Finding reviewers on your wavelength

[Tay]

About 1 1/2 years ago, while Batman and I were talking about the Atelier games on Skype, we started getting sidetracked on the topic of game reviews. He named a handful of reviewers (the only ones I remember wrote/write on RPGFan) whose opinions he held in high regard. When he asked me about my own trusted reviewers, I didn't really have an answer for him. See: up to that point I was more a "Google '[name of game] reviews' " type of person. I'd try and look at what reviewers were saying in general, and then -- inevitably -- ignore them and just buy the games I was interested in.

 

I've tried to improve since then by looking at games I know I like, and reading past reviews for an author whose opinions closely matched my own. Then I'd cyber-stalk that author to read their full reviews portfolio to see if we continued to sync up on game tastes. I haven't been super-successful, mind you, but I did manage to pick up two or three people whose reviews I can almost unfailingly rely on. 

 

 

 

The discussion I'm getting at: have you found a reviewer (or, better yet, plural reviewers) whose gaming tastes and experiences are reliable for your own tastes? If so, how did you find them? (I'd be interested to hear details, so go ahead and wax poetic : P.)

[sanahtlig]

When in doubt, I rely on the following general strategy where a glut of reviews exists.  I call it "Evaluation by Critical Thinking".  It assumes that any given person is biased, and thus comments that contradict the overall evaluation are more trustworthy or notable.

 

1) Identify positive aspects of the game highlighted in negative reviews.

2) Identify negative aspects of the game highlighted in positive reviews.

3) Synthesize negative + positive aspects highlighted above to arrive at a fairly objective assessment of the game in question.

 

While it requires a decent sample size of reviews, this strategy doesn't require any one of them to be particularly high quality, and as such it's well suited when all you have is a bunch of user reviews on a site like GameFAQs.

[Stray Cat]

I've never found people I 100% agree with.  Generally I go with metacritic as a basis, especially user reviews cause if you know that's low you're likely in trouble.  Before I knew anything I just went off places like IGN and you can guess how that probably turned out.  I find Polygon reviews to be better than most but still don't really align with the way that I see things.  Reviews from more specific places can be interesting (like RPG fan) but they tend to focus to the specific elements they're looking at which doesn't always work.  Obviously RPG fan would examine the RPG elements mostly and since I don't really like classic RPGs that can lead to conflict of opinion. 

 

However, I think I can only really judge whether or not I'll like something for myself, so I always find the best option to be watching game-play videos and such to determine if it's the type of thing I will be interested in.  That at least will allow me to see if there's any major factors I object to in the game and I've found out the hard way (through some bad purchases) that this is the best way for me to operate with minimal risk taking and money loss. 

 

In short; I don't really trust reviewers so I just watch game-play and go off that. 

[InvictusCobra]

When it comes to games in general, I have a general "squad" of critics whose work I browse regularly: TotalBiscuit, SuperBunnyhop, Jim Sterling and Yahtzee. Some focus more on what a game did wrong than be optimistc, although that's fine in my book. Others give a bit of a first impression or try to dig deeper into a game's story/mechanics and development to present a clearer idea of the game. If I am convinced it's good (rarely happens), I buy it or wait for a Steam sale if it's a AAA game (e.g. Wolfenstein: The New Order). If I still have mixed feelings, I pirate the game (yeah, sue me) and if I like it/ it's replayable and worth the money, I uninstall the pirated version and go buy the real deal (happened with XCOM: Enemy Unknown and Payday 2).

[Narcosis]

I don't find game journalism of any kind to be relatable enough nowadays, although there's a couple of people in the industry I know and hold in high regard.

 

If there's something I find interesting but remain highly dubious of it, I simply give it a try and check it myself. I don't feel the need to boost my ego with opinions of other people regarding things I like or not, as they generally never mattered that much to start with.

[Turnip Sensei]

I do the google for game stuff every time and try to find some consensus on internet, but I tend to listen to niche sources the most. The people who are most enthusiastic about the game can usually give the best comments, though you need to be careful of the blind fanboys. Also because most of the games I'm picking are localisations, I can always find the people who have played the game before hand.

 

While I don't really have specific reviewers that resonate with me, I have found few sites that usually match with my opinions with their reviews.

Hardcore Gaming 101 is place I use every time I'm looking into older games I might want to play. While their articles aren't really reviews per say, more like miss-mashes between reviews and analytic articles, they are pretty in depth and give much better overall view of the game than a normal review.

 

For newer games I tend appreciate the reviews of DiehardGameFan, mostly because their reviews go deeper than normal and they actually put lot of effort into them. It also helps that their JRPG reviews are not like those of the other review sites. They have more to say than: "Fanservice, but otherwise okay" or "the combat is normal turn based business and requires grinding", unlike many "mainstream" review sites.  

[krill]

for pc gaming i like total biscuit, he is very in depth without annoying over use of opinion. he does his best to just give the information with what he thinks of the quality, the systems, the game play and the ui and options. i don't really console game i mean i have a 360 but haven't bought more then 5 games for it in as many years. i do play a lot of emulators and for the retro games i generally just look up the basic info online and then decide to try it or not instead of relying on a pros opinion.

 

i watch a lot of others at random on youtube mostly as something to listen to as i clean and take care of my son during the day.

[Zenophilious]

for pc gaming i like total biscuit, he is very in depth without annoying over use of opinion. he does his best to just give the information with what he thinks of the quality, the systems, the game play and the ui and options. i don't really console game i mean i have a 360 but haven't bought more then 5 games for it in as many years. i do play a lot of emulators and for the retro games i generally just look up the basic info online and then decide to try it or not instead of relying on a pros opinion.

 

i watch a lot of others at random on youtube mostly as something to listen to as i clean and take care of my son during the day.

I watch totalbiscuit too, but I have to admit, his review of Hotline Miami 2 was pretty fanboyish.  He failed to address any of the major complaints about the game, like the larger number of long areas with windows and enemies behind them with guns that can shoot you from off-screen, and only showed gameplay from one level and character.  Not saying I disliked the game, because I didn't, but that review was pretty bad.  Other than that, though, his reviews are good.

 

Also watch AngryJoe.  Found him after getting disgusted with IGN and their obvious biases, and I have to say, I've mostly agreed with his opinions.  His videos can get dumb occasionally when he goes overboard with a joke, but he still has good reviews.  His Alien: Isolation video was spot-on.

[krill]

I watch totalbiscuit too, but I have to admit, his review of Hotline Miami 2 was pretty fanboyish.  He failed to address any of the major complaints about the game, like the larger number of long areas with windows and enemies behind them with guns that can shoot you from off-screen, and only showed gameplay from one level and character.  Not saying I disliked the game, because I didn't, but that review was pretty bad.  Other than that, though, his reviews are good.

 

Also watch AngryJoe.  Found him after getting disgusted with IGN and their obvious biases, and I have to say, I've mostly agreed with his opinions.  His videos can get dumb occasionally when he goes overboard with a joke, but he still has good reviews.  His Alien: Isolation video was spot-on.

 

i watch AngryJoe as well but he covers way more console releases and as i said i don't buy console games, except maybe once every year or two. if im going to invest in something for gaming it will be my pc, more utility, blah blah master race blah blah. TB  does occasionally fan-boy it up like the Hotline Miami WTF IS?. but much less often then your average YouTube reviewer plus he goes over the info i want the most that a lot of reviewers skip like the UI, the options menu, if its mod enabled, size of install, and how resource heavy it is  etc. i also watch dodger from press heart to continue since she covers a lot of Japanese ,otaku based games.

[Nimbus]

If I'm perfectly honest I'm more interested in what happens to a game before it's released than the scores it gets after release. A dodgy business practice like micro-transactions is more likely to put me off a game than a 10/10 is to get me hyped for one. Another example is Shadow of Mordor; I had already gathered it would at least be a decent game but I was more interested in hearing about Warner Brother downright awful review embargo policies than hearing about the Nemesis system in the actual game.

 

I'm usually ok with just looking at the general consensus of a game is when I'm purchasing it but there are a few opinions I like to hear beforehand. The reviewers I trust the most would be (in no specific order) Jim Sterling, Angry Joe, ProJared and Caddicarus. 

 

I also tune into Zero Punctuation every week because, well, lets face it, no one reviews a game like Yahtzee.

[Darklord Rooke]

The discussion I'm getting at: have you found a reviewer (or, better yet, plural reviewers) whose gaming tastes and experiences are reliable for your own tastes? If so, how did you find them? (I'd be interested to hear details, so go ahead and wax poetic : P.)

 

No, not because I have a problem with reviews I just never found anybody who's willing to go into enough depth and/or talk about the stuff I want to know.

 

I found a community or two of RPG gamers instead who's tastes are attuned to my own (RPG Watch, and its 4-chan equivalent the Codex )