Asmongold Reacts to "You CANNOT Trust Mainstream Game Reviews"
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- Опубликовано: 12 сен 2024
- Asmongold learns why you cannot trust mainstream game reviews (with Upper Echelon Gamers)
Original Video:
You CANNOT Trust Mainstream Game Reviews • You CANNOT Trust Mains...
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Eyyyy, the man himself reacted! The come up is real. Edit: Oh shit!? Im not one to gush, but having asmon say "I like this guys videos a lot" is... a big deal for me. I watched him many years ago in the early days when I was only allowed 2 hours of computer time per weekend. Thank you to asmon, and the all of you fellow degenerates who watch him. Our teachers may have said "video games will lead you nowhere" but we sure as shit showed them.
Everything deserved man, keep up the amazing work!
@@DJdeliverance Huh?
@@Salmagros facts lol!
I'm here because of you! Solid journalism and it's about damn time someone appreciated your hard work.
Keep up the good work and congrats papa long neck lol.
Need some giraffe merch.....
W
Can't trust any reviewer somehow every movie is the number 1 movie in America lol
This is so true lol I'm glad to see others are starting to notice these things.
same shit when a new series is crowned number 1 on netflix XDD like oh shit, xy series just decrowned squid games because it has more viewers on the release weekend than Squid game, which has been out for a month
That means #1 in America this week 🙃
Every book is a new yorks time's best seller. Lol
America is a big piece of shit
As someone smarter than me once said: “Nowadays buying games day 1 is beta testing”.
And let’s not even mention the annual release games were it’s 90% same recycled game with micro transactions and heavy predatory gamba mechanisms…
Unless it's Kirby. 💜
Just for that i'm happy with Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, game is finished and pure !
I really miss Totalbiscuit. Flawed, glorious bastard that he was.
After TB passed away, I thought Jim Sterling would step up and take the relay. Well, we all saw how that turned out and what a shit show it is now.
@@paxvesania2008 What happened? Didn't watched him for a while.
@@blkgravido Well it's no longer "Jim" Sterling but "Stephanie" Stirling iirc to start with. Then there's some wrestling persona and even more insane intersectional leftism than he had years ago already.
@@IanGerritsen Oh, so i missed some... colorful character arcs of him. I maybe look ar the new content later. Thanks for the information.
@@blkgravido -- It's also the fact that he's on a personal crusade against some gaming companies like EA or Ubisoft. It doesn't matter what they do, it doesn't matter if they make the best game of the year or if they end world hunger, you already know that Jim Fucking Sterling Son is going to be making a 20 minute video about them talking shit and dismissing everything good about a game. It's like they personally murdered his whole family or something. The rambling got boring years ago and it never stopped. Also let's not forget that he's incredibly dismissive about indie games, for a guy that heavily criticises everything in the triple A industry. The best example of this, and also the straw that broke the camel's back for me, was during the release of Remnant: From the Ashes. It's a game that got highly praised for everybody for trying things that somewhat worked, yet our neighbourhood dingus trashed it to the ground and ripped it apart during the whole video because "It wasn't his favourite genre of games". Yet the very next "review" that he did, was for an extremely generic JRPG game that gets shit out once a week, and he loved it lol. That's when I realised that it was time to get out for me because I didn't have anything in common left with this guy who clearly spends more time doing stupid shenanigans than actually playing the games the he supposedly "reviews".
Considering there is about a billion games, old and new, with sources like Epic giving away free games every week or steam sells for 90% discount, in addition to mmo's or multiplayers; I only buy games for $5-$20 w/ all dlc included and bug fixes 2-3 years after it releases.
Edit: Also, the modding community is rich with content after that amount of time too. Buying day 1 is just beta testing nowadays.
games as a service is very weird in that it makes the company more money and gives players access to games for a lot less than dishing out $60+ per game
I prefer getting games at 100% discount through a torrent.
exactly that
They're totally hyping everyone up to do pre-orders and the 'being the first to discover' mentality, to cash grab as fast as possible. I hate it. I hate this business model. The best we can do is vote with our wallets, but there are so many naive sheep out there, so it'l probably never work.
@@godless1014 yarr harr
Wait until they find out you should have healthy skepticism for ANY “mainstream” (motivated by $) media, not just news media, all media.
Also I don’t mean an independent creator earning a living when I say motivated by $ Im talking big corporations making decisions for the good of investors first.
True, media's would convince and brainwash you that 2+2 is 5 for enough money
@@NuclearSad Independent creators rely on early review copies and you think they can't be ''unstrust worthy'' ?
They can get cut off from those copies in a heartbeat if the publishers disappove of their reviews/views.
100 times easier for them to cut off a youtuber quietly than somebody like IGN.
Wait until you realize the all non mainstream media also has the same issues lmfao
Obviously you should have healthy skepticism of everything guys it’s just funny to dial in on one fucked aspect of a thing with 1000 fucked aspects that’s all.
Tbh, people getting games on release/preordering are paying the stupid tax 90% of the time. Elden Ring is sadly a big exception from that.
Multiplayer games with regular releases (Fifa, Cod) are currently not purchasable at all, because the moment the game gets cheaper and has all content/bug fixes, the new game releases, the old game gets into maintenance and the playerbase usually leaves.
Big red flags nowadays are:
- First picture on steam are the great reviews
- game as a service
- big pre-order bonus that gives in-game advantages
- not much gameplay from 3rd parties/ always showing the same stuff
- long development time + sudden release without much content to show beforehand
- E3 hype
- big talking points are either about politics, some graphic advancement or some tech irrellevant for the gameplay in a grander scheme (fish ai etc.)
@@deetsitmeisterjd its the same but different imo.
One is a nigerian prince, which promises you the world, if you pay upfront.
The other one is walking into a casino which just has pictures as prices and believing you can win every time.
Both are stupid. But in a different way
CDPR are inexperienced amateurs and scammers. CDPR will go bankrupt soon because almost everyone refunded Cyberjunk
Elden Ring is an exception?
Yeah, cause the people that purchased day one on PC had a GREAT experience (which still isn't fixed btw ;) .
Oh yeah, let's not forget about the weekly patches they have to release because they completely butchered the launch experience... But yeah, I guess Elden Ring is just perfect.
@@WeinerTouchy not only on PC, even on consoles it had problems, but people are still in the honeymoon phase.
Mainstream nowadays is synonymous to sponsorship bias. And this extends to everything, from social media to your mainstream news. Even your politicians are sponsored by some big organization; they’re pretty much just glorified “influencers.”
This has been debunked thousands of time already. The biggest pressure reviewers feel to be nicer in reviews is from fans themselves. *coughs* breath of the wild *coughs*
"Nowadays" ? Lol
IGN smh
@@antoniomendes7961 And WHY is that pressure there? Because that's the clicks. Why do the clicks matter? Sponsored.
@@dopaminecloud No the pressure is there because of fear of harassment and actual death threats. Imagine if that was a normal thing at your job.
The one caution I have about a video like this, is it’s easy to point the finger at large reviewers being incentivized for good reviews. But, the small reviewers often times have the incentive to write bad reviews because bad reviews get them more clicks and they are monetized as content creators to get view time. So really it is up to people finding people they actually trust to give a review, or playing the game themselves and not relying on reviews.
I was watching reviews of the newest Shantae game, and when I got to Zero Punctuation's review, I realized that it was the first one I saw that mentioned it being a Metroidvania game.
It's the only one that actually talked about the gameplay, instead of just "It's really good. Female Protagonist. Lots of items and abilities. Looks nice. 9/10"
Yeah Yahtzee is always a good balanced view on games
The thing that makes this unavoidable nowadays is "pre-orders", since those sales heavily rely on the reviews being positive, or good sounding.
I don't think it takes a genius to know most publishers will do whatever it takes to deceive the reviewers, or alter their experience to cater to the narrative they want. Hence why I don't bother with media reviewers, and just stick with steam user reviews, just for a general idea of how the game runs. Along with actual in-game gameplay footage, probably a couple days after release.
And this is why i havent preordered a game for years and never will ever again
@@Jansmaaa I bought Diablo 3 at launch and played it for month without touching any other games. And I still play it on occasion. I consider that a win🤷♂️
Black ops 2 was the last game I pre-ordered
Even Steam reviews are dicey when people come review bombing for the sake of virtue signaling
This is what gamergate warned about so long ago and they were 100% correct and then some.
True and real
Wtf are you on about?
@@antoniomendes7961 The original poster is right, it was about gaming journalists being in bed with developers (both literally and figuratively) until some woman pretended it was about something else about her and decided to declare all gamers sexist and the media decided to pick up on that instead of reporting on what it was actually about.
it just feels like everybody wants to make the next candy crush
With the least amount of work.
I mean. Yeah. Cheap development and insane profitability? I can see why.
Everyone wants to make the next Honor of Kings. They want to make millions per week from microtransactions
In my opinion, there are so many single player games out there that it's simply not worth buying them on launch day when you can get them a year later at a huge discount, with many bug fixes and updates.
Yeah sucks that companies often get pushed to release the games earlier than they should have been and then has some major flaws that could have been avoided with 3months more time
yo ho ho, a pirate's life fer me!
Waiting for GOTY editions of SP games is totally the way to go- FOMO only applies to Multiplayer games , imo
@@Lorenna1234 lol this guy
We are at a point where professional reviews have effectively become worthless. Why watch b roll footage from a mainstream reviewer when you can have an independent person show raw gameplay, showing what a game is actually like without any repercussions from the gaming industry.
I used to work for a game company that did reviews. The way it worked was that, a big publisher would pay our company to make a certain amount of content for the game. So something like COD, they payed us to make, 5 video's, 4 websites articles. The reality is that these big companys would pay us our salary's. If they would give them low reviews we wouldn't get asked again.
Whenever I'm interested in a newly-found games review outlet the first thing I do is look at their review opinions on games that I've ALREADY PLAYED. If their stated opinions mostly match my already-preexisting opinions on those games then I give them a chance.
Even if we disregard the intentionally misleading reviews and/or review products, it's important to remember that reviewers will ALWAYS have at least an unconscious bias -- I find it best if the reviewers unconscious bias closely matches my own.
There are some fantastic RUclips creators who have become my go-to for game reviews. I don't even remember the last time I checked IGN or Kotaku or GameSpot to actually make a purchase decision.
As an indie game developer, I watch your videos to learn what not to do when designing my builds. If I had the funds to afford your gaming experience; I would totally hire you as a QA Director. However, nothing I could currently offer you would be worth your time. Keep doing what you are going...to some of us it matters.
“If the gameplay is good, I play the game”
I haven't taken a media outlet's review seriously in like 12 years.
I find it's always good to look at different opinions on things, so for games I look at the player reviews & some mainstream ones then watch a few videos, but one thing I learned is that with most games nowadays especially 'live' service games it's always good to wait a bit before buying as you can get discounts on the game & DLC plus it usually has a few patches and is more "complete" or enjoyable we'll say
What I learned: If I ever start a business, change the name of the "marketing department" to the "truth department"
The ironic thing with elden ring pre launch, that you can only play it on PS5, which is the most stable platform, and you can't play on PC yet coincidentally because Fromsoft doesn't want people to Datamine the game before launch, and because of that the performance issue on PC were not addressed even by people within the souls community who get the press copy. Not to throw any shades to anybody, just an interesting coincidence.
This is why I love Asmongold. He's actually genuine, like that's the real him, he's not putting on a persona for entertainment, he just likes to be chill and down to Earth with everything because that's how he is.
i like him to but his Google tabs give me anxiety
I love how, when Asmon was talking about his New World review, that "he's an exception because he already has a large audience".
Yeah, why do you think that is smartass? Why do you think people want to watch Asmon's review rather than someone else's? It's because he has proven his integrity and intelligence time and time again. Being an influential streamer takes hard work and a bit of luck, but when you hear how everybody always wants to know Asmon's opinion on even the most mundane shit you should realize that there's a reason people ask. They value his opinion. That's not just because he's an entertaining steamer, that's because people feel heard when he speaks. He's a voice for a largely underserved group of people that are tired of corporate bootlickers and bought-out opinions. He's just a simple guy that wants good fucking games like they used to make em.
okay, so? doesnt change the fact that because he established his audience over many years, he has the luxury to wait a month before releasing a review of the new game. Yes, he built up his reputation with honest work, but that doesnt invalidate the mentioned point.
@@motyovszkimiklos7538 he addressed that himself, qua the mainstream outlets - Kotaku, Polygon, etc. They all have large audiences, and are equally as capable of intelligence and integrity. There is a large audience hungry for opinions free of inserted political bullshit and corporate bootlickers, and the mainstream outlets consistently ignore them.
"It's not fair comparing your audience side to what multi-national corporations can manage" is a strange take.
I’ve been dying for just a genuinely good battlefield game for so fucking long and it’s honestly painful. Once they fixed it battlefield 4 was amazing and one of my favourite games
I hope asmon reacts to more Upper Echelon. He makes good videos.
Unless you religiously watch, trust and have similar interests with a certain content creator then always check multiple sources of individual player reviews. Anytime I'm going to buy a new game regardless if it's new or not I check the reviews on steam (if it's on there), check the metacritic score, check the games forums to see if it's nothing but flames or happy players and finally I check how long it takes to beat because everyone values a dollar differently. And honestly....just don't buy mainstream games. I don't know of a good mainstream AAA game that hasn't gotten overhyped just for players to find out it's a disappointment.
In a way the player is sometimes just as at fault as a reviewer. There were thousands of CDPR apologists giving them good PR after the company lied repeatedly to their customers and this happens for just about every game out there.
I see it as this
If a game interests you from what you have seen, play it and see if you like it. You dont? Get it returned
Same with movies. Go see it if your interested. If you dont know if you want to see it, wait till its out on digital or blu ray so it costs you a little less then seeing at theatres
Stop listening to other peoples opinions, and make your own
"That sounds like a zone in Gnomeregan." I lost it dude lol
One of the few trusted 'main stream reviewers' is the Zero Punctuations corner, I think.
Not only Yahtzee a small time game developer, AND an author, his brand is basically built on blunt honesty.
Sure, it can be cashed out on for a short term boost, but once that's up, he's probably done for. So it's more worth while to just keep at it.
18:27 the guy freaking waited for that NPC to get destroyed before starting shooting :D
Exactly been saying this for awhile finally a video on it definitely should wait for a game to be released before buying if people did that we would avoid games like cyberpunk
yoooo I've been watching upper echelon for a long time. Good to see his channel getting some recognition.
A quote from Tom Scott when it comes to voting, but I think it works well in this context as well.
"People can be corrupt, or threatened, or incompetent, or all three at the same time"
All the discussions about credibility in video game reviews, it makes me miss Totalbiscuit even more. Say what you will about that man but I remember him making a video on how people trust independent creators in part because they know that creator's tastes in video games. He flat out said if you want to hear about if a story is good, you should not go to his video because that's not a priority for him. If nothing else, the man had integrity.
RIP TotalBiscuit
Yep he was 100% up front about his WTF series being first impressions. He clearly stated biases he thought was relevant, and showed pure gameplay. He was well aware that selling out his reputation for a fake review would cost him his audience. F.
yeah i miss 2 hour reviews talking about nothing but menus, sliders and display settings
@@vsear5911 If a game fails at the fundamentals, it should be pointed out. They still mess up over there today and I wish there was someone around to complain about default settings and option lay out.
Just follow the money. Always ask if there are any incentives or outstanding motivations that would impact a review. The best reviews use concrete and repeatable measures. While some measures are subjective, you can avoid this by looking at how consistent they are between games.
I knew something was going on when Cyber Punk was getting 10/10 “ game of the year “ reviews from some media outlets .
on the other side of the coin if any outlets gave it unfavorable reviews at launch they were dragged in the comments and on forums.
ACG is the only reviewer I trust, and I don't even agree with him all the time.
You had me at Badlefield. 😂
23:39 the waiting time to play killed lost ark for my friend, if you get online at 11pm or midnight after work you cannot play it anymore on that workday
I'm glad Asmon gave honest opinion.. I always liked browsing through paper game magazine and just see the games, so I don't mind mainstream outlets.
"ONE OF MY FAVORITE GAMES IN THE SERIES"
Lol, at that point they should have also quoted "EVERYTHING WORKS", without the 'when' in the front.
Totalbiscuit and Jim Sterling have been warning us about this for probably a decade now. I honestly do not know why people fall for anti-consumer tactics like pre-orders and embargoed/bought reviews.
tbh if you actually value reviews before getting a game you should look at multiple sources some main and some independent. just to get a lone singular opinon. but if that's too much work. I personally finder gameranx before you buy to be quite on the money for me personally
Hard to swallow pill:
If you buy a game on launch and it turns out to be trash, you've got NO ONE to blame but yourself!
Or pre ordering
There are also big outlets you can trust. If you follow them over years, know the writers, it is not much difference to small independet people. I grew up with magazines, there it was the same, you bought the one magazine you liked, trusted the journalists who wrote for it and some I even follow till now. I think biggest problem is with reviews that are pushed out before release and are, like explained here, restricted to a lot of rules. But staying with the example of Cyberpunk, the website I followed the most back than, gave the PC Version a high rating, but the then current gen became devastating reviews. But that magazine is known for not follow that trend of pushing reviews out fast etc.
Although they have new owners now...
I think the main thing is gaming journos for "main stream" aren't covering something for the game itself a lot of times (One example is Kotaku's Xbox article fixated on the holes), where at least indie coverage hits the game proper or hardware and are open with it being their opinion a lot of the time. That said, I agree 100% knowing a journalists biases as well as your own helps you see things a bit more objectively.
I wish Asmon would go back and watch UEG's coverage of the Titanfall hacker incident, what a wild ride that was.
People were salty as fuck when asmon got early access to elden ring and they didn't. Especially the streamers whos main game is the souls series. But what they don't get is that their entire audience is already going to buy the game. Where Asmons audience not so much since he's a variety streamer.
I stopped paying attention to reviews over ten years ago when they wrote they hated the game because “It’s not on my favourite console”
Nice, upper echolon does good work, hope he gets a boost.
Gonna be real. I got lucky apparently. I barely had any issues playing cyberpunk on a ps4 at launch. My biggest bug was appearing naked in mirrors. I absolutely loved the story, music, combat, etc.. and was sad about the bad launch because it was really a great experience I think a lot of people missed.
Glad to UE getting some pub from Asmon watching one of his videos. He makes some very good content.
Don't buy games at day 1. We've seen enough flops that it should be standard now
It’s the same with movies, every movie I like has like a 30% rotten tomatoes
I had 4 experiences that made me stop buying games on release (which I only did a few times), and pre-ordering.
1. DayZ. Oh how much fun DayZ was, I truly have great memories with the game even with how jank it was, I met some great people, had some of my best gamer moments there, taking Cherno with 17 people was really fun. Then my PC broke and I couldn't play for like 3 months give or take. I came back and the game was the same. I took off my rose coloured glasses and I realised that the game is shit... And deep down we all knew it but we expected it to get finished over time. I still think it's not finished, and their official release was as random as the appearance of the alpha version on Steam. This all made me wary of the early access limbo.
2. Battalion 1944. I bought it on release and I quite enjoyed it tbh, they even updated the game quite a bit relatively fast and I'd say it was an alright beta but you could feel it's early access. But at some point they decided to go for 1 patch every few months and player numbers went down as the game was just developing too slow and ultimately it died and the devs moved onto another project. That made me wary of never trusting the little guys.
3. Imperator: Rome. This piece of shit game I pre-ordered. I played Europa Universalis 4 extensively and had great deal of fun, CK2 was fun but not for me, HOI4 I never played but it also seemed good, so Imma pre-order I thought. The dev diaries pre-release were always kind of... confusing to say the least, I never really understood what any of this shit meant but I thought I just didn't pay enough attention or I'm stupid or both. Some youtubers played the game and claimed it was fun so the game drops and I played it. I had fun for 2 hours before I discovered how stupid all the systems are, how artificial mana is (compared to EU4 where mana makes a lot of sense) and just how flavourless the game is. Most of the mechanics didn't even matter so nobody bothered, and every country felt the same. They did update it a lot since then, did the overhaul, called it the 2.0 version and honestly it's much much better but they'd have to essentially make a game from ground up to fix it and they realise that so they abandoned the project. That taught me to never trust a liked developer (kinda).
4. Cyberpunk 2077. I kinda gave into the hype at the very end, I am not proud of it but Witcher games were great, just not my cup of tea theme-wise, it's a company from my country, what could go wrong.... WELL everything. Game sucks a massive cock at everything except soundtrack, and graphics. This time around I learn to NEVER pre-order.
I had some other experiences worth mentioning. Crusader Kings 3 is a weird game because after Imperator fiasco I decided to watch it for like a month to decide if I like it and all the time spent watching it on yt I felt like I want that game. I bought it and... well... it's... really empty. Like the base game is good and it was by far their best game release but... idk game feels boring and extremely easy. There are more than enough mods to change it though so it's not like it's a bad game but I don't know if I would recommend it.
Same will go for Victoria 3, I am ULTRA hyped but I'll watch it for a week or two. This time around the dev diaries make it sound like a great game, the dev's descriptions of how their test playthroughs went also sound pretty cool but I've been burnt enough times... I have high hopes but I won't buy on release.
Eventually I learn that some devs release their early accesses in playable spots so I think every game except for the original Don't Starve that I have was bought in early access and they've always been very playable and fun. The Don't Starve Together was definitely by far the worst one because it had little content for quite a while but I think they were testing if their online solutions will even work so I forgive them; once they got their infrastructure together they nuked the game with content.
But generally speaking no name studios with big ideas - never buy early access (No Man's Sky is the only redemption ark, I admire their commitment tbh)
AAA games - trash, avoid for the most part
Games promising great things that sound too good to be true - they are too good to be true
Pre-release youtubers' reviews, ESPECIALLY when a lot of these reviews are small channels - red flag, the little guys generally are too afraid to shit on the game when they get paid for a review; I'd say youtubers that don't give a fuck about relations with companies are the most trust worthy but not always.
15:15 Those sites may have an established audience too, but their primary route to attract NEW viewers is through those articles, whereas Asmon is an exception because he gains and retains viewers primarily through his alternate content, he is not primarily a gaming news source. He is able to diversify his content in a way news sites can't really. Nevermind the parasocial aspect that comes into play as well.
22:05 that's EXACTLY how I do it 👍 I never bought a game at release day ever!
Never have since overlord two.
the reality is these companies (Kotaku, gamespot, etc) only survive by being freelance marketing divisions of AAA games companies
Video-games practice shameless marketing and sales tactics and i could be wrong but these tactics seem to only have gotten progressively worse in the last decade as company’s have figured out to suck the most amount of money out of their player base and make gameplay compromising decisions to please investors.
@8:00 Tiny Tina's wonderlands is a fine example of that. 8.5 out of ten on Meta, 5 average on player reviews.
I base game purchases off of watching RUclips gameplay for an extended time. If it looks fun, I’ll get it. I don’t think I’ve ever made a purchase based off of a review
I usually judge a game based on the story, graphics and the ui, but in recent years has i also started to judge by who that has published or developed the game
Haven't people noticed how many MSM people write like they are a spoke person for the industry , not the consumers
8:55 that’s literally the same marketing as Bubsy 3D
This video kinda watches like a group of people discovering the concept of marketing for the first time. There's a reason it's not called "truthing".
When i watch reviews on games i look at the gameplay, listen to the pros and cons, and watch MULTIPLE reviews BUT i never listen to the actual score. Some times thats payed off and sometimes it hasn't.
Game reviews released within a week of launch are just part of the hype train. They show very shallow content to ostensibly "confirm" that the hype is real. In reality, mainstream reviews are obsolete in a world where you can find full playthroughs on RUclips or twitch. Any adult buying a game can spend 20 minutes looking up gameplay and seeing if it's what they like.
If you trust pre-release reviews, or buy a game on release, you deserve to be disappointed, especially single-player/offline games. There's absolutely no benefit to playing the game on-release, when you could instead wait 2 weeks and have the entire world beta test it for you.
Don't think waiting in a queue really matters much, it only matters if the game is bad, it becomes just another straw that broke the camel's back, if the game is good, it's a nuisance, but people will still love it and play it.
People go to review sites i believe to justify their purchase. same reason people look up phone reviews as they want to feel like they spent their money wisely so having a review for a game be a 8-9 out of 10 to them means "i didnt waste my money this is good"
15:30
Bro, you're Asmongold. You have your audience. Imagine being small content creator with ~100 subs and put out really good video about something noone really cares about anymore 1 month after release. It's gonna get like 1-2k views at most. Small creators can get recognised if some big content creator reacts to their video or if they "win a lottery" of randomly getting recommend via platform discovery mechanism or self-advertising on social media.
Outriders was the same way. Reviewers all gave it a high score, the demo flipping rocked and worked well, then it came out and fell on it's face.
🤔 personally I do a handful of things before considering a game.
1) the devs and publishers of ... what's their previous works? How was the atmosphere for this one?(atmosphere being workplace dramatics such as "lead dev resigned")
2) what is being promoted by the mainstream regarding and/or what slander is being promoted about it?
3) what are several (4+) independent players saying in a positive/negative light?
4) 2-3 weeks in, what are all the players saying? All opinions matter be they new to the type/series or veterans who could tell you the game lore that led up to this one. The positive and the negative across the spectrum is considered.
This may seem a bit much but given the gaming industry's practices over the past decade or so... I really don't want to waste my time playing something that I won't find is worth it. Sure, may only be $##.## but I see that as time spent before I even start the download or crack open the case.
I have a very simple litmus test for game. If there's a review embargo, I pirate. This test has never steered me wrong.
I wonder how many people really got duped by Cyberpunk, cuz in my head most people knew that it was going to be a bug infested circus but wanted to experience the game anyways, so they preordered it.
It’s kinda sad how often these days people insist you were paid by developers because you like a game. It shows how often bad games are released.
Yeah upper echelon really does great videos, highly recommend
Individuals creators are very good for the space. Yes they can also be corrupt at times, but if you know the reviewer it's much easier to judge his integrety. Especially reviews that come out some time after launch, mabye a year later for example are much more trustworthy. Additionally you have a much broader spectrum of opinions, which is always good.
The amount of good will lost by CD Project Red for Cyberpunk just can't be repaired. They were the golden child of the gaming industry after the failures like Mass Effect Andromeda, before them. They were the chosen ones. They were supposed to save us from their darkness, not join them!
I don't buy games on release day anymore and if the launch is bad due to an unfinished product I don't buy it period.
It has to be illegal somehow, we need to figure out how to hold these people accountable. Letting the franchise slowly die only hurts the fans
10:10 Simple, companies pay lobbyists to legalize the shady anti consumers practices they do and then give kickbacks to the politicians to let them keep doing it. That's why it's allowed.
Criteria for a great game:
Great review scores, Great user scores.
Criteria for a GOAT:
Great review scores, BETTER user scores.
Worrisome Game with paid reviewers:
9/10 Critic score, less than 5 user score.
Horrible game:
Bad critic review, bad user review.
If a game is rated by critics between 7-9, but has a user score consistently highly than its respective critic score, you can assume this to be a pretty good game - that the devs didn’t shell out a lot of money to critics.
On the other side, when your game is the equivalent of a cinema block buster, costing dozen if not hundred of millions to produce, you just can't fail. It's too risky.
So they do whatever they can to sell as much as they can on the release, before reviews on the final product can be made.
This is why you look at multiple reviews and listen to what they are actually saying about it, what they like and what they don't like.
The only review i ever give a smidge of plausibility to are from content creators and, even still, often times these reviews are paid for.
It is so easy to know if a game is good or not. Just wait until release and see if the game gets review bombed or not.
"Editorialising" or blatant "misrepresentation" to push a favourable narrative irrespective of the context of the quote.
Naturally they don't want bad press, but removing 5 words from a 3-page angry rant to push a "happy" narrative is insane levels of misrepresentation.
Plus it damages the reputation of the reviewer (possibly causing loss of earnings) just to make more money themselves.
And if the game is TRASH the reviewer gets labelled as "fake news" and loses out when their non-hardcore (casual) audience walks away.
It's similar to shifting blame onto the victim, so the aggressor gets rewarded while the victim gets slammed.
Talk about BM-ing! 😠
even when it's a good game reviewers can ruin it. Elden Ring definitely got ruined for me, the game's biggest punch to throw is hiding how big it is slowly revealing more and more areas and every reviewer could not help themselves but tell you exactly how big it is so when the map keeps expanding you're like "ok what else you got?"
lesson learned, if you like the dev and you know you're gonna play anyway, stay away from reviews.
Major reason why i have stuck to PC gaming is because most games have more issues on Consoles for instance I never had any issues with Cyberpunk 2077 on launch day. Later i had a crash but that's has to do with my GPU breaking. lol
Asmon I agree, Individual creators are not fundamentally more objective, they are consistently more objective
Kotaku having an audience. That's funny.
I actually played cyberpunk again after uninstalling it when it first released. I gotta say they really fixed the game. Had a ton of fun playing it. In case anyone was wondering if it’s good or not.
Pretty much the only Reviewer I take seriously is SkillUp. Makes 30min+ review videos where he almost always finishes the game, and dissects all the different parts of it, and lets you decide if you want to play it or not
buying games day 1 isn't morally wrong, but just admit that you are essentially gambling.
That's why I now just take game reviews with a pinch of salt, unless I've done enough research on the game that I'm already invested into buying. Some games, I need a review to tell me that I'll enjoy it, or need to buy it, because I already know I'll enjoy that game 85% of the course of my playthrough. The only time I need to worry about certain games, are the ones that are NEEDED to be connected online, multiplayer focused, and having controversial development/makes promises that seem too good to be true; especially if I'm see trailers and "gameplay" of the same set pieces and footage, or extremely scripted.
Game marketing has gotten so good with their false advertising, to the point they really make the game out to look better than what it'll actually be; and it's kind of scummy. That's usually why I appreciate things like Nintendo's Treehouse Events, since they mostly show gameplay(regardless if it's good or bad because of the player), have the development director there to talk about the game, and probably the most unfiltered you'll see the game; thus giving you more perspective on whether the game is going to be any good or not(to one's own interests of course).
Upper Echelon is saying bc of "XYZ" you can not trust mainstream media on reviews not that the reviewers are doing it on purpose, but bc they might have a better engine, a better PC, no lag, a better build, a different version, and only seen parts of the game and not spent 100hrs in the game that their review can not be trusted bc they are not reviewing the game the same way the customers are.
I’m willing to bet that the reviewer build doesn’t have DRM enabled. Because you better believe DRM lags the living daylights out of games and causes a whole bunch of bugs. It’s why a pirated version will often run better and be less buggy than the official version. (Note this isn’t an attempt to encourage piracy, but rather a useful comparator as pirated games are DRM free)