The Worth of Reviews (child of What games are you playing now?)

Originally Posted by Thrasher
Quality of the review sites matters more than quantity. Most of the review sites high on your list quoted by metatcritic are worthless.

Is that a fact? Reviews usually seem pretty worthless to me when they don't correspond with my personal opinion.

Face it, DMoMM got mixed reviews. It wasn't unfairly bashed as much as you're trying to make it sound.

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
Never kicked much, and never felt compelled to kick much. I think I just didn't see it as a particularly attractive approach to combat, and never really needed the aid of kicking.

Same here. Fwiw, I played the assassin character as well.

I seem to remember most of the "high-profile" sites giving it a suprisingly low score. Don't hold me to it, but I do remember 6ish instead of my expected 7ish.

It's sort of a magical barrier between forgettable and potential cult classic. I'd give it a 7 for the quirky charm factor, personally.

Reviews are just a bunch of opinions, and the media today are so ignorant of games and their history - that I only use them to guage a game's potential financial success. As for the quality of a game, they can be somewhat supportive if it's not a high-profile title - but they don't really influence my opinion any.

Yep. The high profile sites that I listed above, for example, were consistently harsh.

The little, crummier sites rated it higher. Odd that.

Well we all know the higher the profile of the site, the more credible it is. Sites like Gamespot and IGN are the epitome of credibility.

I find myself agreeing more often with the sites I listed above, rather the other crummy sites that ranked DMoMM higher. Thus the question as to why the reviews seemed skewed for DMoMM.

I wouldn't be surprised if all the bugs at release put the reviewers in a bad mood, and the fact the game was developed in Europe made the euro reviewers ignore its issues.

What exactly makes a site "crummy"? Just curious…

Also, I highly doubt it received higher scores from European sites just because it was from a European developer. That sounds like something rune_74 would say. It's more likely a matter of gameplay/style preferences.

A preponderous of stupid just plain wrong reviews. And by wrong, I mean objectively and factually wrong or just plain vapid. Differing likes or dislikes is not wrong. Just different. After reading a few wrong reviews by clueless or perhaps just bad writers, that site is marked as "crummy".

So every site that didn't give DMoMM a negative review is also coincidently one of those sites eh?

Anyways, I think we've beat this dog enough..

Actually I trust the reviews from back then much more. Once the recession hit, any separation of writing and advertising broke down. Heck, IGN and Gamespot don't really conceal that their contracts more or less require minimum review scores. Basically, any site with significant ads from a game company can be considered 'bought'

Originally Posted by JDR13
So every site that didn't give DMoMM a negative review is also coincidently one of those sites eh?

As I said above, I suspect it is not coincidence…

But right now I don't trust reviews from any commercial sites, really. Some are just crummier than others. There are some sites where the reviews are so bad, they are actually painful to me to read.

Most reviewers give inane or blatantly false information to buttress their opinions. It's just noise… But there may be pretty pictures.

Reviews that actually objectively and accurately describe the game are the winners because the allow me to form my OWN opinion from the info presented (but these are few and far between, lately).

Originally Posted by Thrasher
Reviews that actually objectively and accurately describe the game are the winners because the allow me to form my OWN opinion from the info presented (but these are few and far between, lately).

The problem is that when our opinion doesn't match that of the review, we tend to automatically assume that they weren't being objective, whether or not it's true.

Not me. I try to pick out the facts, and just plain ignore the opinion. If there are no (or few) facts, then the review is not "objective", to me at least.

We all try to pick out the facts, but there are very few facts in reviews to begin with. Reviews are by nature mostly subjective.

One thing you seem to be unaware of is - feelings. Emotions.
We actually use emotions and feelings to rate things, too !
So, when we get a certain feeling over a review … which is or at least can be caused by a certain choice of words … this feeling becomes part of our consideration, too.

We all ain't so much rational as we always want to be !

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
One thing you seem to be unaware of is - feelings. Emotions.

Um I'm quite aware of them, and how they can make reviews inane.

I really don't care about a reviewers opinions or feelings on a game, as more likely than not, my feelings and opinions will be different (especially considering the sad state of a gaming "journalism").

Well, as someone who writes reviews let me add a few thoughts. Certain sites are 'bought' and there's no argument there; just ignore them. Some sites can be quite biased or even ignorant; when the opening line is "I hate RPG's" you should be worried. Indie sites like here, the Codex and Banshee are much more reliable. Usually we buy the games we review, though the small indies (rarely the big boys) will sometimes give us a review copy. I only buy games I think I will enjoy so that might pre-dispose me to a favourable review, but if there are things I don't like I never hesitate to say so.
A review HAS to contain both facts and opinion. I believe there should be at least twice as many facts as opinion, but that's just the way I work. What is most important is to FIND the reviewers who usually agree with YOUR opinion and read them. Conversely you could read those you always disagree with and base your decision on that!!

On average, the most informative reviews are usually the most negative. Of course, RPGWatch doesn't follow the mediocre, which is why I like it here.

Negative reviewers usually feel disposed to back up their opinions with facts more so than positive reviewers. I'm sure there's a good reason for that., but it is an interesting observation, I think.

I'm trying to follow this conversation. Can someone just tell me what DMoMM is ??

Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. Quite a mouthful, eh?

Isn't this game ten years old?