How broken is the current Game Review process?

[caliblue15]

Should you really be taking any notice of Game Reviews anymore?

Is the whole game review system not giving us what we want, a non biased review of the latest, greatest game of that time?

It probably is looking back at some previous reviews. Lets take a look back in time.

We dont have to go back far do we to see the reviews and scoring for Rockstars GTA4. Some 99% (ok maybe 98) gave the game 10/10, 100/100, etc, ad nauseum. Lets face it this is the moment that the game review system become corrupted and a standard for scoring was set. The general consensus over GTA4 is not too good afterall with failings pointing to lack of story / bad story, some call the graphics into question and others have faults based on their own perception of the game. It is certainly in no position to sit back and revel in the review scoring it was given.

Lets also take a look at one of the greatest FPS (for the majority) currently available, the Call of Duty series. Its safe to say that COD in its latter offering (4+W@W) are the current king of online rambo type games and why not, Its fantastic in nearly all aspects on and offline, we will leave it up to you to review the review scores for this. While you are also reviewing old reviews take a look at some of the reviews for Gears of War 2. Again by all accounts another fantastic game and was well recieved in the game community, faultless.

I think we can safely assume that great games get great reviews and bad ones get properly beaten to the edge of the internet forever, a bit like the review for Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing Review. It scores 1.0 by the way and here is a couple of quotes :-

“Just how bad is Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing? It’s as bad as your mind will allow you to comprehend.”

“It is so disturbingly bad that even its budget price tag seems like a slap in the face. It really makes you wonder if the company that put out this dreck even took so much as a half minute to glance at the game that it was releasing. The game’s readme file does assert that the game was thoroughly tested on various PCs, but the end result seems to suggest otherwise. The fact is, even if you tried, you couldn’t play Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing the way it was seemingly intended to be played, and even if you could, you wouldn’t want to. “

See thats a review, reading that does it justice and you would not buy it.

So do you the reviewer want to create a loyal group of readers that trust your input and reviews, do you want them to read about future game reviews on your site? The name of the game says yes, you need the loyal to come back.

So the challenge is this, Can you really justify giving a game such as GTA4 10/10 and GOW2 10/10 or COD4 10/10 and then give KILLZONE2 a 9 or future title less? When you said that GTA4 will blow you away and that GOW2 is the what you need to buy an xbox for did you also remind your readers that they didnt have a good story or that multiplayer was serious broken and that some games were missing CO-OP and thus marking them down for it? No, didnt think so.

Please do your fans a favor and provide them with a real review based on real things that we need to know and at the same time keep the fluidity and scoring system the same across all games no matter what platform they come on. A real gamer knows that a good game is a good game no matter what platform it is on. Your broken review systems only fuel what is meant to be an “enjoyable experience”, one of “entertainment” into a festival of hatred for one another. Remember this, when checking out a review always look back at some of the previous big titles and see what they had to say about them as well.

Thanks for reading.

http://www.vgwatchdog.com/?p=21215