Are Reviews Really That Important?

When you’re debating about buying a game, what factors into your decision? Is it the genre, how much hype the game has gotten, personal preference—or do you rely on reviews? Every person is different in what genre of gameplay they like, what they’re looking for from a game, and even what style of graphics they prefer. So whose opinions do you value when it comes to making gaming decisions?

Now, I love game reviews as an insight to the game. Many reviewers are great at giving the basic facts: about how long the gameplay lasts, if the button layout fits the style of the game, etc. These basic facts are universal for most games and don’t rely on opinion. And I do really look at factors such as these when I consider buying a game.

I do believe that game reviews, when properly done, can be an extremely useful utility for gamers. After all, researching a game before you buy it (and then hate it) is a good idea. Because selling back games doesn’t always pay.

Unfortunately though, a lot of reviewers rate games based on what they expect from that game. But to some degree, that’s not practical. Some reviewers downgrade games because they don’t feel that the plot is complex enough, that there’s not enough action or something along those lines. And I’m not saying every reviewer does it — but before you knock a game for getting a bad review, you’ve really need to read what the review says to make sure that it’s not based one hundred percent on the potentially biased opinion of the author.

To some degree, every video game is like a movie. Some people are going to love it, others are going to hate it. So in that sense, you could look at a review after playing a game and be shocked that this guy is saying such horrible things about your new favorite game. Or you could agree with him: it sucks. But how are you going to know that?

So I don’t know if reviews really are that important or if you should believe every review that’s written. However, if you look into a lot of reviews and generally see the same thing, I would tend to believe the guys — they are supposed to be experts. But be smart and wary, because you don’t want to miss out on a game you could potentially love that some reviewer didn’t like.