION. Sometimes, they're ENTERTAINING to read! Imagine that, reading for entertainment's sake. I don't always agree with the writer, but if they still make me laugh my ass off, it's actually fun to read, but I often end up saying, "Damn, you're funny! But, I'm still going to play that game anyway. Thanks for the laughs, though! I never would've looked at it that way!"

Super Mario Galaxy 2, I've played plenty of Mario games enough before to know it's going to be good; all I need to know is when it's coming out (it already has, but just as an example...), but if you want to write a review anyway, and maybe throw in some jokes about how the things you do in video-games are actually quite absurd, okay, sure, shoot!

Sin & Punishment, though, was a franchise I've never heard of, until I read reviews, and figured out that it was actually supposed to be some kind of shooter. From the sound of it, I would've figured it was some kind of FPS like Doom, or more recently, Gears of War. So, yeah, I'm gonna wanna read about something I've never heard the likes of, before.

I think that certain things have to be mentioned for a review to be good. I'm gonna make a list and people can tell me what they think.

1. Enemy AI
2. Controls
3. Mechanics (Hit detection, character movement & animations, etc.)
4. Level Design
5. Difficulty
6.

Doesn't it depend on the genre? These categories don't really work for reviewing a new Rock Band game.

Yea. The list isn't complete. I'd say this list applies to the action genre.