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DylanC

Are User Reviews A Reliable Metric Of A Game’s Quality?

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Interesting feature I read on VGR recently. For the most part, I find User Reviews to be a fairly accurate litmus test of a game's quality-- though there are exceptions to the rule. Obviously, they can be used in a negative way/exploited by angry fans that just want to tank the User Average. Usually, I prefer Critic's Reviews. What do you think of User Reviews? Do you trust them? 

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No. Just because others hate or love a game doesn't mean you will have the same reaction. Take these games for example:

FF8 (PS1)
Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest (NES)
Friday The 13th (NES)
Street Fighter 2010 (NES)
Zelda 2: The Adventure Of Link (NES)
Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero (N64)
Swordquest: Waterworld (Atari)

None of them did very well with the critics. But there are some circles that are die hard fans. Now take these:

Dr Mario (NES)
Marble Madness (NES)
South Park (N64) 

The critics loved these games. The gamers weren't particularly impressed however.

 

Me personally? All the games I listed, are games from my library that I personally love, with the exceptions of MKM: Sub-Zero, Dr Mario, and Marble Madness. Critics can kiss my ass. The only reason I have those 3 is that there was a time that I enjoyed them.

Edited by The Blackangel
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Most times, User Reviews tend to be mostly accurate because it isn't influenced by a bias towards certain companies because they are on their Payroll. Critic Reviews are the ones that I don't tend to trust because of their bias towards individual companies.

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1 hour ago, skyfire said:

I think so to some extent. But some are biased based on the influencer getting paid. I think that skews the data. And gaming industry suffers from problem of negative review issue, one youtuber giving negative review can avalanche the momentum in the industry. 

Hence why I don't really pay attention to critic reviews at all.

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I prefer critics reviews for the same reason, one will think fan reviews are more sided to the truth since they are not getting paid for the review but lately many angry butt hurt gamers will talk shit of a game just for any dumb reason. True critics are getting paid for reviewing the game so in one way they have to talk nice about it but I found critic reviews to be more complete. 

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14 hours ago, The Blackangel said:

No. Just because others hate or love a game doesn't mean you will have the same reaction. Take these games for example:

FF8 (PS1)
Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest (NES)
Friday The 13th (NES)
Street Fighter 2010 (NES)
Zelda 2: The Adventure Of Link (NES)
Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero (N64)
Swordquest: Waterworld (Atari)

None of them did very well with the critics. But there are some circles that are die hard fans. Now take these:

Dr Mario (NES)
Marble Madness (NES)
South Park (N64) 

The critics loved these games. The gamers weren't particularly impressed however.

 

Me personally? All the games I listed, are games from my library that I personally love, with the exceptions of MKM: Sub-Zero, Dr Mario, and Marble Madness. Critics can kiss my ass. The only reason I have those 3 is that there was a time that I enjoyed them.

Yeah, but they asked you about whether or not USER REVIEWS were good.

Also, what are you talking about? The FF fandom consider FFVIII to be trash while critios gave it score of 90%

Street Fighter 2010 is the same story, the community has torn this game apart. Not only that but the Angry Video Game Nerd was among the people who said the game was awful.

Same deal with Zelda II and MKM SZ. The community at large considered these games to be godawful. What? are you going to tell me that people's favorite Zelda game was Skyward sword?

I'm glad you have your own independent thoughts but if you're going to talk about common criticism, know what you're talking about.

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Notice the part where I said SOME CIRCLES. That does NOT mean everyone everywhere. And AVGN is not the God of video games. His opinion is not gospel or scripture. He's comical, but that's as far as it goes. Also maybe I missed it, but I don't recall making a mention anywhere in my post about Skyward Sword. Perhaps you can point it out for me?

Maybe you should learn to read, before you tear someone's post apart in an attempt to sound superior.

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Most reviews are subjective which means you will always have to take a review as OPINION, not FACT. By definition a review is just someone retelling their experience with something and informing consumers about any possible difficulties they could expect. That's it. It's still up to the customer and reviewer what they subjectively think of the game and that is usually what the review is mostly about.

User reviews are almost always 100% opinion though, as most users are not very interested in being objective.

Edited by Alyxx
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3 hours ago, The Blackangel said:

Notice the part where I said SOME CIRCLES. That does NOT mean everyone everywhere. And AVGN is not the God of video games. His opinion is not gospel or scripture. He's comical, but that's as far as it goes. Also maybe I missed it, but I don't recall making a mention anywhere in my post about Skyward Sword. Perhaps you can point it out for me?

Maybe you should learn to read, before you tear someone's post apart in an attempt to sound superior.

I just brought who was at the forefront of the community calling SF2010 shitty. Not only that but just because a game has a cult following doesn't mean it's good. Does the fact that Sonic 06 got a remake by a dedicated fanbase mean the original vanilla game is good? Definitely not.

I also didn't imply that AVGN was the god of games.. So that's your opinion like how you implied I was a Nazi.

I mentioned the Zelda Skyward sword argument because you said that people in the Zelda fandom liked Zelda II. Which is one of the most despised games in the series with some critics on YouTube and outlets coming out and defending it.

So yeah.

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4 hours ago, The Blackangel said:

Maybe you should learn to read, before you tear someone's post apart in an attempt to sound superior.

I'm not attempting to sound superior. I'm telling you to do your research instead of making claims and passing them off as fact.

I'm also glad that you dodged the first question i made.. Which was

13 hours ago, UleTheVee said:

Yeah, but they asked you about whether or not USER REVIEWS were good.

 

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3 hours ago, Alyxx said:

Most reviews are subjective which means you will always have to take a review as OPINION, not FACT. By definition a review is just someone retelling their experience with something and informing consumers about any possible difficulties they could expect. That's it. It's still up to the customer and reviewer what they subjectively think of the game and that is usually what the review is mostly about.

User reviews are almost always 100% opinion though, as most users are not very interested in being objective.

Not only that but opinions can change, amirite? 😛

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7 hours ago, UleTheVee said:

I'm not attempting to sound superior. I'm telling you to do your research instead of making claims and passing them off as fact.

I'm also glad that you dodged the first question i made.. Which was

 

And I expanded on the topic.

Grow a fucking brain.

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6 hours ago, The Blackangel said:

And I expanded on the topic.

Grow a fucking brain.

You didn't. You just decided to make more claims to pass off as fact instead. Not only that but you aslo put words in my mouth yet again by stating that I thought that the AVGN was "The god of video games". Not only that but you also dodged the original question and didn't expand on it in a worthwhile manner because like I said before, the examples you showed off were purely wrong.

I even challenged you with an example of my own (Sonic 06) which you also didn't respond to. So yeah, for an expansion that was pretty lackluster.

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