Should reviewers try and ignore the hype when reviewing games?

[cheat-master30]

For this, I personally think they should try and avoid being influenced by hype and popular opinion and go by assessing the game on how fun it is for them personally, and things such as technical qualities. This means reviewers on one hand shouldn't just give Super Smash Bros/Final Fantasy/Halo/Legend of Zelda/etc a great review just because everyone else says it's a good game and they'll get flamed if they don't, and they shouldn't just badly criticise a bad game without actually playing it, or be extra harsh on it because any audience, whether hardcore or casual says it's crap.

I know it's difficult to ignore the screaming fans and the annoyed fanboys (the amount of flaming people who said they didn't like games such as Super Smash Bros Brawl or The Conduit got was plain ridiculous and could light a barbecue), but I do think there's a current tendency for mainstream reviewers just to give a game a score purely because their audience expects it to get that score, and it's rather unfortunate (even worse when they give a game a good or bad score specifically because of the advertisers, such as the Gamespot editor's firing or the Sony sponsored magazine bashing Super Mario Galaxy, but that's another thing).

[Soul keeper13]

Yeah, This almost made me not buy two very awesome games. Star Fox Assualt was one. It was truly awesome. Plus the multiplayer was fun too. For me, it never got old. But when I read a review on it before I got it, they seriously bashed it. Another was kirby air ride. after recently finding it, I play this game alot, I used to play it everyday, after I unlocked everything, I even started over once or twice. But Gamespot gave it a 5. And I seriously doubt the reviewer even played it. D=

[MrLuigi]

Reviews? I never read them, I'm pretty sure I'm gonna start bashing critics in my new Critic Bashing of Game magazine.

[Chrisjh0223]

I believe that video game reviewers should try and ignore the hype when reviewing games. C&C 3 Tiberium Wars and Red Alert 3 are getting bashed by a portion of the former Westwood fanbase, I don't think they even played the games (or at least watched them on Youtube). They're actually very good games, so reviewers of these games should ignore the haters and proceed to diagnose C&C 3 and RA3 through actual gameplay/observation.

I remember Psycho Penguin's review of Super Mario 64, he/she said the game was not all that good bar a few aspects. Just about everyone (including myself) says SM64 is one of the best games ever, if not the best. Yet Psycho Penguin simply reviewed the game based on personal critique. While I have to disagree with this person, it's good to see Penguin deviated from the major crowd and went with a more personal system of rating. People on the SM64 board at Gamefaqs still make topics to this day of Penguin's review, saying things like "man, Penguin really is psycho" and other people like TUK will come into the topic and say "gee, can't you lot just DROP THIS topic already?" because SM64 truly is a good game and deserving of a great rating.

So in short, I say reviewers should ignore what other people are saying of the game when reviewing it and review based on your scale of judgment with proper observation of the game in question. You might get bashed in the process, but don't let other people influence your pure voice.

[Phazon]

Half the reviewers out there are uneducated 12 year olds who think everything is great or everything sucks. Their opinions are completely non-valuable. Just read some reviews and it'll become more and more obvious that they only focus on the good or bad things and ignore everything else, which leads to a load of 1/10s or 10/10s. Anyway what's the point of following hype when it so obviously comes from such a useless source? Only you can decide if a game is good or not. I mean personally I think Mario Galaxy is the single most over-rated game ever created, but I know that almost nobody will agree with me on that so why even take what someone else thinks seriously?

[Mario15632]

Well, I think a good reviewer is a balanced reviewer who, as mentioned before, factors everything about the game, not just focusing on good or bad, because you know what that's called? Bias. And a biased review isn't worth anyone's reading. Well, except for laughs.

[ninjablooper]

It is annoying when people complain about minor things because the fans don't like tat small aspect. Say there was a new Mario game, but without Bowser. All the fans would complain and FORCE the reviewer to give it a bad score.

[Phazon]

It is annoying when people complain about minor things because the fans don't like tat small aspect. Say there was a new Mario game, but without Bowser. All the fans would complain and FORCE the reviewer to give it a bad score.

You mean SMB2?

[dragonboy]

If I like a game that always gets bad reviews, then I feel offended.

If I like a game that almost always gets good reviews, except for one person that gives it a bad review, then I don't care what that person thinks, but most people will be irritated by a bad review even when it's only the vast minority.



Overation paradox:

if the minority agrees something is overrated then it is overrated; if the majority agrees something is overrated, than it technically isn't.

[ninjablooper]

It is annoying when people complain about minor things because the fans don't like tat small aspect. Say there was a new Mario game, but without Bowser. All the fans would complain and FORCE the reviewer to give it a bad score.

You mean SMB2?

That is a good example. All the fans are like "this gam sux cuase it iz not lik teh other gamez" when if you actually try to enjoy it it is a very fun game, but because a few aspects that are different than SMB and SMB3 everyone rants about it.

[cheat-master30]

Do not forget the other side of the coin. Many video game players seem to completely have this strong first opinion about whether a game is great or horrible, then refuse to listen to anyone else, practically demanding everyone gives it either a good or bad score respectively. The Conduit gets this a lot. Seriously, anyone who bashes this is called biased, ever. Yes, it's a so called 'hardcore' Wii game. But that doesn't automatically mean quality. Really, you just need to see all the reviewers get flak for not giving it above 90%.

Similarly, anyone who gets a bad impression of a game (think any 'casual' game), seems to basically have a grudge against anyone who likes it or reviews it decently. Can't they ever accept reviewers have this thing called an opinion?