Game Reviews and Trustworthiness

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Do any of you find mainstream videogame reviews, be they from "official" critics or the average user, to be incredibly untrustworthy? Because there are a ton of games that have gotten wonderful reviews that I've disliked (for instance, the highest-rated game on GameRankings is The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, which I disliked), and I've also played plenty of games that have gotten average to bad reviews from both "official" reviewers and users such as Suikoden IV that I actually thought were pretty decent (I'm also playing a poorly-reviewed game, DemiKids Light Version, which I'm actually liking, as well). Do any of you trust or distrust the likely neurotypical reviewers that dominate "official" videogame opinion? I should note that I myself am a game critic, and post my reviews to this site:

http://jmgreviews.wikidot.com/

I think that you all may find my reviews more trustworthy since I've played more than two hundred games, mostly Japanese RPGs, to completion, and I'm on the autism spectrum like most of you.

I only trust Edge and Eurogamer. I used to love watching Consolevania/Videogaiden, but that stopped ages ago.
I'd never even consider the opinions of any of the official mags/sites.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp8nk6IKVXA[/youtube]

Liking a game is a subjective thing, so something you don't like might rate very high. The opposite is true, some people love the insanely hard Mario ROM hacks or dwarf fortress yet the mainstream gamer will not like them at all.

Another thing with mainstream reviews is that they have an incentive to give good reviews, particularly to AAA titles. Since many of the sites and magazines have reviewing as their business, then keeping business good is a priority. If you gave really honest reviews then a game publisher might think twice about sending you a pre-release review copy for reviewing. If you get a review out much later than everyone else that hurts business a lot.

I agree, it is subjective to a degree but games need to be reviewed on the level of innovation they bring to the table and the production values they offer. Partly it is to do with marketing and money and I definitely think game reviewers can be biased but it's good to keep in mind that reviews are simply opinions.

Game sites are notorious for corruption. I only use metacritic.

The game reviewers are their opinions, not facts. I don't take it seriously. It just gives me an idea what the game is like.

And this is one of the reasons why I don't trust reviews. If a reviewer can't give an honest opinion, how can I trust it? I think that's blackmail. But, it's not just due to corruption that I don't bother with reviews anymore. It's that reviewers, at the end of the day, aren't impartial, and their opinion is no more "professional" than mine. And, these days I disagree with most reviews. Anything that's CoD, or CoD like receives a heavily inflated review score, despite bringing nothing new to the table, and being the exact same game that everyone's played a million times over, assuming they think it was that great to begin with(I don't). Everything that isn't CoD is criticized for not being CoD. Ok, I suppose it isn't that extreme. But it seems as long as something has guns, or is ultra-violent, or is in some way as unoriginal as possible, it'll receive a good score. Is it any wonder why I dislike this gen?

I used to frequent metacritic, but I don't go there at all anymore. I used to take the time to read the various reviews, and form my opinions based on the reasons the reviewer had for liking or disliking various elements of the game, rather than take the average review score at face value. I was never so dense as to take the metascore and base my opinions solely on that, unless it scored below 60. It was through other people's opinions that I was able to develop my own. But, I don't go there anymore for two reasons. One is that the purpose of the site's redesign seemed to be to make it as inconvenient as possible. I really don't get why sites think they have to "modernize" for the sake of making things look better at the expense of convenient navigation. I'm sure it's the same logic that women use when they wear heels in a snowstorm. Style over practicality. I also don't go there anymore, because I know what I like now, and don't have to consult reviews, which is just as well, since I disagree with most of them now.

Last edited by Tross on 02 Mar 2012, 1:32 am, edited 1 time in total.

I enjoy reading video game magazines, and I like reading the reviews, but ultimately I don't take their score into consideration when I get a game. I get what looks fun to me. I've played and liked many games that aren't considered "good". I never really trust game scores seeing as that's just one person's opinion, or maybe it's not really their opinion and they were just paid off.

I mostly only trus the show Goog Game here in aus, unlike other reviewers these guys give fair reviews where they really tell if something is annoying, and a rather honest about the thoughts, plus they actually know what they are talking about. They always give positives and negatives, what other people might like or dislike about it, and I do not get the feeling that they are trying to suck up to anyone, some really get blasted for legit reasons, even big games that you would expect very little complaints will have them mentioned, even in Skyrim. But they are nor mean about it like some online reviewers are.