Many used Metacritic reviews to hate on BFA. And BFA definitely had horrible issues but I can no longer trust the reviews from there.
I recently saw a video of how Kojima Productions Death Stranding received amazing reviews on Steam but had horrible reviews on meta critic. The only difference between these sites is that Steam requires the person to purchase the game before reviewing it.
Then this brings to memory the metacritic reviews of Warcraft III reforged. Yes that game had serious issues but man I cant say that I can look at this site as seriously now that a well received game is getting so much hate from people who likely did not buy the game.
never trust any review.
Professional critics are completely out of touch and only in it for money directly from those are reviewing.
And the consumer review bomb things now for some reason.
If so, high sales doesn’t indicate high quality.
Well it honestly depends on why their bombing the game in the first place. Take GTA 5 and OpenIV for example. Take Two tried take down modding and players showed their disgust though reviews on almost all the R* games. And it was thankfully reversed. This did happen years ago of coarse.
Most of the review bombs i come across are mostly because the company was doing something shady or silly.
Brigading against and fangirling over aside, simple scores are horrible for reviews;
Different people like different genres
Different aspects of a game hold different weights for some people (story, gameplay, etc)
They might not be a fan of the series and lack perspective of something a fan like yourself would care about
They might be a longtime fan and have a bias towards something being a way you dont like.
and of course theres the concern of honesty
Numbered reviews are generally bad, especially since people tend to grade it on an academic level where a 75 is average for them and anything below 65 is failing. Even professional reviewers are known to not be able to spend a lot of time with a game, or might have to review games they have no idea about or how to play. The best thing you can do is to do your own research.
How is it not justifed? Do you have other ideas to get the consumer’s voice out there other then review bombing to show their disgust against something like what Take Two did, or even more recently, against Blizzard’s questionable changes to the Remake of Warcraft 3, that even has a bit of a questionable bit of ToS that said something along the lines of “Mortal rights” or something?
Companies aren’t gonna get the message unless something hurts their profit flow. Lets be honest here.
There is no reason to give a game a high score either, unless you truly believe it to be an accurate reflection of the game.
If you are gonna use this argument, you have to be consistent. You can’t cherry pick negatives and just leave anything positive. Otherwise, it’s just one-sided and inconsistent.
I never seen any positive review bombs, and even if i did, their more or less pretty rare.
Either that or your referring to professional critics being bought by the companies to give 10’s and 9’s, which yeah, i seen a lot of, and that is bad too.
its petty and arrogant to think you have the right to lie to people, misuse and abuse a review site, and compromise the integrity of what a review is, so much so i and many others no longer can believe what they say any more, just because you don’t like a decision the company made.
Yes there are plenty of other avenues to let a company know how you feel.
Boycots, reddit, forums if they have them, phone calls, letter writing campaigns, emails.
yes that is true. Any review should be accurate.
But at least when a game has stupidly high scores you can tell its because people are having fun. As opposed to giving a game a 1 because it doesn’t support cloud backups like what happened with animal crossing.
Fans will fight 0’s with 10s all the time if its a big franchise, but you’re correct it’s usually professional critics being very generous for brownie points… although fan “bot” accounts are becoming popular but more for movies/cinema.
You will notice lots of positive reviews with the same “scripts” from throw away accounts, just a few words switched around, no real points or reasons for their score just very generalized comments. A lot of these sites even ignore 0-1’s to avoid trolls yet count every 10.
It may sound a bit conspiracy-ish but you do notice it happening if you look, but like I said you see it more with big film releases but it’s creeping into triple A games.
Agreed. Never once followed or trusted review whether it’s a movie or a game. I realized reviews were BS when some PS1 classic had horrible critic reviews, but the player base loved them.
Wasn’t there some critic who gave Cuphead a poor review, but he could barely complete the tutorial stage?
You say this as it takes away from people making constructive criticisms at the game without even mentioning the decision or just passively mention it or not let it affect it. You still have those.
Not to mention, a decision of what the company made is part of the review when were reviewing sequels or patches and so on, on what has changed, what remain the same and so on. So why is that okay, but talking about something like a corporation taking down a mod tool down which will impede everybody’s ability to mod isn’t?
Boycotts never work. They in general never work. You need a majority of people to stop playing that game or not watch/buy anything in order to have it to work, and they don’t work because more people buy/play/watch the game/movie.
You’re most likely going to get an automated or copy/paste response form this avenue. Sure, you might get a response that isn’t automatic or copy/paste, but that’s rare these days. And even then, your comments and such might not be considered even. All it matters is if your still paying or not.
And how often you think they will check them? Heck, how often Blizzard checks the GD? Not to mention, this isn’t even taking into a possibility that both the previous and this method, their also mostly likely going to give you a non-answer.
No. You said any review should be accurate.
Fun or not, you have to give an accurate review.
Having cloud backups are pretty useful, don’t you think? I mean, isn’t Animal Crossing Online or something? Or has both Single-Player and Online? what if something goes wrong with the save and you can’t open it? And it’s on the switch mind you, so i can’t go to the files and edit the save files like i can on the PC. (provided if it’s Singleplayer) Not to mention the possiblity of wanting to take that save file to other switches or …whatever. I don’t know what else you do with cloud saves, mind filling me in with that?
Look, i understand you think review bombing for something small is petty… actually i don’t, it’s not pet, but i sort of get it…
But here’s a wiki for all the review bombs. And note the fact at the beginning of this convero, i said “Depends on the situation”. So if were talking about Valve fanboys review bombing any valve projects that aren’t Half Life 3, then yes, that’s unjustified and just dumb. If were talking about a game that has DRM that is invasive or hampers the performance like Spore, DOOM, Assassin’s creed, then it is justified.
I would argue it’s already in “Triple AAA” games, it’s just been subtle up until this point.
Of course when you are unhappy its important to give feedback. But a lack of mod support does not make a game a 1 out of 10 so to rate it that way is a flat out lie. It would still be a good product.
Review sites are not a way to protest.
if it doesn’t work, its because the issue didn’t affect that many to begin with. Or else they would have left as well.
the way it works isn’t about getting a reply.
Its to show them just how many people care by clogging up their inbox with it.
probably a fair bit if they do their research.
it should and i stand by that.
I also stand by that with a 1 out of 10 you cant tell if it is good or not because it could be so glitchy you fall through the floor when you load, or because you cant play as a blond cat.
When its 10 out of 10 its probably a lie but its far far far more likely its because they had a good time with it, rather than because you now CAN play as that blond cat.
It doesnt make it okay, but it does make them worth more.
They also reviewed a fire emblem game calling it the wrong title, and reviewed another game in the series before that giving advice to do things you should do the literal opposite of.