Something that I've noticed during the past 8 or so months on the Internet is this growing hatred for video game reviews. It's always been there, yeah, but I've noticed an unusual increase recently. On different sites, different message boards, and even chat rooms, whenever someone brings up a review for a game, the response is almost the same: "reviews are useless, play the game yourself and decide". It's really getting on my nerves at this point because of how stupid that statement is. People rely on reviews so that they won't waste time and money on something they might not enjoy. It really makes me think that these are either kids that have their parents buy them games or extremely rich people.
You know what's even more annoying? The people that are always complaining? The reviews aren't aimed at them. The people that hate reviews are the ones that already made up their minds, way before the games are even released, that they're going to buy them and enjoy them.
So why are they going through the trouble of reading negative reviews of games they love, hell, why are they reading reviews at all when they constantly moan about not trusting reviews? Do they get off on it in some kind of masochistic way? All that wasted energy and time could have been used for playing their games. Why, what's the point? Do they feel they need to defend the developers because they think their feelings were hurt? I can understand when people get bent out of shape because of a stupid review on Gamespot stating Doom II XBLA feels dated and such, but that doesn't mean all reviews and all reviewers suck.
Isn't it enough to enjoy the game?
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zippdementia - June 02, 2010 (05:47 PM) I have this conversation every couple of months with an MSN friend of mine who thinks reviews are worthless. I've never quite understood his reasons for this. I'll dig up one of the old conversations and give some examples in a bit. |
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bloomer - June 02, 2010 (09:41 PM) Some people come out of school with no critical facilities or knack for them, and if they don't study any humanities after, they never acquire any. Their whole life, all they can say after a film or book or TV show is 'it was good', 'i didn't like it', etc. Most of those people will always say reviews are useless because they don't understand this area of understanding at all. I have a feeling the increasing 'rage' in other areas is due to the democratising, dullening effect of instant internet communication. Good critical material is harder to find, surrounded by a sea of crappy material, and it's all instantly there. The moment a cultural object a person like appears, 1000 people deliver their opinion on it, the minority with any finesses. To avoid feeling pissed off by stupid opinions or ones you don't agree with, you turn on the whole phenomenon - 'To hell with these reviews!' A lot of these people would say a twitter comment on a film is a review, and lump that in with all reviews of any length. |
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