ohhh i used to read a lot of game informer reviews before i was an adult, back when i didn't have cash to spend willy-nilly on games, and really, really had to be picky about what i bought. i remember being, ahhh, about 13 or so, and i was really trying to build my library to be good games exclusively. maybe 14. around 13-14.
but we had a subscription to game informer. and i was tired of playing shitty games because i wasn't looking at any reviews.
well, i stopped that shit pretty quick when they gave pokemon mystery dungeon: blue rescue team a fucking 3/10. three out of fucking ten. that game wasn't perfect, by any stretch, but even metacritic's average is double that at 62%. i actually got it that christmas. it was my first game of the genre, too, so i'll give it credit for that. no, it wasn't that great, but three out of fucking ten, guys.
my distrust in the magazine went full-blown when i got a stack of them from a high school friend, who just... had a bunch of them she didn't want anymore. she gave me the copy with tales of the abyss's PS2 review in it. they gave it a 5 or 6 out of 10. infuriated me, because ToA stands as one of my favourite games on the ps2... top 5, by far. interestingly, IGN gave it... 8.3/10... the 3DS remake got a lower score.
maximo brought up user reviews, and i disregard those, too. gamers are just as bad as professionals, if not worse in some regards.
kindafunnygames brought up an incredibly good point about IGN (they're all former IGN guys) and professional reviewers in general, and low scores. it shed a lot of light on the professional reviewer 'controversy', if you will. they said pro reviewers are usually much harsher on games (than average players) because they see the same shit over and over. they have to push out so many reviews, which means they play the same games, which explains why games with the same thing done over and over... it might be new to the average player (say, a niche game does something unique, then a few AAA titles take that, those average people may only play one or two of the AAA titles with that unique thing, while a pro reviewer may have had to play all the AAA titles AND the niche game that started it all in the first place) but it's not to the professional, it's either overstayed its welcome, or has simply been done ad nauseum to the point a professional reviewer is tired of it... while the average person may not be.
add to that reviewer fatigue (it IS a job after all, and jobs wear out their allure, no matter how neat the job, and if it's a shitty month where you were given 20 ridiculously long games, you're going to feel overbooked) and there you have it: games can get incredibly low scores without honestly warranting it, because of all of that.
this also explains why a game that may not appeal to gamers, but brings something new to the table, will get these stupidly high reviews... like walking simulators, when they were fresh to the table, they were getting incredibly high scores, because professional reviewers found some relief in them because they weren't the 15th pew pew open world shooter of the month.
the flip side to that is the idiot userbase who hasn't seen X theme or Y mechanic that has been done in 20 fucking niche games you might have played, but then got jacked by some AAA title. so they go on and on about how unique and interesting the mechanic/theme/whatever is, but you've already seen it, so that would knock your own opinion of the game down from 'unique experience' to 'meh, seen it, done that'.
anyway, yeah, the one review that sticks out to me is pokemon mystery dungeon: blue rescue team. that game, in GI, was absolutely fucking TRASHED.
i guess i could also say that when i see shit like tomb raider reboot get a 9/10 i feel like it's way the fuck off, because when i played it, i was sitting there and literally saying "when does the game start?" for the first two hours. the game had started. that was the game. maybe it finally opens up out of QTE nightmare 'hold your hand and guide you piece by piece through the story' bullshit, but i didn't bother to give it more time to see.
