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FWIW, just got my December 2007 edition of PC Gamer mag. It gives Crysis a 98% rating! Wow. I'm assuming the demo is just a taste of what's to come. The demo was cool, but nothing really all that spectacular IMHO. I'll definitely buy it. Just hope with that 98% rating it's the best damn game I've ever played (even better than Half-Life 2 when it came out).
In the Highs/Lows section summary, for the lows they don't mention anything about "stiff system requirements" or anything of the sort. So maybe there is hope. Most reviews knock down a few points for that. Not that is should play on a GMA 950 or anything, but it should at least run on a 6600 Ultra or better GPU...
Hmm.. that's making me consider buying it for my laptop (7600)...
I usually trust PC Gamer when it comes to reviews.. they always do a good job and every game I have bought that has a 90% or higher is usually that good.
I'm sure Crysis, the final version at least, will run on the lower end cards like 6600. There would be a lot of outrage if it didn't, and it would scare a lot of buyers from buying it (not to say it hasn't already).
Well, I'm sure there's SOME bias. But they need to be honest for the most part, otherwise they'll piss off the people who actually buy the product. Give a game a 98% rating but it's nothing but boring and buggy, then that reviewer and editor need to be fired immediately. And that mag will lose all credibility.
Does this score surprise you? Hyped games *always* get ridiculously high scores. Sometimes they deserve it, often they don't. Quite often, the reviewers just look like idiots a year or two later.
Yeah, and santa claus exists too... Sorry to burst your bubble, but we don't live in such a perfect world. Reviewers *are* biased, and they have absolutely no need to be accurate. They have a need to satisfy the publisher so they get treated to exclusives and previews before everyone else.
But even if they that wasn't the case, people still tend to rate hyped games higher, simply because you're so stoked about them that you don't notice the problems.
And as for pissing off the buyers? Come one... What's going to piss people off the most? Criticising Crysis when we already know that huge numbers of people will adore it no matter what? (see the aforementioned point about hyped games. Non-reviewers are even more susceptible to this effect) Or giving it a better score than it deserved? Sure, in the latter case some will say it was rated too high, but at the same time, we also know that an awful lot of people will love the game simply because of the hype level, so giving it a high score can be justified.
In short, when reviewing a high-profile uber-hyped game such as this, you piss of *both* your customers and the publisher by *not* giving the game a high score, regardless of whether it's deserved.
On the other hand, if you give it, say, 98%, the publisher will love you, which is good, and you're assured that *many* of your readers will agree with you as well.
i know that their sister mag, maximum pc, separates themselves from the ad dept just for the sake of keeping reviews unbiased. they have no clue who's running an ad in the publication. one big slap in the face came when they did a review on an iomega product (forgot which one) and gave it a terrible review. and just what happened to be on the adjacent page? a full sized ad of the product they dissed.
one thing i notice about forum reviews is that if you don't agree with the majority or bash the product you disliked then your review isn't and "honest opinion"
i don't like gta, i don't like ddr, i don't like guitar hero, all the metal gear games bore me. if i were to review any of those people would swear i was giving a biased, unfair review. but those games aren't to my taste. and that's a honest opinion. to say anything i'd be lying to myself.
What do ads have to do with it?
They know full well who gave them access to the game. They know very well who's the publisher, who's going to decide whether or not to give them an exclusive on the Next Big Game.
True, ads can be an extra complication, but doing this doesn't solve the problem that if you get a game from publisher X, you know publisher X might be unhappy if you slaughter it.
Well, a review is supposed to be a bit more than "my honest opinion".
If you just say "I didn't like it", you're a pretty lousy reviewer.
Your target audience is people who are considering buying the game. Obviously they have some kind of interest in the genre, so it's completely useless to know what people who have no interest in the genre thinks.
So yes, it would be a biased unfair review. Biased because you failed to see past your own personal preferences and tastes. And unfair because you're obviously not the game's target audience.
When some time has passed after the release of a game, I usually check this site:
http://www.metacritic.com/ It collects reviews of the most known and respected sites and magazines from all around the world. I'm always especially interested in those reviews which give scores lower than the average.
LOL. Reviews are
not supposed to be "your honest opinion". That's the strangest thing I've ever heard.
Reviews are supposed to be informative and objective. PC gaming magazines have all sorts of checks and balances to make sure a reviewer doesn't post some ridiculous score.
I.e. Some reviewer might decide to give "Shaq Fu" a crazy score like 100% simply because they enjoy stupid games. Or they might decide to give Half Life 2 a 0% score because "they didn't like it". Those reviewers would probably be fired on the spot for not having a brain.
Reviewers have a duty to their customers, to provide informative and unbiased reviews. (Of course there is also a lot of behind the scenes manipulation by big developers and publishers, but what can you do?)
I'm impressed by the Crysis score, but we'll have to wait until the rest of the reviews are published. I'm annoyed that it requires 12GB of hard drive space, laptops aren't built for that kind of reckless memory usage.
Reviewers are reviewers. I don't know about you but the big budget titles which are often advertised on some of the big sites, are being paid to advertise there. They will not bash the game when they often spend half the website advertising the game.
If I want honest reviews I go to independent sites which have little bias because they have no reason to be biased.
Before anyone bashes me for saying that, not all sites are like that and some are. Point is these are sites are business and businesses want what ladies and gentleman? Profits, yes.
Besides everyone knows I provide the most ubiased, greatest reviews around.
Getting Call of Duty 4, Monday. Look for a review coming up later this week.
Dear Lord, Jalf. You never used to be this seriously disenfranchised with the world. What the heck happened? Avatar changes and so do you.
Anyway, I'd shy away from saying that hyped games automatically recieve good scores because of evidence pointing to the opposite. *cough* Daikatana *cough*
Reviewers have no obligation to bend the truth as long as they have a reputable enough publication. Magazines with clout don't need to cater to publishers because the publishers need the magazines either way in order to appear respectable and worthy enough of a high-level review. Smaller publications might run into the issue though.
It seems as though reviewers fall into two categories, overly harsh or overly positive. Thankfully, services like metascore offer a better view of how a game really plays.
The more important reviews to read are usually the lower ones. See what it is that people hate about something.
I don't have any reviews up myself right now, but I do have some written, and some being written. I decided in the end, to give no score. If all your after is a bunch of scores to justify your opinion or thoughts of a game, well too bad. I personally read reviews to collect information about a product, I don't really want the reviewers opinion, though I do want the human factor of his opinion.
That I think is the most difficult part of a review, controlling the amount of your personal judgement and opinion against the facts. And so to speak, I'm not surpsied to see Crysis get a 98%.
wth!! 98%!! wow that game must really be something! close to the proverbial perfect game! im with pc gamer, those guys have been around for years and know wat they are doing.
Jalf uve got kickass points that make alot of sense in the gaming world
totally agree with you, about not being too honest on hyped up games. + a small group or 1 person opinion really doesnt do justice to any game imo. its really personal preference and stuff.
I used to review games and PC hardware for a reputable site several years ago. I was completely detached from the publisher, developer, etc. I was given something to review with a deadline, wrote the review, submitted it for editing, and it got published.
We were always subjective, and had zero influence or pressure from either our own site or game developer/publisher. Reviews are like reports. They need to indicate what it offers, how engaging the gameplay is, a little about the plot (if any), and overall results.
Yes there will be some personal injection and opinion, which you qualify as such using terms like "*I* think" or "In my opinion". That just means the reader takes that opinion with a grain of salt. The more established a writer, the more you might respect or just plain ignore their opinion.
Like I said, the moment it's obvious you're completely biased towards a game or publisher, you lose all credibility. That goes both ways, not always for hyping a game. If you slam a game harshly that doesn't deserve it, then you lose credibility there too.
I thought it was supposedly billed as the "spiritual successor" of the system shock series which qualifies as hype in my book considering the influence of the system shock series, that along with its DX10 graphical features don't categorise the game under "sleeper hit".
Computer Gaming World - now "Games for Windows" - gave crappy scores for both Halo 2 and Shadow Run. These games were Microsoft published, as is the magazine. That is what respectable publications do. Sure they might bias it a bit by giving a score a 92% instead of 89% just to put it in the 90%+ category, but to give something an 98% when it should really be a 78% is just plain dumb.
But that's not always the case. Especially not for print mags.
Your description is how it works *most* places *most* of the time. And then there are the specials, like that world-exclusive preview of the next WoW expansion, or the next big thing from Nintendo, where it might be tempting to be a *bit* more careful about what ends up in the article.
Agreed
Bioshock wasn't hyped? Only if you've lived on mars for the last 2 years...
Shocking. It was a port of a what, 2-3 year old game?
It was hyped when it came out for XBox, yes. When it came out for PC, no one really cared.
It does kinda prove my point though. When a new, hyped, high-profile game comes out, everyone's excited and gives it high scores (look at Halo2 when it came out on XBox).
And if people were to review it two years later? (As in the PC release) It gets a very mediocre score. Perhaps it was a bit overrated to begin with?
But yes, I never said that "no game has ever gotten a fair review".
I just said that there's a tendency, for multiple reasons, for high-profile games to get good reviews. Part of it is simple psychology, and part of it is (sometimes) due to a desire to not upset people (publishers or readers)
But come on, have you never bought a super-hyped game, sat down and thought it was the best game ever for an afternoon or two? And then... somehow it morphed into a sorta ok'ish game after the first couple of days?
Of course the same can happen during reviews. You buy into the hype, you play the game, and you simply ignore all the negative bits, and focus so much on everything that's been hyped to hell and back, and so you give it a great score. Because, at the time, you thought it was worth it. A month later, you might have wanted to subtract 20% from the score, but then it's too late.
Or read *any* site or mag's preview features of something new and exciting. Never a negative word. Does that mean they're all corrupt and have been bribed? Of course not, it simply means that they're human, and they see something new, and hear someone talk about how awesome it is, and they start believing it.
To the rest of us, who weren't at the Valve offices hearing Gabe speak about HL3 or whatever, it's a bit easier to be objective. But when you're flown in from across the world to see the unveiling of, say, the PS4, you naturally get excited, whether or not it's actually justified.
Humans are easy to influence. And game reviewers as a whole aren't the most professional group of reviewers there is.
I'm excited about Crysis for one reason (in fact, I will finally be purchasing a new laptop mainly to play Crysis, and because it's about time)...
I loved Far Cry.
And it wasn't because of Far Cry's cutting-edge graphics...I finished Far Cry on a P4M 2.0 GHz Toshiba laptop with a GeForce 5600...I had to turn everything off and play at 800x600...
BUT...for the first time since Future Shock and Skynet, I felt complete freedom in an FPS...even the outdoor levels on Half-Life 2, the successor to the story driven FPS with scripted sequences, seemed very linear to me...if you looked at a map, they were linear...only one way to go...highly polished product with a great story but a somewhat limited world...
Far Cry gave me freedom...I spent the first hour or so just walking around looking at stuff and that was at 800x600...Crytek has earned a 'I'll try your next product because your first one was so great' purchase from me...just as I'll buy anything Blizzard puts out these days because of the quality of their games...they've never disappointed me...
I used to subscribe to PC Gamer (1994 to 2001), and never regretted purchasing any game with a score of 85% or greater...I look at Gamespot now, and have never been disappointed when purchasing a game with 90% or greater and enjoy most of the 80% and greater crowd...and that's regardless of genre...
PCs are nice because you can usually always download a demo prior to purchase, and the demo (unlike movie trailers) doesn't even show the best parts of the game...if you like the demo, you'll probably feel the money and time spent on the game was worthwile...
And I'm not sure you can look at reviews historically (although Game Informer does it near the end of their mag)...Doom was incredible in the early 90's...revolutionary...deserved nothing but praise...but the game, today, looks almost as silly as Wolfenstein 3D, and it's not that fun anymore...I still play Master of Orion and Master of Magic and Mechwarrior 2 and X-Com and Duke Nukem 3D and Curse of Monkey Island despite the graphics because they're fun...
PS. I never understood the fanaticism for Halo, Halo 2 and Halo 3...of course, I never had an XBox...I always felt those FPS games were WAAAAAAY behind PC based FPS games in both graphics and gameplay...the first time my buddy showed me Halo 2, he was so excited about being able to drive vehicles and then I showed him UT2004...welcome to the PC...Microsoft was just trying to make a quick buck off converting Halo 2 to the PC...
Well, I'm assuming most of us gamers here are the "hardcore" ones that are picky with the games they choose. But for many of the gamers out there who don't give as much of a crap as we do, they are most likely to agree with the review. It's pretty much like how parents tell their children not to do what they always see on television, for example, those kung-fu fights. Television has the greatest exposure and those "naive" viewers (i.e. the children) are inclined to follow what they think "it's popular". The parents know it's not good. They can scold, warn or try to stop their children, but they can't always be sure they won't do it. The game publishers know that there's a relatively small (it's not really small, it's just small when you compare it) niche for hardcore gamers with exquisite tastes. Think of film critics bashing movies. You think the viewers care? Time and time again, the viewers didn't care if respected movie critics such has Roger Ebert said a lot of **** about a movie, say "Resident Evil: Apocalypse" which Ebert put in his 'worst movies' list. Well, it's not really a good movie IMHO. But you can't change the fact that the action scenes and stuff like that made it sell. They have these reviews and advertising for the masses. Reviews, as most of you agreed can be tampered by the publishers themselves to make it look nice, are advertisements themselves. Have someone "credible" who has a lot of exposure give a game a high rating can do wonders. By the time those people have bought the game and realize (it can very, very subjective though) it's not as good as what the reviews say, it's too late. He spent his money already. You can't just return the game because "it sucks". It's not false advertising either since these "reviews" are made by other people. Bad reviews can be subject to scrutiny over time as you guys said, but "tweaking" reviews to be biased doesn't always have to be in excess. Subtle, but important and discreet, changes can be made or added to give a big a effect. I can't remember the times I've seen review say "This is the greatest invention since sliced break" and similar derivatives.
Well, sorry for the mushy and shallow explanation of mine. It's 1:30 am here as of this time of writing and I'm kinda sleepy. I'll probably clear it up a bit later.
@ IWantMyMTV
Crysis and the newer games is the reason why I want to get a new system as well. But in my case, a desktop. I'm even going to shell out a bit more than what I intended to. I'm getting a Geforce 8800 GT instead of the HD 2600 XT GDDR4 AIW version. Gah. Can't believe I'm sarcificing the All-In-Wonder card (which I need for my video editing) for more gaming power.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
