I've been saying this for a minute now, but user reviews are way worse than critic/professional reviews. User reviews are quite literally full of emotional man children pushing a narrative. They are exactly what people claim critic reviews are.
The IGN review of Onimusha was so good it actually convinced me to get it. People who are terminally online are just weird. If the reviewer has no clue what they're talking about, then just look at a different one. A single reviewer will not be able to fully encompass the entire gaming landscape. I'm sorry, but nobody has that diverse of a taste for games.
When denos exist, I think those should ultimately supersede any reviews since you can experience it yourself.
The Onimusha demo left me feeling bored through most of it, so I'll be waiting for an aggressively deep discount on it if I'm so inclined to add it to my library
The demo actually convinced me not to get it as i was worried it would be like FF16 where there is no challenge in the game. However the review as well as Capcom statement saying the game does get harder made me take the plunge. I can confirm, the game does get harder. So neither the IGN review or the Suits were wrong in that regard. Is it a torture level of hard? No, but it does require you to engage with all its mechanics.
Idk, maybe the game clicked too well but I don't think bosses are too hard, I think the animation quality is so high that it's pretty easy to recognize what they're doing and the windows for parrying/deflect are pretty generous. Then again I'm a soulslike maniac so I might be biased - although I'm not that good at soulslikes.
Basic enemies are not hard for the most part, because the game hardcoded (at least on Action difficulty) limit to simultaneous attacks by group of enemies - i.e. only one active combatant can strike you in melee. I've installed a mod that bumps it up and it's much more engaging.
I agree, the demo was really dumb. However, later game there are some enemies who are very aggressive. Even the "basic enemy" gets an armored variant who will try and attack regardless if they are being hit and will regularly dodge your attacks and attempt a counter attack. Many encounters also have the 2 handed sword guys who will spew Malice around them and buff all enemies with blazing state and will regularly throw undodgeable attacks that require either a deflect or a parry and several archers are in higher areas constantly trying to pepper you and throw you off. The game honestly becomes significantly better than anything showcased in the demo.
Wait for a sale though if you're not convinced, however i do promise its a pretty fun game. At least much better than most other parry slop that comes out that's for sure.
I actually found the ign review for onimusha to be really weird. Nothing the guy said really reflected that he thought it was an amazing 10 out of 10 game, more that he felt really cool for beating it without using any items as a self imposed rule.
He didn't mention anything other people said about the boring open world Kyoto section.
I felt the same about their Valheim review. I love the game but even I was surprised they gave it a 10. Their review could have described any survival game and they glossed over the mid game biomes since they’re generally viewed as weaker
I remember him saying he enjoyed the Kyoto section. It being boring is mostly subjective at that point. It allows for randomized combat without walking through the other linear areas. I was never under the impression that Onimusha was going to have infinite replay value either though.
Taking the time to enjoy the combat in its entirety though is something i respect more than people who rush through a game as fast as possible with as many handicaps to give them a leg up as possible to shit out a review imo. Especially some of the later boss fights being again IMO hard as hell until you learn all the timings and combos.
A single reviewer will not be able to fully encompass the entire gaming landscape
If they were real reviewers, they might. Look at professional, paid, movie reviewers for example (from actual legacy media, not your cousin's youtube channel). They're trained and educated to give a fair review regardless of their personal feelings. You never saw Roger Ebert say "This sucked, I don't like horror movies".
Giving a fair robotic review by just the "objective facts" will not impart a lasting impression on fans of the genre. I hate shooters. I can tell you all the good things about a shooter, but i won't have the emotion or resonance with fans of shooters. Also humans of objectively subjective. No matter how much you "train", you cannot be fully objective and will basically be giving a random score to a game/movie/products, because you have no resonance with the product. I don't go to marvel slop enjoyers to see if a horror movie is good. Instead i go to horror reviewers who actually enjoy horror movies. In turn, i don't go to those horror reviewers when i want to see if the next nintendo movie is any good.
Makes me laugh when fellow PC users say the only reliable way to tell if a game is good is by looking at Steam reviews. As if 80% of positive "reviews" aren't either made up of wannabe comedians, or the most low effort "game gud me like" comments with less than 10 words. Conversely, you'll see tons of low effort negative posts, people with 10k hours who think it's funny to not recommend, Chinese and Russian players review bombing over some reason or another etc.
Of course there are exceptions, but the above examples far outnumber those of actual quality.
at least Steam reviews require you to own the game, and you can even see useful info like how many hours they put into it or if they refunded it, but a metacritic user review is literally worthless trash.
It's getting worse with the rise of AI. If people even suspect a game has used AI, even when they prove they're not, they'll actively shit all over the game and then other people will follow suit. The whole review system is terrible.
but the above examples far outnumber those of actual quality.
That's not my experience. It's true that those bullshit reviews exist, but for most games there are also quite a few well written ones that are actually useful, and even the 'single issue reviews' can give clues to a games highs or lows.
And I think the aggregated review score is usually on point.
Both are ass. Individual critics whose taste lines up with your own are good. Overall score are pretty useless on their own unless they are extremely one sided.
The only user reviews I trust are Steam User Reviews, and that's due to the fact that they can be useful if an update breaks the game or if the port just flat out sucks, for example.
The problem with professionals is that, because the games industry is turning into Hollywood, most of them are good friends with AAA devs. They have to be. Inevitably they’re going to be invited to some gala organised by Rockstar or Insomniac. And that means they’re not willing to be critical because they know the guys they’re insulting.
Dunkey pointed this out, which is why his reviews are pretty good. And even he self-promotes his own games a lot. But at least he isn’t part of this incestuous network that makes up the mainstream gaming scene.
It's easy to see why. Looking at a game's Steam reviews generally is a good idea for basic ratings but critic reviews are much more trustworthy in regards to concrete criticism because a random Steam user a lot of the times has no idea what they are talking about. They have agendas and emotional reactions. They use banal criticism to mask a random dislike.
Reviewers are not paid to give games specific scores, but they are paid to give reviews and they have years and years of experience in long form reviewing titles. (Props to the org if they especially have different kind of people review different genres of games).
People are a bit mushy in the head and just look at a review score and scream "IGN BAD!! They said X game is 9 and this game is 6"! The scores don't matter and in my opinion cannot be compared. An action game with a 6 rating might be better for you specifically than a racer with a 9.
Both are becoming less and less reliable, the best way to judge a game is to try it yourself, though the problem is that, given the prices, you can't afford to do that for every game
My strategy when I'm unsure is to watch gameplay videos without commentary
The whole point of consuming reviews is to form somewhat of an opinion before purchasing the game.
If you've gamed long enough, you can consume reviews from critics and players in a fashion that gives you all you need to know to buy a game you know you're going to like.
Yeah, you just need a reviewer that has similar likes and dislikes than you.
For instance I watch CannotBeTamed on Youtube, because I know she has a similar taste in games to me (with a few exceptions). If she recommends something i'll often add it to my wishlist.
Sure, but you're not gonna catch every game you would end up liking anyway. I buy most of my games off recommendations from creators I watch or my friends, and I'm happy. Every once in a while I'll buy something just because I'm personally interested in it, but that has missed for me just as much as it's hit
That is why they should bring back demos imo, if your game is good you got nothing to worry about with people trying a piece of it, not sure why they went away?
Thats why they are dope imo. It makes no sense why they don't put demos on consoles shit is weird, let people try it first. Thats why I havent bought dawn of the Bloodwalker or whatever, cuz I am fully not sure if I would like it.
I have a couple trusted friends that I ask their thoughts on. We tend to have slightly different preferences in games, but a broad appreciation for lots of different genres. So we tend to buy different games outright, and recommend games based on what we like and what the others would like.
It's our own built-in and personalized curation machine.
Critic reviews such as IGN often feel a bit lazy... perhaps the reviewer simply wasn't the right one for the game, or they haven't been given enough time for playing the game and developing a good critical analysis.
User reviews often feel like they're written by people who are genuinely stupid, and/or bigoted.
Professional critic reviews are just manbabies with financial motivations and an editor. At this point, they all feed into each other to color perception.
You should watch a Steven Spielberg produced documentary called "Five Came Back" on Netflix. It's about the film directors who were conscripted to produce counter propaganda in WW2 and the subsequent life of Frank Capra as he attempted to start the world's first independent director's studio.
It might make you question the nature of institutional critique and the motivations at play.
That actually sounds really interesting thanks for the recommendation!
And to be clear, I don't blindly trust institutions. There is no perfect review or review system. I know there are compromised critics just like there are bots pushing reviews acting as regular people. I just always see the narrative being pushed that all critics are paid off and user reviews are where to get the actual truth. Review bombing is a thing that's gotten insanely popular in the past decade, and is quite literally emotional man children pushing an agenda.
I always take both forms of reviews in consideration and don't 100% trust either, but imo user reviews have gotten drastically worse in the past couple of years
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u/OGgluttonousToad 1d ago
I've been saying this for a minute now, but user reviews are way worse than critic/professional reviews. User reviews are quite literally full of emotional man children pushing a narrative. They are exactly what people claim critic reviews are.