Reviewer Corruption?

[ohioastronomy]

Master of Orion 3, by general consensus one of the most disastrous modern gaming releases, got 64/100 on Metacritic. Professional game review scores are astonishingly inflated - and, if you look at the comments to the reviews, the reviewers get scads of hate mail if they rate any new game below A+++. It's a serious problem, made much worse by the nature of games like Civ (flaws appear after many hours, not on the surface.)

I'm a huge fan of the highly rated Amazon reviews, which seem to track quality much, much more closely than the professional reviews do. I place less stock in the cumulative averages, since a lot of the reviews there are brief and uninformative. But the ones with a few hundred folks liking them tend to be, well, useful in making a buying decision.

 

[Alphons Rodulfo]

I read a fair # of reviews before I bought ciV, mainly because I was excited about the game and I wanted to learn more about it. I have to say, after having played the game for over 100 hours, I would say this review by Tom Chick is the one that stands out to me the most.

That is a good review!

I don't like having read it, though. He was clever to recognize that the tech tree and the policies tree are essentially the same game mechanic now. So I am slightly more dissapointed at the game now that I have read the review. Before that it was only the bad AI that worried me.

 

[gilmore606]

Reviewer corruption can be fought by building Courthouses in each gaming mag's office.

 

[CivFanaticMan]

no one should listen to official reviews. A review from a game veteran on a fan site is enough.

 

[Nocturnal]

I would say this review by Tom Chick is the one that stands out to me the most. Although its' a bit short for my taste, it now seems like a breath of fresh air compared to the over whelming majority of overly positive reviews of the game.

Now thats a very very good and brave review, states half the things beign ranted in this forum.

As for the rest i think is something of tradition, i guess everyone in the office would look bad on a reviewer who gives a low rating to a such established franchise like CIV, and thats because EVERYONE whether they play civ or not EXPECT every release in the series to be a fundamental GOOD game...

supporting this just look on metacritic the proffesional reviews vs. users reviews of COD: black ops.

As has been stated, one can't really trust a paid reviewer, i think ill try looking into amazon reviews from now on

 

[zerotwo]

1. Take a review score.
2. Remove 5 points.
3. Double the remainder.
4. Arrive at realistic game score.
5. Save your money!

I live by this method.

 

[Slowpoke]

1. Take a review score.
2. Remove 5 points.
3. Double the remainder.
4. Arrive at realistic game score.
5. Save your money!

I live by this method.

Hey, that works pretty well actually!