Poll: Which do you Trust More, User Scores or Critic Scores?

[HardkorSB]

I usually prefer reading individual reviews rather than look at scores.
I'm looking for intelligent and well thought out opinions.
If a person can't explain properly why they gave that particular score then I don't care if it's a critic or random person, I won't take their opinion into consideration.

That being said, critics usually explain their ratings better.

With some critics, I know their tastes well enough to know that, for example, if they praise something for X and Y, I will most likely dislike that thing for the same exact reasons.

 

[SecondPrize]

Are you talking like an aggregate of each? I trust neither. There's one critic I trust, Tom Chick, but I don't just look at the score he gives because our tastes differ. The reason I trust him is because he's a bonafide, professional critic. When you read his reviews, you know why he feels the way he does about a game because he explains it. You also believe what he's writing, there's no sense he's just scoring something like he does because everyone else either loves or hates the game and shitting out some words to go along with it.
He is the only critic I trust because he's the only one I know of who acts like a professional, despite coming from a film background (I think) rather than journalism. If anyone wants to be a vidya journalist, look to Chick's example, because he seems to have come into it with as little schooling and real world experience as anyone else in the gaming press yet appears to have decided that he was going to learn a bit about his chosen profession and actually do it well.
User reviews are useless in aggregate as so many users seem to feel only two scores exist, 1 and 10. In the absence of a review by Chick, however, I prefer skimming user reviews for bits about what i'm concerned or excited about in a game rather than reading a few from critics because so few gaming reviewers seem to give the slightest damn about their credibility as professionals, so I attribute none to them.

 

[Vykrel]

critic scores by far. with critics, you only have to worry about a handful of them giving disingenuous scores for the sake of page hits, whereas the public will give wrongful ratings en masse. they will give a game they are annoyed with for one reason or another a 0/10, and they will give the next Christopher Nolan film a 10/10 before it is even released.

i wish Rotten Tomatoes would add a gaming section, because it seems to be the one site where the audience scores are not completely ridiculous.

 

[Kingjackl]

Critics. They're paid to do it, they no the craft and history better than most user reviews do. All you really need to do with critics is find the ones whose views tend to line up with yours. My first port of call for critics is usually Jim Sterling, Joab Gilroy from Ausgamers and most PC Gamer writers.

That said, user reviews are useful for finding out about little details that a critic might overlook. So long as you avoid the ones that are either useless gushing or petulant bashing, you can't go too wrong with them.

 

[EHKOS]

Neither, I watch gameplay videos and decide whether or not it would be a game I would enjoy. There have been enough times where there's been someone who I've looked up to, or had a good friend, tell me that a game is good and I've ended up not liking, so I trust myself and only myself when it comes to buying games.

 

[CeeBod]

I usually start with the critics, and then look to user reviews for specific stuff, and I only usually decide to buy something after checking out both.

As a recent-ish example, Total War: Atilla has a metacritic score of 80/100, and as a fan of all the Total War games, I had it on my wishlist, and was thinking of buying it. Then I saw that user reviews were mixed, so I started to look at what some of them were complaining about. Mostly they were protests about DLC (as usual!), but there were also a few that posted in a very detailed way exactly why they were so disappointed with Atilla. Reading what they said made me think I'd likely feel the same way, so I didn't buy it, despite the good reviews - sometimes just identifying with 1 random person's review is enough.

 

[Silvanus]

I trust critic scores more than I do user scores, but tend to base decisions more on gameplay videos than either.

 

[Zhukov]

Critics.

By a fucking huge margin.

"The Public" is mostly made up of gibbering, inarticulate cretins with petty axes to grind.

When it comes to actual purchasing decisions however, I generally go on a combination of gut instinct and Youtube gameplay videos.

 

[Dizchu]

On the flipside, fuck the obscene levels of importance that users give to score numbers in the first place.

Actually this is a good point. I love aggregate review scores (well, the Rotten Tomatoes model more than the Metacritic one). Not because it is an "objective" measurement of quality, but because it indicates the likelihood that I'll enjoy a certain game/film/album. If 90% of critics liked something, I can't "disagree" with that. Anyone who is so offended by review aggregates (or even scores) are displaying a sort of insecurity. As if their opinion needs to be validated by others. Like what you like, dislike what you dislike. Don't feel bad about it.

The point of review scores and aggregates is to provide another tool (in addition to promotional material, gameplay demos, audio samples, etc.) to determine whether or not you want to experience a certain film/album/game/etc. I've also found that ratings offer another purpose. Instead of determining if something is good or bad, they can instead be a means of venturing into unfamiliar genres or encouraging people to experience things they might not have experienced otherwise. There's plenty of albums that I've listened to not because I had a preconceived idea of what I wanted to hear, but because the great critical reception they got made me intrigued, they made me want to try something new.

 

[veloper]

For aggregates on Metacritic, the public wins as long as there's at least hundreds of votes.
When I look back, the scores just happen to line up a little more with what I think, which is usually more negative than the big reviews tell you.
I believe even the 10s and zeros work in aggregate, when the population is large enough. It's crude but it gets fair results.

For individual reviewers outside of the aggregate, it depends entirely on who's available.

 

[Major_Tom]

I don't trust arbitrary numbers at all.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

it highly depends for video games, but usually I'll find some nice medium in the middle.

I don't pay attention to the numbers too often, because someone else's 9/10 does not mean jack shit to me really, I usually find those few reviews for both users and critics that can really tell me what the game is about (gameplay and story wise) and depending on the details of those reviews I'll watch some trailers for the game and typically go from there if it's a "must buy" or a "down the road on a steam sale" or "hell no" purchase.


that changes for movies more though, I tend to agree alot more with audiences on rotton tomatoes over critics, pretty much any "critically acclaimed" movie I won't care for, but all the action/B movies that come out I tend to eat up when critics destroyed it in reviews.

 

[Xyebane]

I usually only trust either if there is a consensus between them.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

Critic reviews, when well written are singularly more valuable than a huge number of user reviews. I can trust a critic to be honest and unbiased about a games mechanics, features, story and their respective quality. I cannot trust most users due to fanboyism, trolls and how the internet brings out so much venom in people. Very few users will honestly critique a game...they usually love it or hate it with little in between.

There is a new thread on this forum right now entitled "I liked Watch Dogs" wherein the OP and a small number of others extolled the games "virtues". How on Earth can anyone trust the opinion of a gamer who says a game so awful was "good"? It brings into question any other game thereafter described by them as "good"

Saying that, there are many occasions where a "user" review can have significant, as much or possibly more weight than a non-critic's review otherwise might:

- A friend. If a friend, in conversation, describes a game as good I am much more likely to take their word for it. Why? Because I know their standards, I know what they like and dislike, I can quiz them on any specifics about which I'm curious and form a very solid opinion of my own based on it.
- Aggregate scores. Steam now has a simple thumbs up/down system and a comments/reviews thing for games. While I still take them with a pinch of salt, more often than not there are actually well written, concise reviews with useful information from which I can form an opinion. And if a game has 1,000 reviews with 90% "Overwhelmingly Positive" then I would also consider that as a worthy endorsement. 1-100 users can be faked, can be bombed, can be gamed, but several hundred+ I can have some faith in.
- Even on the Internet there are users whose opinion I can value. Often on this site, a fellow escapist has answered my questions about their comments regarding a game or its features. It's usually me being sceptical, curious or intrigued and when asking for more specifics they've rewarded me an insightful, honest, unbiased answer that I liked.

 

[Bad Player]

Users, but not as a whole.

Critics are bringing their own personal views into the review (like any person), and so are bringing their own personal likes/dislikes in terms of genre, how much they care about gameplay vs graphics vs story, what their standards are for good gameplay/graphics/story/etc, how much they know about the franchise, etc etc. All those things are going to affect the review, and I don't like to put my purchasing decisions in their hands when I know nothing about how close their preferences are to mine.

So that leaves users, but numerical scores aren't very helpful, due to all the ways they can be skewed in either way. Instead, I usually go to amazon or gamefaqs or someplace like that, and read the best positive review and the best negative review. This usually helps me understand the strong and weak points of the game the best, and since I know what I like or dislike in a game, I can usually get a pretty good feel of whether I'll like it or not.

 

[sageoftruth]

Can't favor one over the other when my trust in both bottoms out at zero. Just to be clear, I'm only talking about the scores. User/Critic opinions play a big role in my buying decisions, but the scores tacked on at the end really aren't necessary.

 

[Schadrach]

As a whole, critics. They don't give a game 0/5 because they dislike the DRM.

Instead of giving it 0/5 because the DRM prevents it from running on 15% of PCs, they give it 5/10 for having the wrong politics or 10/10 for having the right politics.

The upshot of user scores is even given the idiocy of the average user, they average out pretty well given enough reviews. Wisdom of the crowds seems to work out for reviews across a large enough dataset. Steam's system is actually pretty good for this, once the review count gets high enough.

 

[Darth Rosenberg]

Pft, I kick it X-Files: trust no one.

...except LP's. And some word of mouth. And a few reviews. And playing the game, if possible.

Smart people will use combinations of sources, so the question of which do you trust most betwixt 'critics' (whatever they really are in the games industry) and punters is a rather meaningless, coldly theoretical question.

 

[Womplord]

If you are looking for unknown/cult games, I would definitely go for the user score. Often sites like IGN or Gamespot will review the game even though they haven't even played through most of it. In cases like this there is a large disparity between user and critic score.

 

[Evonisia]

Critics most definitely. Users are the most polarising group in terms of score. Good luck getting a fairly consistent consensus among them. A game will get bombed or praised to high heaven. This is worsened for PC ports of games. A good port will get volleyed up the rankings, a bad port will get stamped on regardless of how good the games themselves are. It's understandable to a degree, but it leaves you with no sense of whether the game will be good post-patch.

I'd love for there to be a Rotten Tomatoes equivalent for video games[footnote]If there is one, let me know[/footnote]. Getting a percentage on how many people thought a game was good is much preferable to a score (which is provided additionally).