You're probably better off not trusting reviews at all unless you trust a reviewer. Watching video of gameplay is a decent way to gauge whether you would enjoy the game.
I haven't trusted review platforms for years now, it's too easy to bot reviews or for the publisher to pay the platform to fudge the stats in their favour. Less so on steam as they have no loyalty to the publishers and they are actually too big to fail.
The only time I check them out on a steam game is when they're mixed or mostly negative out of curiosity. So for this reason if you're curious give them a read, otherwise just stay away and/or build a list of YouTubers who do unsponsored reviews who you can align your likes to.
If you want to get on the top of the NYT Best selling book list, you buy something like 5,000 copies of your own book from Amazon. Then sit on them for a while, put a fresh slip cover on them, and re-list them. It costs relatively little (because you're buying them from yourself) and getting to the top of that list gives you a lot more sales.
It would not surprise me if a similar scheme was done with video games.
Perhaps I should have left that detail out. Reselling the book is merely a means to recoup some of the costs. Even if the books were thrown away, getting to the top of the chart is a relatively cheap way to boost real sales.
I don't disagree with you, but Pharaoh may be a poor example. Hordes of gamers will buy any Total War game, no matter how good or bad it turns out. It's just a benefit of that series' lineage.
Most gamers don't give a fuck about the state of the industry they barely can even handle a game with story (for me story is the most important factor of a good game). They are just retards who want multiplayer shooty bang bang. I'm in the old world camp of wanting the entire game industry to collapse into complete ruin. I don't care how many of my favourite IPs must be sacrificed, the 80s video game crash needs to happen again, and much more severely. Total war is a very bad example to use because the moron historical total war crowd are zealous and will get anything not warhammer in an attempt to try and prove something about fantasy not being good.
Aye, there's definitely some weird shit with Steam's stats and rating/review results. And "recent reviews" tends to be implemented rather poorly, to the point to where a game that's only received 8 or so reviews in the past month can lead to "mixed review" status based on 3/8 of those reviews being negative. Even if they're negative for shitty reasons.
Also, how utterly short and meaningless most reviews are. I've actually AVOIDED writing reviews for years because I felt like I needed to be overly detailed and verbose, and didn't have the time to do that. Maybe I should've said fuck it and given games I like positive low effort reviews anyway? I dunno.
One thing I'd like to bring up, since it's something I often tune out, fail to notice, or forget, is how awesome and useful some of this NextFest stuff is that Steam's been promoting lately. Games with playable demos and the like, giving people a proper chance at previewing and trying before buying. Still plenty of shovelware but I've played at least a few demos that were legitimately enjoyable and/or seemed like they might have decent potential.
This is the same company that didn’t just release a shitty cash grab Counter-Strike 2, they also removed CS:GO for people who paid for it in favor of free-to-play shit.
I would say that virtually all the large game companies deserve to have their games pirated at this point, but in most cases that’s more than they deserve. Give your mindshare to retro games that are more deserving.
Steam lets anyone review, so naturally there will be bot farms gaming the system. individual reviews are not useful, but aggregating them can be. look for trends in the negative and positive reviews and ignore the overall score.
for instance, you can tell if a recent patch broke something by looking at the most recent reviews. You can also tell how much of your time the game demands by looking for people complaining about grind or praising it for "tons of content".
Steam also differentiates between all reviews and the most recent, as well as lets you see review trends over time in a graph, which can help you detect anything artificial happening.
IMO, Steam has the best reviewing system and I wish it was adapted for other things as well.
I used to be a mod for an indie steam game, and I can kinda confirm this. Steam has a pretty lenient policy on what companies do to reviews, or more accurately they're under the impression "it's better to be in the center of attention even if it's bad". While I can't speak for all games, many b-tier indie ones will intentionally pay bots/companies to boost their reviews. It's not cheap (I know the game company I was with was paying about $15-20k a month to "boost" their reviews), so not all companies go for it.
I dont rely much on steam reviews, if i see a game that interest me, ill go look up the gameplay on youtube, there's bound to be one even for smaller titles. If it looks good there too then ill pirate and if i do like it then ill buy it... when there's a discount.
Only reviews I'll ever look at is the negative ones, see what pattern I can make out and ask myself if those negative features would bother me while I look at gameplay online.
After that I may give a game a shot if it has a demo or a "demo". Or I might jump the first step and try the demo first.
If I like it then I'll consider dropping cash for it if I think the game will entertain me for a suitable amount of time.
I don't think I've read a positive review in decades
You're probably better off not trusting reviews at all unless you trust a reviewer. Watching video of gameplay is a decent way to gauge whether you would enjoy the game.
Gotcha. I always assume that wokies are cooking the books in the absence of evidence that they're not.
"<insert game> no commentary gameplay"
I haven't trusted review platforms for years now, it's too easy to bot reviews or for the publisher to pay the platform to fudge the stats in their favour. Less so on steam as they have no loyalty to the publishers and they are actually too big to fail.
The only time I check them out on a steam game is when they're mixed or mostly negative out of curiosity. So for this reason if you're curious give them a read, otherwise just stay away and/or build a list of YouTubers who do unsponsored reviews who you can align your likes to.
If you want to get on the top of the NYT Best selling book list, you buy something like 5,000 copies of your own book from Amazon. Then sit on them for a while, put a fresh slip cover on them, and re-list them. It costs relatively little (because you're buying them from yourself) and getting to the top of that list gives you a lot more sales.
It would not surprise me if a similar scheme was done with video games.
Perhaps I should have left that detail out. Reselling the book is merely a means to recoup some of the costs. Even if the books were thrown away, getting to the top of the chart is a relatively cheap way to boost real sales.
I don't disagree with you, but Pharaoh may be a poor example. Hordes of gamers will buy any Total War game, no matter how good or bad it turns out. It's just a benefit of that series' lineage.
Most gamers don't give a fuck about the state of the industry they barely can even handle a game with story (for me story is the most important factor of a good game). They are just retards who want multiplayer shooty bang bang. I'm in the old world camp of wanting the entire game industry to collapse into complete ruin. I don't care how many of my favourite IPs must be sacrificed, the 80s video game crash needs to happen again, and much more severely. Total war is a very bad example to use because the moron historical total war crowd are zealous and will get anything not warhammer in an attempt to try and prove something about fantasy not being good.
Aye, there's definitely some weird shit with Steam's stats and rating/review results. And "recent reviews" tends to be implemented rather poorly, to the point to where a game that's only received 8 or so reviews in the past month can lead to "mixed review" status based on 3/8 of those reviews being negative. Even if they're negative for shitty reasons.
Also, how utterly short and meaningless most reviews are. I've actually AVOIDED writing reviews for years because I felt like I needed to be overly detailed and verbose, and didn't have the time to do that. Maybe I should've said fuck it and given games I like positive low effort reviews anyway? I dunno.
One thing I'd like to bring up, since it's something I often tune out, fail to notice, or forget, is how awesome and useful some of this NextFest stuff is that Steam's been promoting lately. Games with playable demos and the like, giving people a proper chance at previewing and trying before buying. Still plenty of shovelware but I've played at least a few demos that were legitimately enjoyable and/or seemed like they might have decent potential.
This is the same company that didn’t just release a shitty cash grab Counter-Strike 2, they also removed CS:GO for people who paid for it in favor of free-to-play shit.
I would say that virtually all the large game companies deserve to have their games pirated at this point, but in most cases that’s more than they deserve. Give your mindshare to retro games that are more deserving.
Steam lets anyone review, so naturally there will be bot farms gaming the system. individual reviews are not useful, but aggregating them can be. look for trends in the negative and positive reviews and ignore the overall score.
for instance, you can tell if a recent patch broke something by looking at the most recent reviews. You can also tell how much of your time the game demands by looking for people complaining about grind or praising it for "tons of content".
Steam also differentiates between all reviews and the most recent, as well as lets you see review trends over time in a graph, which can help you detect anything artificial happening.
IMO, Steam has the best reviewing system and I wish it was adapted for other things as well.
I used to be a mod for an indie steam game, and I can kinda confirm this. Steam has a pretty lenient policy on what companies do to reviews, or more accurately they're under the impression "it's better to be in the center of attention even if it's bad". While I can't speak for all games, many b-tier indie ones will intentionally pay bots/companies to boost their reviews. It's not cheap (I know the game company I was with was paying about $15-20k a month to "boost" their reviews), so not all companies go for it.
I dont rely much on steam reviews, if i see a game that interest me, ill go look up the gameplay on youtube, there's bound to be one even for smaller titles. If it looks good there too then ill pirate and if i do like it then ill buy it... when there's a discount.
Only reviews I'll ever look at is the negative ones, see what pattern I can make out and ask myself if those negative features would bother me while I look at gameplay online.
After that I may give a game a shot if it has a demo or a "demo". Or I might jump the first step and try the demo first.
If I like it then I'll consider dropping cash for it if I think the game will entertain me for a suitable amount of time.
I don't think I've read a positive review in decades
I only buy old games that are on sale and by old I mean years and years old.