Quote:
Originally Posted by Lucien21
I think it is a good idea to read a range of reviews until you can identify a reviewer or site that best fits your style and stick to them.
It's never going to be perfect, but you get to know their style and use your own judgement as to what you like and dislike to form your own opinion on the game.
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Exactly! I usually don't read reviews in games magazines - well, I don't really read game magazines to begin with, the reason being that most German game magazines focus on action, shooters and soccer games, to name but a few - it boils down to "They focus on games I'm not interested in". They build up hypes around the latest shooter, sometimes around the latest RPG; if there's an adventure being released, it's more like "Oh yeah, and then there was this adventure as well...". The rating tends to be average at best, even though all the Sam & Max-episodes get rather high ratings (usually more than 80%, around 83-85 would be the average, I think). The rating does of course depend on who wrote it and what kind of magazine it's being published in. The ratings for Nostradamus, for example, weren't that great if you compare it to any shooter that's been released in the past years. Gamestar thought Nostradamus was worth 71% - I don't agree with that at all because I had a great time playing this game and there weren't many things I didn't like about the game (timed sequences and a very short ending being two of them). PC Action rated the game 64%, Culpa Innata received only 47%! For me, this was one of the best games ever. I could go on and on but I don't want to bore you guys to tears
The bottom line is: When looking for a new game to buy, I don't rely on ratings published in game magazines. Instead, I go online and try to find as much information on the game as possible, reading reviews on game sites, talking to other gamers about the game, reading boards and gamers' reviews as published on boards to get as much information as I can. If the game still sounds good to me, I'll get it. I'm lucky enough to have found reviewers online whose taste in games most of the time matches mine; there are a few exceptions, of course (I still hate Myst and Myst-like games with lots of technical puzzles even if my preferred reviewers love those *g*) but usually I know where to look and whose reviews to read if I want to get detailled information on a game. After a while, you develop some kind of sensibility for that
