how much stock do you put into game reviews?

when you're interested in buying a game, are you the type of person who puts a lot of stock in what review sites (like IGN or Metacritic) think about it? or are you the type to want to buy it anyway and see for yourself how it is?

im the type that buys it when friends are like "hey TY come carry us"

I barely check reviews cause they never line up with my own interests

These days, reviews definitely skew my perception and whether I buy a game or not. While I don't place much stock in reviews written by a single person/company (eg. like IGN), I do think there's something to be said for a game that has overwhelmingly positive player reviews, with hundreds or thousands of people praising it, and similarly if hundreds or thousands of people say it's buggy and uninspired, I'm likely to believe that too.

I often wait until there are a good number of positive reviews before deciding to buy a game, and I do like to read all user comments about a game, since if a lot of people are saying the same things, it's likely true to an extent.

That said, I don't know if I just had lower standards as a kid (likely) but it was also very freeing to just walk into a game store and pick out whatever game's cover caught my attention and reading an interesting description on the back of the box. I'd say I enjoyed most games I played as a kid, even if, as an adult I looked back on some of my favourite games and now see that they had average or bad reviews, I still liked them back then, before I knew other people considered them "bad" games. So maybe I should try more games that just look interesting to me regardless of what other people say - might surprise me.

Only when there's a large volume to user created reviews to look at. When it's just an individual or company, it's hard to take stock in that one opinion. However, if it's a considerable amount of people, then I'll at least give it further research.

Also, most of the time my friends will push me to pick up the games I absolutely cannot live without. Never been turned in the wrong direction before so I trust 'em. :)

I definitely hold what my friends and people I know say about a game to a much higher regard than reviews of strangers on the internet. Especially if said friends have the same interests/like the same games as me. If there's no one I know that has played the game I might look a little into what people say about a game before getting it but not very often as the reason why I pick up most games these days is because i hear it from a friend or a group of people haha.

Depends.

Will I let reviews from something an actual critic has looked at affect my decision? No. Why? Because they are looking at things from a VERY differet viewpoint from me; I can't realy expect them to review the game at an angle from which I can directly relate. However if my friends or people who know what I like in a game tell me to not bother, I will at least take their words into consideration when playing the game, however I will always try on the basis that there is the potential I will enjoy it.

I feel like I over-rely on reviews these days to affect my decision.. and I don't like it. The situation usually goes like this:

I'm at a GameStop, wanting to pick up a new game (usually a JRPG) that I haven't heard of before. Before doing so, I sit down and look up youtube reviews from multiple parties and see what they say before coming to any sort of decision, myself. The problem is that I'm super indecisive because at the back of my mind I believe "well, these ARE people who've played the game so surely I have to take their opinions into consideration", but at the same time I may see things very differently than they will.

Much like Karen, I really do miss the days of being a kid and picking up a game and making the determination of whether or not I would buy it based on looking at the back cover. The back cover usually told me what I needed to know about whether or not I would be interested about a particular game, and these days I feel like I need to see not only gameplay, but characters, dialogue, battle system, what other people think about it, the whole nine yards. @_@ I think it's mostly because well, $60 is a lot of money and I want to make sure I'm actually getting my money's worth, so I take everyone's opinion a lot more seriously than I would take my own.

I wish I can convince myself not to rely on reviews so much. I dunno if that's a good or a bad thing or somewhere in the middle that I do that, but it sure as heck feels like I'm letting strangers make the decision for me instead of me making the decision on whether I'll enjoy the game, idk.

That's another thing too and why I try not to really look at reviews or have them effect me. Read too many reviews and you have this impression of the game before you even go in and just like everything else if you expect it to be this way bc of what people say then I feel like your experience could very possibly hurt from it. A game you could've enjoyed you didn't because you went in with either too many expectations or none at all and bc you went in with a bad opinion said opinion hurt your judgement on a game you may have enjoyed otherwise.

idk I've just seen it happen to people so I just try to be skeptical i guess.

I still enjoy reading them, however not as much as I did previously. Also I don't play to critique which most reviews are written for. So if I can enjoyment then I can usually overlook many flaws.

Ash said:

That's another thing too and why I try not to really look at reviews or have them effect me. Read too many reviews and you have this impression of the game before you even go in and just like everything else if you expect it to be this way bc of what people say then I feel like your experience could very possibly hurt from it. A game you could've enjoyed you didn't because you went in with either too many expectations or none at all and bc you went in with a bad opinion said opinion hurt your judgement on a game you may have enjoyed otherwise.

idk I've just seen it happen to people so I just try to be skeptical i guess.

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I think the biggest example of this happening was when I went to GameStop and saw Shining Resonance: Refrain. The boxart is super pretty, holographic and all (which isn't common at all to see with boxarts, imo), so I was tempted to give it a shot. However, in true Angie fashion, I don't like shooting in the dark, so I sat down and watch review after review after review on youtube and read up on them and I've heard the same negative and positive points brought up in most of them to the point where it feels like even I've played the game without even actually played it and it killed whatever desire I had of getting what would probably be a game I would enjoy.

Idk like, I like reading up reviews on a game just to see what I'd be getting myself into, but I'd rather not... take them so seriously.

I don't pay much attention to game reviews so not much. But "fun" is so subjective. I would probably not trust in most game reviewers - however, if I found one that had very similar tastes to my own, I would trust them much more than the average joe.

I usually use reviews for ingame images and a first impression kind of deal. Whether that's making me buy a game or not is a completely different story. If I really want to make sure I'll also check out some LPs or streams. Occasionally I even end up buying the game without research.

colours said:

I think the biggest example of this happening was when I went to GameStop and saw Shining Resonance: Refrain. The boxart is super pretty, holographic and all (which isn't common at all to see with boxarts, imo), so I was tempted to give it a shot. However, in true Angie fashion, I don't like shooting in the dark, so I sat down and watch review after review after review on youtube and read up on them and I've heard the same negative and positive points brought up in most of them to the point where it feels like even I've played the game without even actually played it and it killed whatever desire I had of getting what would probably be a game I would enjoy.

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I have a rather weird history with this game. I was thinking back and forth on whether to buy it or not. Ultimately I bought it, though. Throughout the first couple of hours I kinda regretted it somewhat. I don't know if you've ever played Tales of Berseria (if you haven't: I recommend playing it), but this made me wanna play ToB very much. In fact, at a certain point I just had to swap games and play ToB instead.

When I went back to the game I ended up not caring for the majority of gameplay mechanics and only focused on the interesting stuff (the battle system is pretty decent). That way I actually got some enjoyment out of it and even beat it. The problem with this game isn't that it's bad. It's just incredibly mediocre and uninspired, copying all the mechanics that pretty much any other (good) game of its sort has, without doing anything unique with them. It doesn't stand out from the crowd for anything good, but it's also not bad enough to be considered trash (trash games can be enjoyable too, just for completely wrong reasons).

I don't really care much about reviews, I almost always just get the game I'm interested in and see how I like it for myself

I reeeally don't care for what the reviews say, but it depends. If it's IGN, etc. I don't care.
4.9 ON MYSTERY DUNGEON: EXPLORERS OF SKY?! REALLY?!?!?!? REEEEEE--

Now if it was reviews such as how Steam does it where people themselves review the game, I do care a lot more. Though nowadays it's hard to tell if certain reviews are butthurt people 'review bombing' a game or if they genuinely dislike it. -_-

I watch lots of gameplay, then make my decision on if I'm getting a game or not. I do watch reviews, but those generally have no effect on my decision.

I don't check out reviews for a game I'm buying. I very rarely impulse buy a game. If I'm getting something, it's for one of these reasons:
- It's a series or comes from a company I've played before and trust (mostly Nintendo stuff)
- I've heard nothing but good things from friends or the Internet
I can't think of the last time I was straight-up disappointed in a game.
Unless it's in a "wait I'm not going to play this" way like Smash Bros, I don't have friends, why do I own this?

I used to put quite a bit of stock into reviews, but now I just use them as an indication as to whether a game is going to be good or not. It depends on the the content of the reviews. If a review says that a game is riddled with bugs then I will pass on said game.

tigertron said:

I used to put quite a bit of stock into reviews, but now I just use them as an indication as to whether a game is going to be good or not. It depends on the the content of the reviews. If a review says that a game is riddled with bugs then I will pass on said game.

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Yeah, this is how I would want to think of it. A broad indicator and not much else and it has to come from like... multiple reviewers usually saying that the game is terrible before it gets me thinking twice about my purchase. Of course, I'd have to see actual gameplay for myself to make that judgment just in case it's just the reviewers making hasty judgments, but yeah.

Individual reviews? Not so much, since they tend to be biased imo. I read multiple reviews and watch gameplay videos before figuring out whether I'll like a game.

Not much. I usually read a bunch of user reviews and watch a little bit of gameplay to see if the game is really what I expect it to be. This usually cover most of the things I want to know about the game before buying it.