Which reviewer(s) do you trust most?

[UPRC]

Simple question. When you're on the fence about a game and need a well informed opinion to help you decide whether or not to make the purchase, who do you usually turn to for help?

For me, I go with Gametrailers' video reviews, IGN, or Zero Punctuation.

Why Gametrailers? They take a game and they do exactly what they should do, briefly state the good and bad without any silly analogies, stories, etc. They just tell you exactly what you need to know and they do a fair job of doing so.

IGN takes a lot of heat, but if you ignore the actual overall scores that they give games, they actually have fairly decent reviews. They've helped me make a few purchases and I find myself agreeing with their reviewers, or at least being able to understand where they are coming from with their opinions.

And Zero Punctuation.. Ah, dear Yahtzee. While it's hard to call what he does reviewing, he tells you exactly what the games are (albeit in a very silly way) and he'll let you know EXACTLY what you're buying. Good for him, too. He's informative while being funny as hell at the same time.


Also, I never look at review scores. Remember, it's the content that matters most. I say that as a reader as well as a reviewer myself. The number that someone assigns to a game is the least important part of any review in my honest opinion.

 

[sephiroth1991]

I trust this websites team of people, i trust Yahtzee to tell me the problems with a game, that's why he does it cos some reviews overlook problems.

 

[Vampire cat]

Me. Me. And only me =3. No one else that I know of likes the aspect of games that I do, so only I know what I want!

 

[Ninjamedic]

For Comedy: Yahtzee and Spoony
For Genuine Opinion: the escapists reviewers from The Funk to Miracle of sound.

 

[Julianking93]

Me since I review things.

But seriously, none. Hardly any major reviewer can be trusted since A) they normally won't have the same opinion as you and B) they're most likely getting paid to give a game a good review *stares at IGN*

 

[UPRC]

Nothing. Since about last year, after being sick of reviewers leading me this way and that, I vowed that from now on, I would get games based on gut instinct. And, weirdly enough, it works! I haven't bought a dud game since then, I just buy games based on how I feel about them, and what I know about them. You really would be surprised how well this works.

So essentially, I trust me.

I used to do that, but then I bought Robotron X.



Yeah. Robotron X.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

If people still talk about a game five years later then it was probably worth looking at. Anything before that is lies and misinformation.

 

[TheDuckbunny]

Gametrailers reviews, they're good quality methinks.
But then again I don't always let review scores influence my game purchases.

 

[jef91]

Nothing. Since about last year, after being sick of reviewers leading me this way and that, I vowed that from now on, I would get games based on gut instinct. And, weirdly enough, it works! I haven't bought a dud game since then, I just buy games based on how I feel about them, and what I know about them. You really would be surprised how well this works.

So essentially, I trust me.

Wow, you buy games based on what you know about them? Look out people this guy's got it down pat.

 

[Mechsoap]

yatzhee gives it a dimension and handle it like most gamers with a good sence of opservance

 

[Yumi_and_Erea]

Yahtzee and Philip M. Jackson (from How To Play).

I usually let "professional" reviews such as IGN fuck themselves.

 

[UPRC]

yatzhee gives it a dimension and handle it like most gamers with a good sence of opservance

Exactly why I like listening to what he has to say. He doesn't drone on about why the game should be praised for it's presentation or anything else that a typical gamer wouldn't mention. No, he hits out at the things that we, the average joes, would as well. That's why I find him to be very reliable. It's very hard to disagree with him, even when he takes games that I love and tears them apart.

 

[Koganesaga]

Honestly, all reviewers except yathzee can go to hell, however he's only spared on behalf of the fact that he's very funny. I've looked as reviews of games after I've played and enjoyed them to find they got very low scores. Good example was Monster Hunter Freedom Unite, I remember a site gave it a bad score and part of it's reasoning was lack of lock-on. First off, what kind of piss poor excuse is that in general? That's like saying Modern Warfare is terrible because of it's lack of lock-on, but it's not, it's terrible for hundreds of other reasons however that's not on the chopping block here. On to the specific, if you've played monster hunter for a fucking day you'd see having lock-on is a retarded idea, it would utterly remove the fun and challenge of the hunt, leaving you with pressing triangle until the monster is dead and then you feeding your disc to the closest dog because of how boring that was. A few other games that got misinterpreted are Demon's Souls and Disgaea, but I won't go into how those got screwed, though I will go with one that was over hyped IMO. Everyone was drooling and foaming at the mouth for God of War 3. I figured, what do I have to lose by playing the demo? So I go into the demo, relatively open minded, and about 10 minutes in my fingers started to hurt and all I'd done was overkilled a bunch of helpless fools. After I finished, I agreed it looked nice, but 9 hours of finger breaking overly-glorified slaughter-fest? I was insulted that it was so popular.

The point is the reviews are people's opinions, they're nothing that can be taken as a factual mathematical formula to determine if a game is good or shit. If you find that you and the reviewer have identical taste (which I doubt) then do everything they say. But if you're like me and many others and find that reviews often have no idea what they're talking about, take the reviews with a grain of salt and try a demo or something.

P.S. This is all my personal view and belief on the subject, and as I said in my view on reviewers, are not factual in any way and you're entitled to your own views and understandings, no matter how much I may scoff and laugh at them. I sadly make this addendum to hopefully stop the people who will feel the need to tell me how awesome god of war and COD are and how stupid I am (happened before, likely happen again), but as a reminder this is a forum and we're free to express our opinions without slandering others (though I will slander at some point or another so that is purely subjective.)

P.P.S. Big wall of text is big.

 

[Banana Phone Man]

I just get what I think will be good based on my gut and I'm usually right. I'm gad that I got Orange Box, Pokemon Gold, and many others. I will say that the hype train also influences my votes. sometimes it will make me or put me off buying a game. It made me get MW2 and I kinda regret it slightly.

As long as I never take advice from my younger brothers because their gut makes them want games like Two Worlds and Soul Calibur.

 

[GreatVladmir]

I don't trust any review, they are entertaining, and its nice for the to express there own opinion, but ultimately, I trust not one reviewer,why? Well, it's there opinion isn't it? If I just trusted every review I'v read/watched, I would not have my own opinion, I'd be a drone just blindly following what someone said just because they are a "professional" it is far better to just got by what you think, Bioshock 2 is a great example, Ben Croshaw said it was a pile of knock-off toss, but I got it, and in my own opinion, he is wrong, but its my opinion, he likes Psychonauts, I think it looks toss so I don't want to get it. I know, I'm probably in the minority with this and it is easier to take someone else's opinion instead of forming your own, but just try it, you might like it, you might not.

 

[DigitalSushi]

None at all, the minute you put a critic on a pedestal is the minute you should commit suicide.

Actually that was rather harsh of me, what I should have said is

"if a single persons writings can sway your bias then you need to re assess your own interest's, because why should another persons opinions affect you since they are biased, if you love Ben Crowshaw but your favourite genre is JRPG's, will you listen to his hate on FF13?, if you do then I hope you get some confidence of your own, instead of hiding behind someone else's opinion.

Liking a persons writing style is one thing, believing everything they say is another
Geff Gerstmann is an idiot for believing he was immune, his reviewing style was shit because
it focused on him not the games, I never saw the games he reviewed, just his smug face.

If games publications allow a journalist with supposed integrity criticise in such a way, then we have another Michael Winner and Robert Ebert on our hands.

When that day comes, remember, I fucking called it.