I Don't Read Video Game Reviews

35 Comments

1. There's two words German people can't pronounce: Squirrel and Library.

2. The perfect score i recommend everyone to use for every game is the binary code, morse code or any code really which can say something like

   "You took time to decode the score. I hope you took as much time to listen/read the review since you obviously cared enough to look over if the game is good or not and decode this. One thing you cannot trust is a review score. What you can trust is someone passionately telling you about their experiences with the game. If someone lists flaws with suggestions to fix them you know this reviewer actually cares enough about the game. Give games at least as much trust as you give an arbitrary scoring system which is to easy to fake. You cannot fake an experience."

3. Renting games never really crossed my mind much.

   When I grew up, there was no such thing. We had movie rentals, but games? Nah.

4. I just picked up Hearts of Iron 4 for $15 dollars on Steam. It's awesome! Always check the Steam sales!

5. "When they get the wrong people to review the wrong game; Japanese niche games"

   Xenoblade chronicles 2 being a victim of this.

6. I usually love your videos, but I cannot agree with this one.
   First of all you said a score cannot summarize a game's quality – you are right, that's why the reviewers spend a lot of time explaining the games ups and downs, the problem is most people only look at the review's score. You can always disregard the score, and there are even publications that don't use that.
   Now, I'm not saying every IGN/Gamespot/etc. review is perfect, but most people are looking for a validation on their opinions, and not a true review. If I watch a review, it's because I want to see if the game is worth my money and time, most of the times. But a lot of times people already have an opinion formed and just want a reviewer that says "this game is great" or "this game is bad", and if their opinions differ, they say the review was badly done.
   I never understood the "I just watch gameplay" argument, since you cannot evaluate the game's longevity, bugs, microtransactions or whatever is important to you in game from there.
   For example, I love the Katamari series and end up buying every single entry, I don't need a review to make up my mind. But if I eventually watch a review about it, I cannot expect that the reviewers loves it as much as I do. I love the game, and that's great – but the reviewer might help someone still on the fence about buying it.
   So remember – a review is not fan pandering! If you already have your mind made up, go ahead and buy the game and don't worry about the reviews 🙂

7. doesnt watch and read them. 40 seconds into the vid, says how the recent doa review was OK… Hypocrisy much

8. Gamers rise up

9. I agree no game is perfect FULLSTOP , enjoying your channel, love the fan service games myself, new SUB ? IGN is mostly activists not game players in my mind. Game pass on the Xbox is excellent value to try games IMO

10. Actually I do both. I read/watch reviews both from the likes of IGN, gamespot, meta-critic and youtubers, if I liked it or piqued my interest then I watch the gameplay/review videos. When reading I just read the conclusion and or the pros and cons list. Also I try playing the demo first. If I liked it then I buy it. Reading comments on the steam or google play also gives you an idea if the game is good or not. Maybe reading/ scrolling through 5-10 reviews is more than enough. In my part of the world libraries don't carry digital medias let alone video games, so I rely more on online reviews

11. I only subbed to IGN for their gameplay footage, but I don't take any critic reviews seriously because they can't tell you everything about a game without spoiling it. A better way of evaluating whether a game is good or not is just to watch footage of them that won't spoil, but for online games it's kinda hard to know well they run unless you just try it.

12. Meh, I never read reviews as well. What I do is literally trust on my instinct and just look at screenshots and stuff, then I can usually judge if I will like the game or not. 99% of the time, I always like what I play, so you would never see me complain that the game I bought is disappointing. Besides, if a game is "bad", I don't think I would have touched it in the first place with or without reading reviews. lol

    Also, I never ever fall into any hype trains as well. I find it really weird that people actually do this when they barely know/play anything in the series or genre. Won't namedrop any games, but I know some acquiantances that do this. They hear that "this game" is good, read reviews and stuff, then they will say they want to play it but never played any game in the series or genre, then complain that they didn't like it. You seriously can't expect me to help in that case.

13. I don't trust any Legend of Zelda games or Rock Star games because reviews often jizz over the titles just because of the name alone.

14. Me too unless I stumble on them from searching online. A way to try a title is great, but I have so many titles to the point where it is hard to justify buying more at this point, but I have way less than the average collector.

15. Totally Agreed , GameSpot gave 6 to fantasy life & 6.5 to dkc tropical freeze , but every cod & bf are getting 8 or 8+ ??

16. The only game reviews i trust are those from cr1tical and YellowSuperNintendo

17. Hit and miss reviews

18. God damnit ysn “the evil that plagues gameindustry” now I can never see the EA logo without hearing arfoire’s stupid laugh

19. Game journos are a joke. They hate games and/or suck balls at them. Technology and internet have made the gaming community self-sufficient when it comes to information. Just as well since post gamergate we realised what hell we'd have been in if we had to rely on game journos.

20. Me it really depends on games, JRPGS I don't give a shit on any reviews. Games I don't know much but interested in I would give a look on some reviews.
    As for scores like Metacritic, to some extent they are accurate but overall it should never be a standard on whether you get the game or not. I'm always baffled on how some say "I won't buy games with under 80 on Metacritic" or "Games under 80 on Metacritic are bad games". Because Metacritic is just a score and even it's raring score us pretty flawed, I highly recommend Opencritic more than Metacritic.

21. Can you even BELIEVE a single word this guy says? Great handling and driving at 2:45 in a driving sim, but can't drive for SHIT at 5:43 in an open world shooter with arcade car controls! This guy can't even be trusted like the IGN reivewer who reviewed Ace Combat 7. UNSUBSCRIBED AND DOWNVOTED!!! I'm going to go and complain about you on the ResetEra forums, that'll teach you to be a better game reviewer!

    Even my wife's son can drive better than YOU in driving games!

22. Back when I got my PS3, I bought it ahead of time for Demon's Souls… but since the game wasn't out yet, I ended up buying Resident Evil 5 with the system. I don't know about other people, but for me, it was a BIG MISTAKE. I hated that game. I loved Resident Evil 4 on Gamecube, so I was expecting something similar… but RE5 was quite a let down. Of course, I'm sure there're fans of the game out there, but sorry to say, not me.

    As for reviews, yeah, I stopped looking at the mainstream reviews years ago. They're just rubbish. Nowadays, it's all activism over actual reviews, and before that it was a paid-by-the-company lip-service kind of reviews, so I stopped paying attention to them long time ago. I trust Youtubers like you faaaaar more now. I'm so glad I found your channel; I wish I did sooner. I went back to Neptunia series, and got interested in Senran Kagura series, all thanks to you. Please keep up the good work! 🙂

23. IGN and similar sites have more content than reviews. And that's a clickbaity thumbnail.

24. Wow your library is awesome! All those games for free amazing! Rental places here in Australia are like $10 for 2 nights for 1 game. You're lucky to have that library.

25. renting is still a thing, even though blockbuster is 1 store away from dead there's still family video and redbox amongst others (in theory referring to mom n pop or other smaller chains), gamefly is just mail order renting.

26. What is the racing game at 3:00 called?

27. yeah…make sense

28. Library has video games that’s something I have never seen before. Sounds like a dream come true

29. What game is he playing at 9:34?

30. I have been confused by the gun violence VS boobs argument for over a decade now. I know multiple people that talk about porn openly—but hate everything from Japan for being "sexist". These same people are also usually anti gun—but love shooting games. Is there a psyc major out there who can make sense of this phenomena?

31. What's the name of the SNK fighting game at 9:45?

32. For me I feel like I can get a pretty good idea of weather or not I'll like a game/movie from watching reviews on YouTube. That being said I'm not really looking for their opinion of the game's over-all quality but rather I want to see what they say about the details and compare what they say to what I see (hence video reviews). A good example might be Breath Of The Wild which got nothing but praise. Even from reviews giving it a 10/10 I could tell it had problems that would ruin it for me, since then I have played my friend's copy at his insistence and I still agree with my initial assessment.

33. I'm not sure I've ever seen a libary here in the UK with video-games, let alone for free (they charge for rental of DVDs and cds let alone a game)

34. I studied to be a librarian for years (though I never finished) and I never even heard about games in those places. My country really sucks in this regard.

35. Game Jurnos
    Pixel Boobies bad
    Also Game Jurnos
    IRL Swatting good