GOG reviews

[civvver]

I love Gog.com almost as much as steam, but the reviews drive me crazy. A game has to be truly terrible to get a poor rating there it seems. Example, in the weekly humble bundle there are a ton of indie adventure games. Book of Unwritten Tales is a $20 so I thought maybe it'd be worth $6. Gog score? 4.5/5 stars or a 90/100. Metacritic? 82, 8.3 user score. That's ~12 pts lower on a 100 pt scale which to me is the difference between a good game and a game of the year candidate. Deponia? Same thing, 4.5 on gog, ~80 metacritic. And it gets worse for bad games, one random one from the bundle, Dark Fall, gog score 4 stars, metacritic 68, 7.1 user. To me that's going from an average game to a good one. Big difference. And the actual reviews on gog? 9 out of 12 give it 4 stars or more, one guy gave a 2, two people gave 3s. Jack Keane 2, gog score 4/5, metacritic a downright awful 52, though users gave much higher almost average 6.9, although this one may be because of the infamous fall insomnia sale trying to get people to buy it and get to the next game.

I'm not sure if the gog ratings are much higher because people go more out of there way to get there, drm free gaming seems to attract a benevolent crowd, vs all the normal whining that usually takes place on metacritic. And also a ton of reviews get nostalgic, you have many openly admit they don't have the gog game but remember such and such title from their youth.

Anyway, I guess you have to take all reviews with a grain of salt anyway, but I'm not trusting any review of gog anymore without checking elsewhere too.

 

[GrayingGamer]

You just have to "curve" the scores. Anything below a perfect 5 should be treated with more skepticism than usual, and anything below 4 is probably garbage.

 

[Maniacal]

I've never really paid them much attention, but they are heavily influenced by nostalgia.

 

[Quintillus]

Nostalgia and self-selection. A lot of the more specialist digital distributors have a clientele that prefers certain types of games, and they carry more of that type of game, so the reviews naturally tend to skew higher. There's nothing wrong with this as long as you're aware of it, and preferably if you also tend to be of that mindset (in which case the reviews of that clientele may be more relevant to you than a general audience review).

Another example of this would be Gamersgate and strategy. Strategy titles, most notably Paradox ones, tend to receive higher reviews there than they do most other places. But if you're really into that type of game, your reception of the game is more likely to be in line with the average reviewer on Gamersgate than the average one on Metacritic, for example. If you don't know whether your tastes tend to align with a site's audience, though, you do have to be cautious.

For what it's worth, I don't think Metacritic is the end-all-be-all of reviews, either. It can be useful for spotting a really low-scoring game, but a lot of gaming preferences are subjective, too.

 

[Akka]

I'm not doubting GoG reviews. All those I've seen are genuine and written by actual real people not paid for it.
But there is a VERY strong element of self-selection in GoG. The very fact that you're using it is already a predisposition toward certain games, and the fact that you bother to write a review for games that has been for all intent and purpose dead since several years, mean that most reviews are only made by people who actually love them.

 

[civvver]

That was my thought Akka, that those who go out of their way to review a title on gog usually do so because they love it so you don't get as many negative responses.

I certainly don't think metacritic is without flaws but it seems to be the most used review site so at least you get the largest sample size there.

 

[Serutan]

That was my thought Akka, that those who go out of their way to review a title on gog usually do so because they love it so you don't get as many negative responses.

And conversely, most of those games are cheap enough so that if someone doesn't like it, they're not mad enough to post a negative review because they don't feel badly cheated.

 

[sherbz]

I agree with the nostalgia view. It would be interesting to know how many people pick up a game they DIDNT play when they were younger. If i look at my gaming library on GOG, games i didnt play when i was younger but have since picked up are:

Freespace 2 (I had the demo but could never pick up the full game because no shop stocked it. A problem which many seemed to face and perhaps explains why it never achieved the heights it deserved)

Alpha Centurai Alien crossfire (I had the vanilla version)

Master of orion (came in a bundle. Have not played it, only got it as a bundle with MOO2)

Master of magic (came in bundle, have not played)

Galactic civ 1 + 2 (briefly played it. Came in bundle)

Witcher 1 (not quite sure how i bought this. Have played it a bit, but am finiding it a bit silly)

Heroes chronicles (had HOMM3, never played the chronicles)

Anyone have any similar lists?

 

[sanabas]

I agree with Akka, the reviews can be very useful. It's the ratings that I don't look at, because they don't tell me anything about whether I'm going to like it. Wolfenstein might get 5 star reviews from everyone if it appears on GoG, but I'm still not going to want to buy it, and reading a couple of glowing reviews would tell me I didn't want to buy it, if I didn't already know.

As for game lists, the majority of stuff I have on GoG are things I didn't play when I was younger. They're actually stuff I've never played, because sales with interesting games for a couple of bucks come along faster than my ability to play through what I buy.

I just looked, I've got ~65 games on there.

SMAC, Privateer, MOO2, Police Quest, Heroes of Might & Magic, Total Annihilation, Dungeon Keeper, Fallout (last two were free ) are games I played when younger. I have a heap of stuff, RPGs in particular, that I never got around to playing when they first came out. There are a few other games available that I've played a lot of, and might buy at some point. Red Baron, Syndicate & Wing Commander 1 & 2. Still got PS1 versions of Wing Commander 3 & 4 if I ever feel the urge to play them again.

 

[civvver]

I agree with the nostalgia view. It would be interesting to know how many people pick up a game they DIDNT play when they were younger.
Anyone have any similar lists?

Actually most of the gog games I own are games I have not previously played. A few I got as digital, windows 7 compatible versions, but most are games I always wanted to try and/or were cheaper on gog than steam at the time.

Games I played previously- Total Annihilation, Lords of the Realm 2, Conquest of the New World. I have these discs all somewhere but they're so cheap it was much easier just to buy them again.

Master or Orion 1 and 2 and Alpha Centauri are games I always wanted to play when I was young but never got the chance to. I mean when you're 12 years old in 96 and these games are coming out you're kind of at the mercy of christmas and birthday gifts lol. Same deal with wing commander series.

I bought FTL off gog cus it was cheaper than steam. Heroes of might and magic I wish I had gotten off a gog sale but I bought it on dvd in a compilation off amazon for like $20. Load the dvd images onto a hd mount and it's not bad.

 

[Standup]

I wonder if it suffers from the same problem as Amazon where people rate/validate a review they agree with rather than one that's actually helpful. I get quite frustrated by the number of 5 star/It rocks reviews that have a high approval ratings rather than the 2 star considered review. I always try to vote for the quality and information in the review rather than whether I agree with the score.

 

[Dell19]

I find it amusing that films tend to average a 4.5* review on Amazon and then a 3.5* average review on Lovefilm. This is probably down to one being for purchases whilst the other is rentals although I do wonder if Amazon removes negative reviews.

 

[civvver]

Civ5 on amazon had tons of negative reviews when it came out. I don't really read amazon reviews much now though cus all my software is through steam or gog and I don't buy movies/music.