Good game reviews sites?

[Alex]

I use Gamerankings to get an overview of what is being said about the game and then I come to Poly and ask the wise men here about the game. I found out that Poly reviews are generally very precise and objective, even when people disagree about a particular game.

[child of Thor]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
quartertothree.com, by Tom Chick and Mark Asher.


Not a lot of reviews, but the ones they have are pretty good. They also have an interesting games forum, with a lot of posts by developers and other gaming pros. And some posts by our very own Child of Thor. A tad too console/action gaming focused for my tastes, but still an interesting site.

Yes i find it a hard place to post - lots of hardcore console players and very much an 'in crowd' feel, but you get the odd thread from a developer now and then and the articles are good like you say.

oh and at Dr.spike

Gamespot has become a staple since yahoo swallowed up the very excellent and unbiased gamesdomain.co.uk(now part of yahoo games and very kiddy orientated ).

For old games i like Mobygames:

http://www.mobygames.com/home

and the site that can't be named

for a collection of computer related links/jobs/industry stuff, i can recomend Datascope.co.uk:

http://www.datascope.co.uk/ at the bottom of the home page is a link 'Gateway to games' - it has a large list of gaming related sites etc, a very handy site

for reviews i like to glance at metacritic.com, to see what the consesus is saying about something:

http://www.metacritic.com/

but for general mature discusion, games or otherwise, poly is about as good as it gets in my on-line experience so far...........thats a scary thought sometimes

[Kuciwalker]

Poly and IGN.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Gamerankings or Gametab, which accumulate rankings. I do read Gamespot, Gamespy, and IGN, but IGN and Gamespot can be extremely biased. Gamespy is ok, I guess.

[Carolus Rex]

What's all this talk about Gamespot being biased?!

I've never heard of it before until I started this thread... Are they eating out of the big companies' hands, or what? What's up with that?

Carolus

[Nostromo]

Originally posted by Carolus Rex
What's all this talk about Gamespot being biased?!

I've never heard of it before until I started this thread... Are they eating out of the big companies' hands, or what? What's up with that?

Carolus

I never heard about it either. Its probably bs. Sometimes, they're victims of the all-mighty hype that surrounds certain games. Games like Metal Gear Solid 2, for example. Sometimes, they give a bad review of a game that someone else happens to like and that person accuses Gamespot of being biased. But I don't think they're more biased than the others.

[Grumbold]

For older games I check the subterranean canines, the reviews there are usually on the money. For newer games I use the sites mentioned and never trust a single source. Where a review is unduly affected by the writers bias (or influenced by a company reputation) the players scores usually start to sharply diverge so its easier to smell a dud review. The best advice is not ot buy a game the minute it comes out unless you really can't wait. After 3-4 weeks it will be abundantly clear if the first impressions were right or badly wrong.

[Solver]

The GameSpot bias is formed by several things. One is a general liking to fast-paced modern games, and they do tend to give slower-paced games lower score. Another piece of bias is the horrible choice of reviewers sometimes - they sometimes have people review a game that is not a fan of the genre. I mean, a person who doesn't like shooters at all, would give Doom, Quake, Half-Life and Unreal bad reviews. Similar things to happen on Gamespot.

They do have some very stupid statements in reviews. A few quotes from the Doom3 review:

Extremely impressive from a technical standpoint yet behind the times from a first-person-shooter design standpoint
[..]
n fact, if you played the original Doom or its sequel back in the mid '90s (or any popular '90s-era shooter, for that matter), you may be shocked by how similarly Doom 3 plays to those games. The legions of id Software's true believers will celebrate this straightforwardness as being deliberately "old school," especially since Doom 3 is packed with direct references to its classic predecessors. However, the truth of the matter is that Doom 3's gameplay structure and level design are behind the times and very much at odds with the game's cutting-edge, ultrarealistic looks. Yet the quality of the presentation truly is remarkable--enough so that it overwhelms Doom 3's occasional problems.

OK, I admit I like Doom3. But I simply find the above unprofessional. Basically, he accuses the game of having old-school shooter gameplay, while Doom3 was advertised as having just that all the time. Ever since it was announced, the two main points about Doom3 that were being made is that it has awesome graphics (which every single review I have seen agrees with) and old school gameplay. Mentioning that as a negative factor in a review is just strange. Or, why have a person that doesn't like linear shooters and old-school gameplay review a game that is SUPPOSED to have that?

Another example, Singles:Flirt Up Your Life, a game I haven't played and don't care about, but this is how the review starts.

Singles: Flirt Up Your Life is, in a word, European.

The reviewer obviously doesn't like the game, and he decides that European is a good adjective to describe something bad. That's just stupid, and the rest of review hardly seems professional either.

Then there is the Call to Power II review, which leaves me seriously wondering as to whether the reviewer has completed at least one game of CtP2. The review says that CtP2 is superior to CtP, lists the new or improved feautures and comments on the interface. He doesn't say a word about the AI, which was horrendeous out of the box, and he says that the game includes a "stable multiplayer option", while multiplayer was absolutely unplayable before the patch, and even with it, stable is not the best way to describe it.

[Dis]

I always thought CTP2 was better than CTP 1.

[DrSpike]

The Gamespot review of Doom3 was spot on.

However, I would concur with the rest of what Solver says. I gave the example of Adventure games, but the problem is certainly a wider one.

[Dis]

don't they charge money for their reviews now? I haven't read one in ages since they started doing that. but I sometimes read the user reviews. Often the real people playing the game have better things to say.

[Nostromo]

Originally posted by Dissident
don't they charge money for their reviews now? I haven't read one in ages since they started doing that. but I sometimes read the user reviews. Often the real people playing the game have better things to say.

No. They charge for other crap

[Nostromo]

Irc, Gamespot was one of the few review sites who didn't give Doom 3 a glowing review. Imo, Doom 3 was overrated. A lot of people fell victim to the all-mighty hype machine. I don't understand why you can't criticize a game for having old school gameplay on purpose. I happen to think old school fps gameplay is a bad idea. That's why the game was so boring imo. Solver, you might love the idea, but I certainly don't. Suppose they decided instead to have old school graphics, à la Doom 1. Would I be wrong to say that the graphics suck?

I agree with the rest of what Solvers say. Especially with the sometimes poor choice of reviewers. But it isn't a sign of bias, but of poor ressource allocation.

I'm not saying there isn't any bias. But you guys haven't convinced me yet that they're more biased than any other site. Maybe they're biased against niche/indie games. (However, they gave EU 2 a fairly good review irc). But that's because they cater principaly to a mainstream audience.

[Atragon]

About a year ago, I would have said www.gonegold.com, since it went under, www.consolegold.com has started reviewing some PC games, and there is a small PC gaming section. I have found their reviews to be decent.

[bipolarbear]

I always check extended play, and if I miss it on tv I check on there rwebsite.