Adventure Gamers - Forums

diego - 13 January 2016 09:04 AM

Still, there’s a difference between reading a “review that goes against my personal opinion”, and reading a review that goes against my personal opinion to the level of banality. I would have never read a review that gives 1/5 to Toonstruck; I would have never read a review that gives 2/5 to The Curse of Monkey Island. I’m not interested to know his reasons for such a score.

This was the whole reason I had to express my concern in what is now known as the ‘Nancy Drew and the Haunted Mansion incident’ of late 2015.

In many situations I don’t mind reviews that don’t agree with me and I look at ratings as a range rather than absolute. But the tone of the review and rating were so far off(also in comparison with other games) from my experience and reached that so-called ‘level of banality’ that I felt I had to say something about it.

diego - 13 January 2016 09:04 AM

TimovieMan - 13 January 2016 07:44 AM

I’d sooner read a review that goes against my personal opinion than one that’ll merely confirm it.

Still, there’s a difference between reading a “review that goes against my personal opinion”, and reading a review that goes against my personal opinion to the level of banality. I would have never read a review that gives 1/5 to Toonstruck; I would have never read a review that gives 2/5 to The Curse of Monkey Island. I’m not interested to know his reasons for such a score.

As said I don’t read reviews beforehand if I want to play a game but would be tempted afterwards to read a low-scoring review (as well as more positive ones - if there are any!) to see particularly in a game I liked why a reviewer would rate it so low! In the case of a game I don’t know, reading a range of reviews good & bad can give you such a lot of information to decide beforehand whether you want to part with your hard-earned cash to buy it - it always comes down to personal preference of details in a game!

I would never buy a game that doesn’t initially interest me merely on the basis of 1 positive review & if I did & felt I had any concerns about the integrity of the reviewer I think it would be better to fold myself up into a paper rocket & launch myself into space on realising that maybe I should have checked out the numerous reviews available from many other sites (good & bad) rather than complain specifically about the one on this site!     

giom - 10 January 2016 06:36 PM

I haven’t played it in a while but I remember really enjoying it, finding it more fun in a way than the first game. From my memories, I’d easily give it a 4.5/5.

I would however definitely not give 4/5 to The Sleeping Dragon (it’s not bad but it’s not that good… Too many boxes…)

Ok, I have to downgrade my previous rating. I’ve just replayed Smoking Mirror and I’d only give it a 3.75/5. The humor falls flat in a lot of place, puzzles are not that good indeed (and I hated the Jungle) and the story is not as good as BS1. It probably doesn’t help that I replayed it on ios, walking is excruciatingly slow.

Now, on the whole debacle about reviews rating, I can understand the point of view of Origami and Diego, Adventure Gamers is now a reference in term of adventure games and reviews here on this site carry a lot more weight than other reviews since most other sites do not have a focus on adventure game and tend to review those games poorly. So, in this sense having a low rating or an overly high rating does influence buying decisions. For the most part, I feel that Adventure Gamers review are pretty objective (and match the overall feeling of most players here) but in some cases (more often with older reviews I feel), there are a very few reviews that have very strange score compared to the general feeling of people here.

The other thing is that an overly negative reviews could have disastrous consequences for a game sales number but I’m not aware of any negative review in the past few years that was unfair. In the vast majority of cases, reviews here have a high editorial standard and are really objective.

giom - 14 January 2016 03:15 AM

......... Adventure Gamers is now a reference in term of adventure games and reviews here on this site carry a lot more weight than other reviews since most other sites do not have a focus on adventure game and tend to review those games poorly…...

I really liked your whole post glom & agree with all apart from the above. I love AG & respect the views of the reviewers but the fact remains that they are based on the perception, opinions & taste of just 1 person which may not match your own.

I’m sure that anyone that devotes their time to keeping this site going would not mind me mentioning that the one review here is just one person’s take on a game & that it’s not the ‘be all & end all’ to base your game-buying decision on as there are other alternative good & bad reviews to be read from other good AG sites as well as those that have less of a focus on AGs & may or may not review them poorly - if you’re teetering on whether to buy a game it’s worth reading all as they may include content that approaches the experience of the game from a different angle…. it’s all about info & deciding whether the dominating aspects suit you & how much the negative ones will counteract! (Or something like that!      )