reviews - gamespot vs ign

i have been a long time user of gamespot and ign, and i used to agree alot of the time with gamespots reviews, but lateley i am unsure of gamespots reviews, for example, call of duty black ops and fallout new vegas. gamespot gave black ops 9.0 and fallout 8.5, where as ign gave black ops 8.5 and fallout 9.0. i agree alot more with ign on this, seeing as ive played both games and fallout is better, albeit marginally. thats not the only review i think is off, gamespot gave super scribblenaughts 6.5, and ign gave it the "right" score of 9.0. this is just my oppinion.

i have been a long time user of gamespot and ign, and i used to agree alot of the time with gamespots reviews, but lateley i am unsure of gamespots reviews, for example, call of duty black ops and fallout new vegas. gamespot gave black ops 9.0 and fallout 8.5, where as ign gave black ops 8.5 and fallout 9.0. i agree alot more with ign on this, seeing as ive played both games and fallout is better, albeit marginally. thats not the only review i think is off, gamespot gave super scribblenaughts 6.5, and ign gave it the "right" score of 9.0. this is just my oppinion.

iinfinity

Honestly? I trust IGN reviews better. At least I suspect IGN still have reviewers who specialized in certain genres. That's why I often see more PC game reviews at IGN such as DCS: Black Shark.

I started doubting GS after reading a review of a PC space combat simulator. The reviewer dinged the game for requiring a joystick and steep learning curve. To me, that's like WTF? Any longtime gamer on the PC knows a joystick is a staple of flight/space combat sims. Now, I usually read IGN reviews. I'd stay there if the forum layout didn't suck. I still like the forum layout here better. But for reviews, I go to IGN.

Gamespot doesn't seem to specialize with reviewers, so the niche reviews almost always suck.

You should pool the reviews together,

Both are pretty awful, but they're ultimately opinions anyway, so who really cares? I mean, what separates a reviewer from any other player? Aren't they just another dork with an opinion, a thesaurus, and a typewriter? I think the industry has a tendency of placing reviewers on pedestals somewhat, which is tragic given the talent pool it draws from.

On second thought, IGN sucks more. But by just a hair. I still wouldn't let either site's reviews dictate whether three twenties separate themselves from my wallet or not. Give me demos and player feedback over reviews any day of the week.

A reviews should be more than just one person opinion. A Reviewer need to be able over look his/her own taste in games and review base on the game. Even if a reviewer hates turn base combat, that reviewer should not take off points for it being turn base. The problem is that many do but they just hid it under things like slow pace and sluggish battles.

The main GS reviewers are actually very good, but not amazing like some of the people who used to work for IGN just a while back. And I also miss Greg Kasavin. He's a legend :P

The best reviewer now imo is Craig Harris from IGN. He has been covering Nintendo since 99 or something and he is now basically the only real editor of the IGN Nintendo team, he has a weird taste in games as he is very oldschool, into arcady titles like Punch out but overall he is the best reviewer, in terms of using the right perspective and reasoning, I'm not talking about writing skills or so as that is irrelevant to me. A reviewer is gamer first and journalist second, imo.

Both are pretty awful, but they're ultimately opinions anyway, so who really cares? I mean, what separates a reviewer from any other player? Aren't they just another dork with an opinion, a thesaurus, and a typewriter? I think the industry has a tendency of placing reviewers on pedestals somewhat, which is tragic given the talent pool it draws from.

On second thought, IGN sucks more. But by just a hair. I still wouldn't let either site's reviews dictate whether three twenties separate themselves from my wallet or not. Give me demos and player feedback over reviews any day of the week.

Shame-usBlackley

I only follow GS, IGN and GT in terms of reviews as I can extract every info about the game from them. I've only been disappointed with 2-3 games of my current gen collection. I know exactly what the experience will be like and to what level I will enjoy it.

I can tell if you will like x game based on just seeing your game collection and what scores you gave them. It's very simple for me, people around me are always asking me for advice on what to get and they always get pleased.

If I where to follow some random GS member's reviews, it would have been much harder for me as I'd have to get to know how the reviewer thinks in order to understand anything the person says in the review. This is not needed in the majority of GS/IGN reviews as they are written by experienced people who have high understanding of what gaming is.

Jeff Gerstmann is one of those that is unpredictable to me. He gave Resort a 5/5 score and Picross 3D on DS 5/5 and some games that are considered to be great, he gave low scores.5/5 is like, OoT big, revolutionary, timeless classic, huge stuff. He is a biased reviewer, but not in a negative way, he gives scores more based on how much fun he had with them rather than being objective.

To blindly say that GS and IGN sucks without no reasoning to back it up is ridiculous to me, they're amongst the best out there.

honestly I've only used IGN's reviews for quite some time....GS's tie in with game advertisers have lead me to be suspicious in regards to their reviews...Omni-Slash

[QUOTE="Omni-Slash"]honestly I've only used IGN's reviews for quite some time....GS's tie in with game advertisers have lead me to be suspicious in regards to their reviews...SteelAttack

agreed.....but after the whole Greg issue....i couldn;t turn a blind eye here anymore...Omni-Slash

[QUOTE="Shame-usBlackley"]

Both are pretty awful, but they're ultimately opinions anyway, so who really cares? I mean, what separates a reviewer from any other player? Aren't they just another dork with an opinion, a thesaurus, and a typewriter? I think the industry has a tendency of placing reviewers on pedestals somewhat, which is tragic given the talent pool it draws from.

On second thought, IGN sucks more. But by just a hair. I still wouldn't let either site's reviews dictate whether three twenties separate themselves from my wallet or not. Give me demos and player feedback over reviews any day of the week.

kontejner44

To blindly say that GS and IGN sucks without no reasoning to back it up is ridiculous to me, they're amongst the best out there.

I don't say it blindly. I have many reasons for reaching that conclusion, equal or greater to those you listed as citations of WHY you like them. And I stated my foremost reason for not feeling the need to have essentially another gamer tell me what his or her opinions are, because the one most important aspect of any kind of writing is the author's care toward AUDIENCE and said writer's AUTHORITY. I honestly think most "professional" game reviewers view their audience ambivalently or even negatively. I believe it is the goal of most reviewers to use game journalism as a stepping stone to get picked up by a development house, which absolutely, positively goes against all the tenets of bias and speaks to the credibility of the source. How many reviewers have we seen get hired by development houses? Alex Navarro? Che Chou? Luke Smith? I could go on and on, but you get the idea.

The other aspect is authority. What history and background gives a video game reviewer authority to write on games? Is playing them enough? No, not if you go by your own standards. Is being able to write a legible sentence that doesn't completely reek of no syntax and poor diction? No -- there are a million bloggers out there who could ace most any english exam. Is it the ability to draft a Rogerian argument or at the very least -- an argumentative essay disguised as a review? No, any tool going to a community college can learn that.

So, here we are.... two paragraphs in and I can't name one reason to take the word of a professional reviewer as anything other than a well-articulated opinion. So when you say "they're amongst the best out there" what exactly did you hope that to mean? Because the field is BARREN, my friend.

Personally, I read the gamespot review, along with reviews of other gamespot gamers, and based on the content of the several reviews (Not the Score), I decide whether or not to get the game.

Gamespot is a cleaner site, a more (in my opinion) honest site, and I feel as though they're less biased when it comes to reviews. This isn't true in all cases, but for the most part I trust what GS says over IGN.

IGN has a habit of not monitoring their site as well as they should (Pop-up ads everywhere, spelling and grammar errors, and unsolicited advertisements in the comments section.)

Gamespot isn't without its flaws, but as it stands, I find them to be a more reputable and attractive site overall.

Personally, I read the gamespot review, along with reviews of other gamespot gamers, and based on the content of the several reviews (Not the Score), I decide whether or not to get the game.

cprmauldin

Ditto - plus a review of user comments on Metacritic and comments on YouTube videos of the gameplay.

I use both gamespot and ign just to see their differing opinions. Though I think that gametrailers is the most reliable out of the review sites out there, but that's just me.

[QUOTE="kontejner44"]

[QUOTE="Shame-usBlackley"]

Both are pretty awful, but they're ultimately opinions anyway, so who really cares? I mean, what separates a reviewer from any other player? Aren't they just another dork with an opinion, a thesaurus, and a typewriter? I think the industry has a tendency of placing reviewers on pedestals somewhat, which is tragic given the talent pool it draws from.

On second thought, IGN sucks more. But by just a hair. I still wouldn't let either site's reviews dictate whether three twenties separate themselves from my wallet or not. Give me demos and player feedback over reviews any day of the week.

Shame-usBlackley

To blindly say that GS and IGN sucks without no reasoning to back it up is ridiculous to me, they're amongst the best out there.

I don't say it blindly. I have many reasons for reaching that conclusion, equal or greater to those you listed as citations of WHY you like them. And I stated my foremost reason for not feeling the need to have essentially another gamer tell me what his or her opinions are, because the one most important aspect of any kind of writing is the author's care toward AUDIENCE and said writer's AUTHORITY. I honestly think most "professional" game reviewers view their audience ambivalently or even negatively. I believe it is the goal of most reviewers to use game journalism as a stepping stone to get picked up by a development house, which absolutely, positively goes against all the tenets of bias and speaks to the credibility of the source. How many reviewers have we seen get hired by development houses? Alex Navarro? Che Chou? Luke Smith? I could go on and on, but you get the idea.

The other aspect is authority. What history and background gives a video game reviewer authority to write on games? Is playing them enough? No, not if you go by your own standards. Is being able to write a legible sentence that doesn't completely reek of no syntax and poor diction? No -- there are a million bloggers out there who could ace most any english exam. Is it the ability to draft a Rogerian argument or at the very least -- an argumentative essay disguised as a review? No, any tool going to a community college can learn that.

So, here we are.... two paragraphs in and I can't name one reason to take the word of a professional reviewer as anything other than a well-articulated opinion. So when you say "they're amongst the best out there" what exactly did you hope that to mean? Because the field is BARREN, my friend.

Game reviewers should be gamers first and journalists second. I don't care about how well written the review is or whatever, it's the content that matters.

Why? The point of a review is to tell people whether or not they should get this game. The first thing you do is to try and narrow down a target audience. "If you like x and y you will like this, but if you had problems with z game don't get this" In order to achieve this you need to have high understanding of gaming, writing skills does not help much here.

I say they're the best because they are the most informative in this sense, it's enough for me to watch the video reviews of GT/GS/IGN to know exactly who will like it and who will not, with a rate well above being correct 50% of the times. This is to me an indication of good reviews. They lay it all out perfectly for us to extract the information we want from them.

Game journalists get hired from game studios because of their knowledge in gaming. Matt Casamassina was easily one of the best reviewers. What happend? Apple picked him up and he is now the head of the game app team. Similar story can be told about Greg Kasavin who was a truly amazing reviewer. These guys shouldn't feel lucky about this, it's the companies that hires them who are lucky to have such great talent working for them.

I've abandoned relying on Gamespot reviews since they abandoned gamers years ago. In the good ole days when Kasavin was the chief editor, you didn't need to wait a week to read the reviews. Now I believe they outsource most of their reviews to contractors, which gives Gamespot virtually no credibility by name. And then to make things worse, they changed their rating system to this silly .5 rounded system. And don't even get me started on their news, which again they are also last to post about anything. I mainly come here just to chat on the boards, even though those too are outdated. But after 10 years or so, it's hard to just leave. I keep telling myself that the glory days will return to Gamespot.

hmm, it depends, both have had their fair share of mess ups, for example, GS gave Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction a 7.5/10, and...that was...well....not a very good review. Sometimes I believe that IGN tries to make up excuses for games to be bad. Uncharted 2: they said that the stealth part in the beginning was hard, and that there should have been a tutorial....I mean come on..seriously IGN? they also ad the Black Ops review where they said there was too much action. Action...in a call of duty game...this shouldn't be new. But I tend to read both sites reviews for games.

why would you ever have to pick just one site?

Look at as many reviews as you can. Or rent the game.

Game reviewers should be gamers first and journalists second. I don't care about how well written the review is or whatever, it's the content that matters.

Why? The point of a review is to tell people whether or not they should get this game. The first thing you do is to try and narrow down a target audience. "If you like x and y you will like this, but if you had problems with z game don't get this" In order to achieve this you need to have high understanding of gaming, writing skills does not help much here.

I say they're the best because they are the most informative in this sense, it's enough for me to watch the video reviews of GT/GS/IGN to know exactly who will like it and who will not, with a rate well above being correct 50% of the times. This is to me an indication of good reviews. They lay it all out perfectly for us to extract the information we want from them.

Game journalists get hired from game studios because of their knowledge in gaming. Matt Casamassina was easily one of the best reviewers. What happend? Apple picked him up and he is now the head of the game app team. Similar story can be told about Greg Kasavin who was a truly amazing reviewer. These guys shouldn't feel lucky about this, it's the companies that hires them who are lucky to have such great talent working for them.

kontejner44

A reviewer doesn't simply try to convey information.They try to convey information that is colored to match the score they assigned the game, and they mate that with rhetoric to try and make a persuasive case for WHY they feel that way. You are making it sound like the goal of a review is to pass along information, but that is only half the story -- they are passing along information that THEY deem pertinent and which matches their rhetoric and ultimately their review score. Nearly all of a review's text is spent backing up the assigned score. Which is fine, but it's mostly subjective. Sure, there are undisputable facts in a review, like the framerate being low or whether there is screen tearing or not, but the meat of the review is highly subjective. Unlike other written works, reviews are qualified only by the person writing it. In all other forms of writing, the writer is expected to back up their assertions and rhetoric with highly credible sources, of which those are listed in the text itself, and on a works cited page or annotated bibliography for the reader to peruse. This is not the case with reviews -- all of the information is reliant on the writer's opinion. It has been rumored that Gamespot's reviews go through some kind of peer review before being published, but calling it peer review is sort of off -- it's more of a consensus the way it's been described, sort of a "HAY, im givin this game a 5 wut do u think?" kind of thing.

As I said before, taken as an opinion, I'm okay with it. It's when people start trying to convince me that game reviewers are some kind of unbiased, authoritative source that I raise my eyebrows. Aside from grammatical errors, I could end up with just as informed a decision by asking a random person in this forum about a game as I could by reading a review, assuming they'd played the game and could artculate their experience beyond a fifth grade level. This is why the age of the demo is so important to me -- a demo allows the player to decide whether they like a game enough to proceed with a purchase, and while the demo offers a limited view into the finished product, the gaps can be filled in by impressions from fellow forum posters. The thing is, as gamers, we've never been less reliant on the gaming press, and it frustrates me to hear people still want to have their impressions fed to them when they could make their own, specifically tailored to their tastes, by downloading a demo. A new age has arrived where the player has the potential to be the reviewer, and to see people miss that boat is saddening.

And regarding journalists getting hired by companies, let me ask you this: if you were a reporter being tasked with informing the public on accuracy in the media, and you'd written dozens of papers, interviews, and reports on the different news corporations only to get hired by, say, FOX News, how do you think that would affect your credibility in the eyes of your viewers and/or readers?