Are reviews still relevant?

There are certain people whom I trust and share similar tastes with - I appreciate their reviews and/or viewpoints. Everyone else in the reviewersphere can kick rocks, though, especially since I've noticed what I perceive to be a trend in major score inflation on metacritic over the past year or so.

Why yes, critical thought is still relevant.

That comment comes across as crass but I genuinely mean it. We're losing something as the lines between game journos and devs continue to (naturally) blur, so when someone is capable of dissecting a game to analyze its strengths and weaknesses without forgetting their job is first and foremost to the consumer, it's appreciated by me. Criticism in general is becoming something of a lost art form, so seeing people do it well is a reminder that it's a necessary, healthy component of creative work.

Traditional reviews? In a mainstream sense? No. Gaming is bigger than it has ever been, more people are in the know than there ever have been, and there are now more sources of info out there than there ever has been. The next big game that will consume the casual audience is not going to be found in a review. It'll be found on Twitch.

The only audience out there for reviews right now are a very niche crowd of people that care about reviews from an art/journalistic standpoint. They don't serve a purpose anymore.

Reviews can highlight hidden gems or put a lot of attention on something you may not notice at first. Hearing the buzz for Parasite before it came out put that on my radar and I went out of my way to see it as soon as I could. I think Siskel and Ebert talking about Hoop Dreams many moons ago helped gave that mainstream awareness and hearing Ebert talk about it (I think it may have been one of their best movies of the decade or something) made me want to see it. A review can also provide another take or perspective on something, especially if I know so-and-so’s perspective on other stuff.

Most of the time they arguably don’t provide that value. Or at least those opportunities to add that value doesn’t regularly show up. It also seems like people treat reviews as self validation, so they can feel good when the game they’ve been waiting for all year gets good reviews, or they can get pissy if they think something is scored too high or too low.

I think that reviews will always be important to a healthy medium, yes. I think that reviews such as this one, which is essentially a video essay, are more valuable than an old-school Gamespot review where they wrote a few paragraphs essentially saying "it looks good, it plays well, it isn't buggy, it was fun", but where exactly the line between those two lie in real examples is pretty much undefinable. And at the end of the day, a few paragraphs telling that a game looks nice, runs well, and isn't very buggy is a nice thing to have.

It's best to have a good understanding of your own tastes and how those relate to the people you're listening to. For instance, while I have seen a lot of Giantbomb content my tastes started veering away from theirs a long time ago and have only gotten farther removed since. Jeff's opinion on most things doesn't really influence mine because he doesn't really seem to enjoy the same things I do. A faceless review from some guy on IGN you've never heard of isn't really that helpful. That's where the real value lies - finding some critics you tend to agree with more, seeing what they have to say, and taking that into account when making purchasing decisions.

Pointless lists arbitrarily noting the top twenty whatevers have pretty much zero value whatsoever, though.

I would say they are as relevant as they ever were. In the past accessibility was the major hurdle to overcome which is why people leaned heavier on the thoughts of others, but not much has changed in that you are still reading someones very subjective opinion on a product and then making your own judgement call. Critical thought as mentioned above will only go so far when it veers away from your personal tastes. Listen to Waypoint talk about a game and then listen to FireEscape discuss that exact same game and you get two wildly different approaches to asserting value and deconstructing the flaws of a piece of media. Personally I am never looking for video essays about a game I'm about to buy - that is too much information. I don't mind watching some of those afterwards but in order to check off some boxes on my buy or not buy list a very basic IGN styled video is usually enough to let me know if this is a product for me. Classic reviews still serve a very specific purpose of giving you a brief glance at something and letting you make up your own mind about it.

Judge a book by its cover, is pretty much how I buy all my games. A few minutes of gameplay then I'll check steam reviews.

The only people I trust with reviewing games are Easy Allies. I check them for EVERY new game I buy

@sparky_buzzsaw: Yep. Sure, I'll check out some footage or someone's impressions on youtube but I need something else to back it up. I need a consensus on a product which is where reviews come in.

I'm not convinced they were ever terribly relevant. Even in the pre-internet era you had the option of renting games and trying them out yourself before buying them. In the internet era (say, 1995+) you had a mixture of shareware, demos, piracy, word-of-mouth, buy+refund, and now live streaming to assess games. The increasingly long tail of post-release patches and games-as-a-service also make static moment-in-time reviews nearly obsolete, and in the PC-landscape that's kind of been the status quo since the late 90s.

They are relevant as a source of information, like they always have. What you make of that information is up to you, as always.

They probably aren't relevant but I like them.

I know there are other websites and reviewers doing reviews but I dearly miss reading reviews from current (mostly former) GB folks.

There is too much of everything, so having reviews can help sift through the noise.

With movies, it's an experience and I prefer to avoid the trailer, so I might not even read the review if it's a movie I made up my mind about before going (pre-pandemic). I haven't seen anything new in almost 2 years (but I do want to see Nomadland/The Eternals, Dune). Unless the buzz is really bad, then maybe I change my mind, because time is precious.

I play non-mainstream games that won’t have reviews or old games. I played a lot of Dota Underlords during pandemic, as well as the old Star Sector that Austin lead a quick look on. Then I started Baldur's Gate. 😆these days it’s Hades and Dwarf Fortress. Maybe it’s the nature of my situation, because I don’t have a PC anymore for several years and I can’t get my hands on a video card, I have lost the desire to play games that just come out. I don’t have a TV or any game consoles as well.

I'm apparently one of those rare people who can make their on decisions just be looking at gameplay for a few minutes, so no, at least not to me.

Yes, mostly if you see them as game recommendations. The old format of "number out of number" at the top with a few paragraphs below it and a final paragraph with the conclusion, might be outdated, but I think playthroughs with comments, quick looks or segments in podcasts with people whose tastes I trust (though not necessarily agree) is a pretty good way to: a) help me gauge whether a game might be interesting for me or not, and b) discover some games that might not have been on my radar.

i think this is a topic that certainly bears healthy discussion- and that's partially because the terms 'review' and 'relevant' are very malleable, and depending on who you talk to they mean different things. a podcast with in-depth discussion can be a de facto review if an individual lays a groundwork for overall opinion. and relevancy depends on if you are a consumer, a marketer, or third party with other motives.

the 'traditional' review of a page of text with a composite score- that probably doesn't make a lot of sense anymore just given the world's media consumption habits. marketing teams go direct to consumer now, and media sites can't make money off them. but i still rely on the opinions of others to help formulate an overall conception of thing prior to purchase. plus discussion around art is fun- that's half the point!

i don't know if we'll ever get there (and i think part of that is that the 'art/product dichotomy' is particularly conflicted in video games) but i'd really like to see games and their criticism get to a place similar to music criticism- which is, music criticism is never interpreted as a objective truth (it's always implicitly one person's interpretation)- but when its at its best, you are exposed to new things and paints a picture in your mind of what this thing could potentially be for you.

in a sense yes. sure written reviews aren't as common as they used to be but i think they still have value , moreso If you know the reviewer's tastes. that said even written reviews aside video reviews can be helpful for ppl looking to make purchasing decisions depending on the format of them. i've always considered things like quick looks on here ( and similar formats elsewhere) to be a sort of evolution of reviews. hell even podcasts can give you a sense too we don't Always need a bullet point video or article but if you can see how something runs/plays and get a sense of things n ppl talk about their experience with them ..well i just think theres value in that.

at the end of the day i think most ppl read /watch/listen to reviews to get a sense of if their money is worth going towards said thing so yes i think they're still relevant. If your speaking strictly of written reviews i think theres still a place for those too cause idk about what other ppl think but frankly reading a short review is usually less time consuming than watching a video or listening to a podcast segment if you want to see more after reading in your possibly limited time thats one thing but reading something quick is just another.

The problem with reviews is that they're often used just as fodder for the worst kinds of people in gaming, where they're taking review scores out of context and loading them into cannons to fire at their enemies. That sort of fanboy shit is exhausting, and forces reviews to be something they're not (aka objective meters of quality that can be directly compared across genre and publication). I think this can make reviews seem superfluous, since the conversation about them is so cluttered and toxic, and entirely based around numbers and percentages.

But in the context of intellectual thought and informed buying decisions, I think reviews are a useful barometer. Between casual conversation about games on podcasts and a review that reflects across the entire game, I think polished and collected thoughts on the experience are very useful. Even when assessing "is this game worth my time" when it comes to downloading from Game Pass is still valuable to me, since my greatest limitation is more time than money.

Beyond just the buying decision, it's also nice to gauge different perspectives. I'm interested in not just whether or not people like games, but why. That articulation is a skill and it's one that takes time and effort to think about. Oftentimes a game may not immediately stand out to be as worth playing, but a review might give me insight into aspects of that game (and video games as a medium) that help me understand the enjoyment of it. While it may not always sway me too strongly, it helps me think more coherently about what I enjoy and play.

And I should say I think generally reviews across the internet have been pretty decent in the past few years. Minus the toxicity from the audience, the actual writing of the reviews and the content within have been pretty solid, once people got away from the default structure of game reviews where you have to talk about the graphics, followed by the gameplay, followed by the story, followed by the value, then summary. There's more room to talk about deeply subjective reflection, focus on what stands out, and make a broader point. I do think there's a silent majority of people out there who see this same value in game assessment and critique and appreciate this as much as I do.

Not particularly. But I haven't put much stock in reviews for probably a good decade at this point. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy reading a well-written and informative review, whether or not the review is positive or negative. Sometimes a scathing review of a bad thing can be fun to read.

The thing is, I know what I like. For the people who cover games (or movies) that I follow, I tend to know what they like, as well. That means that when they offer an opinion about a game, I have a pretty good idea of whether or not I'd agree with that opinion. To use an example from a decade ago, Jeff G. talked about Star Wars: The Old Republic in a fairly negative way. As an MMO fan and a Star Wars fan (and a BioWare fan), I knew that his opinion didn't really matter to me and I got a ton of enjoyment out of that game. It's just not the sort of game Jeff is into, so his opinion on it doesn't matter all that much to me. To use a much more recent example, Jeff is into shooters and much more into sci-fi settings than fantasy ones. His opinion on Cyberpunk 2077, therefore, is one I'm interested in. If we're talking about whether or not structured reviews have an impact on what I play, I'd say that Cyberpunk is the first game in a number of years in which the weight of reviews was enough to sway my opinion to the point where I still haven't picked up that buggy, disappointing game. To be clear, I will play it eventually. It will just be on sale when I get it.

That previous paragraph is essentially a way of saying: why would I take the opinion of someone who doesn't like a genre that they are reviewing seriously? I recently started a forum thread here about Boyfriend Dungeon, which I enjoyed. But a key part of discussing my enjoyment of that game is being clear that dating sims are not my thing. So if you're a fan of dating sims, and I (not a fan of dating sims) am saying that this game is good, I wouldn't be surprised if you looked elsewhere for an opinion. This is why I don't give a shit about reviews for sci-fi movies. If the reviewer clearly has a disdain for the whole genre, why should I read their two-star review about a movie that I have a pretty good idea that I will enjoy? (Sometimes I'm wrong, and I watch Lucy. It's not a perfect system.) I also think this particular SFF genre review issue has probably gotten better over the years, largely in part due to Game of Thrones.

Yeah, I know that was a lot about a simple question. I think about this stuff a lot, and I enjoy talking about it!

As a general gauge of sentiment on release, yeah, I do find them useful, but I don't find the raw score data that makes the Metacritic number as useful as I used to. Too many major sites (Eurogamer, RPS, Kotaku, Polygon) have moved to the unscored format and a lot of low quality sites with questionable impartiality have filled the gap to make the number really reliable.

In terms of finding out if a game is good or not, I find them as useful as music or stand up comedy reviews. Not at all. I know if I'll like a game just by watching it on youtube or twitch. Which is why the decline in quicklooks sucks.

I do recognise however that not everyone is as accurate in predicting what they like so it's a good option for a lot of people.

Of course they're relevant. Seems like the outlets that complain about reviews just don't feel like doing them.

I get a lot out of things like... is the game stable, how long is it, does it drag, is the combat tight, etc. There are plenty of games that I'll probably buy regardless, but for the ones I'm not sure about it'll play a role in my decision. Like Psychonauts 2, I liked the original enough but didn't expect much out of the sequel. Then I saw the reviews and went "oh, ok, I'll play this" and I'm glad I did. No More Heroes III is another recent example.

Discussions could be helpful, too, but I find that some podcasts tend to dwell on the negative for 20 minutes and spend 2 minutes saying "but it's great and you should play it." Gameplay videos are fine, as well, but only show you a small portion of the game. So that's why quick reviews that I can check out on a lunch break are always worthwhile.

I find reviews useful sometimes but just for information, I don't much care about the opinions expressed but there can be pre-release info that the marketing won't cover or things I'd like to know in there. I might want to know more about a game before purchasing but it doesn't matter at all whether somebody else enjoyed it or not.

@topcyclist:

If I could ask, when you say reviews , are you talking purely about scored reviews (for example, 8 out of 10, 80% etc) or are you talking about reviews that discuss the strengths and weaknesses of a game without a set score range?

Yes, reviews are still relevant. I don't agree with people in the gaming industry who claim reviews aren't important anymore and gaming sites have moved beyond them. I think that is just them not wanting to do the work anymore, and they should just be honest and say so. After all, it takes a lot of writing and editing to do a quality review. And a lot of gaming journalist don't want to go through the trouble anymore.

I mean the public doesn't hate COD or 2K those games still sell well every year. But I absolutely use reviews to see if a game is good or not. For example Psychonauts 2 came out last week a game that I have been looking forward to for years, and if it didn't review well and got bad scores I was not going to buy it. These days I am very picky with games I buy and try not to buy games that aren't worth my time or money. The game in at least the past 2 years that didn't review super well that I bought was Immortals: Fenyx Rising, in which I enjoyed a lot, it is very underrated, and one of my top games this year, but even still that reviewed at a 7/10 range which also not awful my any means.

I know the concept of the 'objective review' is impossible, but, any additional information from a third party that is independent from the company producing the product is valuable in deciding where to spend my time and money. You have to be careful of source these days (since everybody with a webcam claims to be doing a review, there's a difference between "your opinion on a product" and "your review of a product", IMHO), but given the way the game companies control the channel, any independent verification has value.

That's what I miss the most about "classic" Giant Bomb -- I feel like breadth coverage has switched to depth coverage, and man, I miss the breadth.

@av_gamer: I don't know. Im guessing it takes at most a day to write up your thoughts for the short reviews people post. Video reviews if I did it as a job would be like a day's worth of work or week. If it was worth the hits I think they would still do them but maybe metrics say otherwise. (note my estimates are based on help from a big staff of say 10 people, to review, edit, etc. Also I may be over balling it given Im basing this off write ups you do for say a 2 page college paper on a book. You could spit one of those out if you were forced to work the entire time in say a week. Who knows thou. Maybe the work load isnt worth it given you could just podcast your thoughts and get more clicks. Maybe people don't like reading.

@johnlocke: I'm speaking on reviews at all, the hot take or opinionated take that persuades your purchase. Has everything become so opinion-based and micro issues that your 10/10 is someone's 1/10 cause one flaw. Is it really useful if we're so focused on the fact all of it is super opinionated? What's the point of a review on marvel's avenger's infinity war from a critic who hates all marvel movies for example. Him or her liking it just makes me think oh it must be good...but is it...could it have changed the formula so much to fit his or her taste that it's finally interesting to him and a slog to me who was a fan. All examples but basically, everything is so subjective and everyone's screaming from the rooftops once a show becomes popular or game how it's Mid or overrated, just type anything into google and add is bad and you'll get tons of reasons to not enjoy something. The reasons will sound like facts, some better explained than others. But in the end, if you liked it all it does is try convince you to hate it. If you hate something someone telling you why to like it is really an uphill battle.

In my opinion, reviews are still relevant for the questions I pose, it helps get a perspective that you can engage in, whether you agree or not. Taking in too much reviews becomes a jumbled mess where you kinda get the consensus everything sucks and is wonderful at the same time. Its nice to get the general merits and go from there then take in your own opinion. Like a preview of what you're getting yourself into. I have friends who will only play the same games cause they see every new game as bad from just trailers, sometimes it helps to open your perspective by taking in reviews and considering people's points. So yes they are relevant, just not as needed as they use to be for everything. Reviews on an amazon product, yes, reviews on a series of action movies critics hate but I enjoy (Critics mostly hate big action set pieces with cgi at the end of movies so much their constant complaints caused me to notice it and lose enjoyment in what I was fine with before), no. Relevance on a scale.

Sure, reviews are still relevant. It's just that separating the wheat from the chaff when it comes to reviews is so much more difficult than it used to be.

See, I'm old enough to remember these things called magazines. Back in the day, gaming wasn't as mainstream as it was now and the internet largely didn't exist. If you wanted to know about the latest games, you picked yourself up a copy of Nintendo Power, read through the reviews (or, if you were lazy, just flipped to the little proto-emoji that went with the score) and that was that.

Of course, that was pretty limited. Not every game got reviewed and if you didn't share tastes with the writers on staff, well, too bad. If you were very lucky, maybe one of your friends had picked up the game first and had some opinions on it. Otherwise, you got what you got.

The the internet came along. On the one hand, the internet is very good because it removes a lot of the gatekeeping that came from having limited print publications. Now if you want a review of a less than major release, you can probably find it, and the diversity of voices means you can probably find a review done by someone who likes what you like.

On the other hand, the internet is very bad because it removes a lot of the gatekeeping that came from having limited print publications. For as few publications and reviewers as there were, you could at least be assured that they had some ability to communicate their opinions effectively. The problem with reviews today is that while there are more voices in general, about 99% of what you find is uninformative, badly written and/or presented crap. And that's before you have to clear the additional hurdle of finding a review by someone who largely shares your taste.

I might not use reviews to confirm a purchase but i enjoy watching someone give their opinions about stuff, in that sense they are relevant to me, since i've been watching films and playing games for decades i like to see how new releases fit in, whether there are issues surrounding them, how the critical opinion differs from how its received by the public etc...
If you're extremely familiar with games a few minutes of gameplay is enough for you to know pretty much how the entire game is going to play out, there aren't a lot of surprises and innovation anymore, which is why i get a lot of entertainment out of reviews for old games and movies, you have to acknowledge how things have aged but you can also marvel at what was achieved at the time, those are the reviews i'm more interested in.

I can't comment on how the general buying public use reviews, it feels like the games kids want is more determined by who is streaming them these days.

I think reviews are still relevant, however I feel like assigning a number to base something's quality on is a mistake. "Oh this job only got an 85 from Vidjaplace.gov it must be crap" or "HOW DARE GEOFF THURSTMAN GIVE ZELDER AN 8.888 GAAAH." I'd rather just read someone's thoughts on a game instead of worry about the grade given to said game. Tell me if you liked it, thought it could use improvements, or hated it. Some gameplay footage and thoughts ala GB Quick Looks are exactly what I look for when wanting to buy a game anymore, and I have a good grasp on the type of game I know I'll enjoy based on that.

@tacobelmont: I like the % grade as in I'd recommend this to % of people generally. So even 50% is an ok recommendation for people generally who would be into this sorta game. I'd recommend 30% say Last of Us 2 if they are teenagers and hate violence but would still get something out of it, then say 80% to people who aren't skiqmish on violence and adults, then say 100% if you are a fan of that type of stuff and enjoy said gameplay loop. so the game generally is a 90% recommend for most I know or who would play it, they would enjoy it. Not an average. a different way of saying 9/10 per se or the GB 4/5 stars.

@topcyclist: i can't say i've seen it done this way before , normally wehen i see something like a 70% its just another way of saying a 7/10 not 70% of ppl will like X

Reviews as a formal content that is produced is not relevant to me. I care more about hearing the opinions from industry people I follow more than how those industry people would "review" it. I do watch review videos from IGN and Gamespot b/c I like watching the game footage, but I'd much rather than in-depth discussion on over a 5-10 video package with a number/grade at the end.

Maybe if I was like Andrew Reiner and could just watch a game for a few minutes on someone's stream and decide "yeah, that's worth $70 of my rather low amount of income" then maybe... but as someone who has a select few game streamers I watch, it's not always a guarantee something I want to buy will have coverage from one of those few. Then of course there's the part where I have trouble maintaining interest in game I *like* a lot of the time. A game that looks cool from a couple hours of streaming might drop the ball or become rote in the gameplay later on. A review might remove some of your ability to judge for yourself in real time, but it also typically encompasses a lot more of the experience, even if it's filtered through someone else's lens.

Plus, I also just genuinely like reading them. There's always a special feeling I get seeing a written review from someone I hear talk all the time, because everyone has a distinct voice in written form, that you can eventually identify as easily as their spoken voice. For example, I always loved reading Dan Ryckert's reviews because the way he spoke of games in writing - while tonally similar - was so different from how he verbalized it. Contrarily, I found it interesting that Brad and Jeff's reviews sounded so much like they were speaking that I could basically imagine them narrating the review themselves. Always found this stuff super fun.

I think it was Dan who recently said nearly all the reading he did as a youth was by way of game reviews. I feel like that's true of me now, as an adult lol. I like listening to audiobooks given the choice anyway.

I usually check out the Metascore on new products and I admit I would be pretty lost without it. But it's not like I follow that score religiously, there have been multiple games that scored 90+ that I found to be bad, and some that scored 60-something that I enjoyed. But it's useful to get the general gist on a new game, to see if a game rates significantly above or below the expected value. I'll expect Halo Infinite to score high-80 on Metascore, but if it's above 95 or below 80 then I might give a closer look to see what they've done right or wrong.

The fact that Deathloop just got 10’s from some of the more mainstream media outlets definitely caught the attention of my friends who don’t consume video game news, podcasts or steams. That’s triggered them to scroll metacritic to read a couple critical reviews and some user reviews to decide if the game is a fit for them. I think there is a good chunk of players like them where traditional reviews still provide important buying advice for those not engaged in other types of game coverage.

Yes, the question of are they "relevant" is the real question. Even if they are useful to some people, I would say they are irrelevant in that they do not push sales. A good written review won't move the needle on sales or exposure for a game anymore.

I think they way people 'decide on games' is they watch them being played or have a friend recommend the game. AT this point I think a game being mentioned by name on a podcast is likely to move to actual sales theses days. Mentioned on a podcast or watched in Twitch are how games are evaluated.

@monkeyking1969 said:

But that needle goes both ways. A review isn't just supposed to drive sales up, it's supposed to drive people away from buying bad games. Obviously, it's really hard to tell how many potential purchasers didn't buy a game because of some squiffy reviews, but I'm willing to bet it's a non-zero number.

The better question is can a written review still be relevant at release? Good, concise, punchy writing takes a lot (like, a lot a lot) of time and energy to put out the door. Far more so than recording some gameplay and editing down some rambling thoughts on video (which is also a lot of work, but a lot less than the writing part). Unless you get a review code way early, there's just no way that you could get a good review finished for day one. Even then, you'd probably be faced with the prospect of plowing through the game to get the review done in time, which is naturally going to color your perception of what you're playing.

So while I generally prefer a well-written review to . . . whatever it is that Twitch is these days, I can totally understand the shift to video. Even if there is no pre-release access, you could always just throw the game in and start broadcasting a playthrough while you talk about it.

There's a lot of video game media that partially takes the place of reviews, but I think reviews will always have worth because they are the most effective way to communicate "I've actually finished this game, and I've put some effort into organizing my thoughts about it".

Sure, the same thoughts can be mentioned in a podcast, stream, etc., but those thoughts will be much harder to find later on.

@therealturk: Funny thing is friends influence it alot and influencers. Twitch etc. Screaming how great a game is, then your friends all saying we're playing the next COD as a TEAM. Sure only like 2 of your 4 friends will love the game but those in the group who say we need a "background" game something they can play while talking will all buy the game. Thus I think what devs should do is just make easy cookie cutter games with nonstop clout chasing sequels max out profits reduce the middle man always online multiplayer-only outfits that boost stats and cash THE F out. XD. - Big wig exec

I read reviews for fun mostly and to get factual info on a game. Whether the reviewer says the game is good or not is irrelevant to me. That is just their opinion and doesn't tell me anything about whether I would like it myself. The only way to find out if I like a game is to buy it and try it for myself.