Do Reviews Guide Your Wallet? $$$$

A recurring argument at my office, which is a business firm of sorts, is what games will get what review score? It is a fun game to play and we take bets on the big titles and even have a pool for game of the year. If you are a gamer then reviews are pretty much in your face regardless of which website you frequent. the argument then leads to what does that score really mean to you in terms of guidance? Does a 9.5 from gamespot mean you have to buy it, even ifit is something you have never played before? and if you are a fan of a game and you see a 7.0 pop up in a review will it detur you from a purchase, and can a review affectyour enjoyment of a game? My opinion is that a review is merely an interpretation, strictin most cases and subjective to a myriad of criticism. I think it should in no way guide enjoyment but i do think it can prevent a waste of money on ocassion. It is a handy tool in guarding against a bad buy, but if i let reviews govern which games i would buy, there would have been several great titles that i may have avioded, yet were great games in my opinion. There is a guy who works here who wont buy a game unless it scores above a 9.0 on this site. If I suffered fromthis dimentia i would have missed out on several Ratchet and clank titles as well as silent hill sequels, Hitman 2,devil may cry 3, shadow of the colossus, metroid prime 3 (which was great), Dead rising.....i could go on and on.

Let's say you love Resident Evil and next year RE5 gets a 8.0 from gamespot, which in the grand scheme of things is not a bad score. But in the wake of a classic might cause you to question forking over $65 for the game. let's say you never read the review and went straight for your retailer andraced home to kill at will - would you find the game better because you avoided the review?there are too many scenarios to mention but i wanted to get some viewpoints on the argument. Should a review govern your wallet? Does it help/hinder your enjoyment of a game? Should you even look at a review?

Thanks in advance for anyone who contributes to this thread, your input is appreciated.

No. If a game was to get a 9.5 from GS I'd look into it if the genre and the actual game interested me and I'd try it out and I'd look at all the good points and bad points and see if I can get over the bad points. Then if I like it then I'll buy it. Most of the time I get a game despite the score it recieves if I'm anticipated for it.

Reviews are just a good guide to games.

Yes and no.

Obviously, I have my own opinion about games that may or may not agree with the editor's review. However, what I usually do is use multiple reviews as a test to see if a game is worth looking into. There are usually about three catagories in my thought process when I go through reviews:

1. Average score is decently high: This is a good sign that a game is worth checking out (although, I always recommend renting a game before buying it), if the vast majority of "qualified" reviewers think it is good, then there is a good chance it is.

2. Average score is decently low: On the other end, of course is the game that gets middle to low scores, this says to me that the game really has too many flaws and really isn't worth my time.

3. Is the genre for you?: This is for the games that have reviews that waver from high to low. This makes me think that the game's genre and the type of genre that you like will play a key factor in whether or not you might be interested in the game.

Well, that sums up my thoughts in a nutshell.

If a game looks interesting or has a high score, I would look into it, and try to find a demo. I usually don't buy that many games, because I can't afford many anymore. I sometimes buy 1 (VERY rarely 2) every 6 months.

My friend works at EB Games and buys a BUNCH of games, so I can try them out at his house. For example, I spent a whole weekend at my friend's house to play Bioshock. I just saved $60.

Yes and no.

...........if the vast majority of "qualified" reviewers think it is good, then there is a good chance it is.

Dragonblade01

this is probably the most intelligent thing to do in my opinion. going by one site, or one magazine is just plain shortsighted. I think with the never ending rise in prices for games you actually need a voice of reason. Is a review it? Or should you just bag reviews altogether and rent first? would it make sense to rent Halo 3 or Metal Gear solid 4 -most likely sure fire hits that are worth the price of admission?

Yes and no. I pretty much know what is gonna intrest me and what isnt.. I skim over a few sites for reviews now but pretty much know what I will and wont buy, and I have wide and varied tastes in games too. Call it my magical power, name any three games that have yet to be released but are to be released soon and I will know enough about them to tell you if its crap or not.GodModeEnabled

I think this is where the argument pretty much begins and ends as far as reviews go. Most everyone has said thatif they are a fan of a particular genre then certain games, regardless of review score, is a no brainer. Like if you are into RPG's you will almost undoubtedly buy Mass Effect. I think reviews matter (maybe matter is the wrong word)more to people with varied tastes who like to experience a bit of everything, like me, but obviuosly you cant buy every game that comes out. I just feel like a review can give you a bias when you are playing because you can actually become more sensitive to an almost unnoticeable flaw that you may not have noticed had it not been pointed out in a review that you many have read/watched. This rarely happens, but when it does i ask myself -"Why the hell do i care about a 1 second hitch in framerate when it only happened 10 or 15 times in 25 hours?" but i guess if a review findsa "flaw", they need to tell you what it is, even something miniscule.

I will admit to being a bit more of a slave to reviews than not. In general, I prefer to see reviews in print and go off of that guidance than reviews on the web. Maybe it's because I have a feeling that there is a web-media rush to be the first to post a review, so I am not as confident that an online reviewer spent a lot of time with the game and did anything more than bull-rush run-through. This could of course, be a false impression; the magazine reviewer could have done the same thing to meet his press deadline, and you are just seeing the review a month later.

Some of it is also based on experience. How many times has a certain publication or website burned me through a good review of a game that I wound up buying and did not like? At the end of the day, I buy enough games that if I wind up with a few in my collection that I do not care for as much as others, that is ok.

My preferred publications are GameInformer for consoles and PCGamer for PC games. I know there are plenty who will read this post who hate those mags or will say that their reviews are crap, but I think each individual gamer has to, through trial and error and experience, find the review publications or websites that most closely align with their own views.

Another point of variance is the system. Right or wrong, for whatever reason, some of the systems I own do not have a lot of games that are in genres that I prefer with high reviews (my target is generally a game in the 80th percentile or above). For the Wii and the Nintendo DS Lite, I will dip to a game in the 7's if it is a genre that I prefer to play. Same for PC games of the simulation genre. Since there are not a lot of hardcore sims coming out frequently for the PC, if I see one that comes in above average but not excellent or great, I might still check it out.

The final variance is the social factor of gaming online. If a few peeps on my friends list on Xbox Live are getting a game, I may pick it up regardless of the review score in order to connect with them online. Chromehounds only received above average marks from both the magazines I prefer and the online community, but a lot of us tracked the game through its development cycle, mech sims are one of my preferred genres that do not have a lot of titles on the market, and a bunch of my friends on Live had agreed to get it. Although the game review scores were only ok, I wound up playing the game for four months almost exclusively when I played online, and reaped much more return on investment from that title than I have from other game that have scored just as high.

The reverse is true as well. Just because a game is considered the bees-knees by most of the media, does not mean it is going into my collection. I played the Doom 3 demo and did not care for it, so I skipped it. Most of the planet is ga-ga over the impending release of Halo 3, and I am sure it is going to receive a 9+ score, but I am more focused on Call of Duty 4, Hellgate: London, Clive Barker's Jericho, and Assassin's Creed. I will still admit, though, that if I do wind up waiting for a review, if I see particular pet peeves of game design identified in a review, I will wind up skipping a game even if I have been checking it out since its announcement.

Demos are the be-all end-all however. I do not get a lot of time to check out demos, but if I play one I like, I am getting the game regardless of the review.

good post by dvader654 above. Everyone should read it......very good addition to this topic. Maybe if the scores matter to the makers too, which everyone would assume they do, then hopefully it will drive the dev's to make some better titles. when i think about it, rarely do i buy more than 8 games a year. I want to buy more but feel like there is just not qualityfor my$'sjayfi33

Reviews effect my purchase of game, but only to a certain degree.

Not entirely. Before buying a game, I usually watch gameplay videos, then read through the reviews, and try a demo if available. Forum recommendations also influence my purchases.

Yeah, reviews do impact my decision to buy games. I will rarely decide to buy a game if it gets a Critic Score under 7.0 (7.0 = Good).

I don't play genres that I dislike. I didn't give a hoot when GS gave Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 a 10. I don't care for skate boarding games. I also value the Critic Score over the GS score and will sometime consider the User Score. I've been pre-ordering a lot of games lately and well, the only thing you can count on there is your own anticipation and what you've seen. My latest pre-order was the World in Conflict Collector's Edition and I was becoming a little wary nearing the release date, because I wasn't sure if it'd score well.

No....in most cases Reviews alone have no bearing on my Wallet whatsoever.

If anything, acclaimed reviews will guide me to research a certain game first over others....but ultimately buying a game is determined by a variety of factors like word of mouth from like minded gamers, demos, and average of review scores.

Case in point, if I went by review scores alone I would have never experienced certain great games like Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, which I decided to check out due to strong positive word of mouth from people both on and off forums who enjoyed great Western RPG games.

I base a lot of my buying decisions based on reviews, or at least the scores. A lot of times I have research done and my mind made up before reviews even come out what I'm planning to buy, but reviews go a long way. I don't go by any gaming site in particular; I don't think that's a great idea. I use a game's score over at metacritic.com and it usually steers me the right way. If there are 50 reviews and 45 of them say the game is awesome, it usually is, although if it's got a bunch of high reviews and a few shaky reviews, I might read more into why those few people didn't like it. If the game scores over a 90, especially over 93, it's usually a good bet for a full $50-$60 purchase. If it's 80-89, you're usually going to be getting a very good game but I will poke my nose around a bit to find out why it didn't get higher. If it's in the high 70s I will usually look at only buying it when the price drops or rental, and if it's in the low 70s or lower, I usually stay away unless it's getting strong word of mouth from the fans or is a franchise I love. It's not perfect but it steers me in the right direction 95% of the time.

Reviews aren't the only factor -- I may buy a game I'm not sure I really want because I know it's going to be rare down the line, or I may pass on buying a strongly reviewed game until it's cheaper if it's less than 10 hours long or has a reputation for being easy. Plus as I mentioned, word of mouth can change my mind. If I see a game get a lot of love from fan votes and message boards, it can prompt me to buy a game I wasn't planning on getting. If a strongly-reviewed game gets bashed by fans, I might wait until a price drop. But the metacritic score goes a long way for me, maybe bigger than all factors.

In the past I'd say no out of some sense of independence, but seriously thinking about it. Yeah they influence my purchases a great deal. At $50 or $60 I can't afford to buy all the games I would like to buy and frankly I don't even have time to rent them all. Reviews influence my purchases a great deal.

The good news is that the reviews out there are pretty good. There is a lot of "if you enjoy X you'll like this game" and "if you're not a fan of Y you'll not like this game" and similar statements.

I do take reviews into consideration when buying games. Sometimes a game I wasn't previously interested in will catch my attention due to a positive review on one or more websites.

There are other times when I buy a game because it's cheap and either don't know what score it got, or decide it's a pretty good score for what I'm paying.

None of the games in my collection have recieved less than 6.0 from GameSpot, That's more of a coincidence than anything intentional. If a game gets a low score, but it still looks like something I may be interested in, I'll still consider it if the price is right.