Topic: Reviews are fair and pushsquare

Ive only just caught up with all the reviews from the last couple of weeks and some of the comments on reviews have been awful.

Ive come to the conclusion that Sammy and his team are now some of the most experienced reviewers on the intertubes. With the best knowledge of Sonys systems and franchises. The reviews have all been fair and well written yet the comments go all mental. This is predominantly from 'new' accounts and Im sure all the regular forum users are with me when I say keep up the good work, Keep it real and dont let these idiots ruin your honest appraisals.

Yeah keep up the great work guys. People fixate over scores way too much. Kiwami may have 'only' got a 6, but from the review it's still a game I likely will enjoy.

However, I'll never forget the 6 @get2sammyb gave Servered . The injustice!

I agree with you. This site is great.

I am fairly new to Push Square. I would occasionally read something here but didn't have an account until recently when I found the regulars here consistently made interesting, well thought out, and mature remarks — so I decided I wanted to participate. I have been on other sites and around the world gaming community and this one seems to have the best overall group of users and the site is constantly fresh with new information in bite sized articles as well as some more in depth ones.
I totally am with you, the personal attacks and insults to the reviewers are just ridiculous. Take that stuff to one of the other many sites with all the other trolls. This community is about mutual respect.
I am impressed with how the reviewers have responded in a calm and civil way, however. Kudos to you all. I appreciate being able to read these great and timely articles.

A lot of the games I have enjoyed greatly have reviewed very badly on this website.

Just do away with the score all together. Most games get a safe 8 anyway. The only time a score makes sense is when the review is long. Now that PS's policy is to write shorter reviews (which I agree is better), and since they always have a conclusion summing up final thoughts, there is really no need for the silly number.

I also think sites that have dropped scoring policies appear more confident and modern.

Now, I expect in doing so you'd lose hits, so on balance I can see why they'd not want to do this.

But I can't say I feel sorry for the reviewers getting slated for their reviews, it's the internet after all, it comes with the territory - a certain thickness of skin is required, which I'm sure the guys here have.

I echo all sentiments above.

Reviewing is difficult but a reason that I come to PushSquare for reviews and news is that, in my time on the site, I believe that PushSquare consistently avoids all the worst aspects of current online gaming journalism.

Reviews are never rushed out to meet buzz or releases. If a huge open world game needs a lot of hours sunk into it, you can tell from the review those hours have been sunk in. Reviews are often passed to reviewers who have a fair appreciation of the genre from what I can see. If you put me in charge of a JRPG review, I would utterly skewer it. If there are problems with a release, e.g an online component doesn't work at launch, reviews and scores are heavily caveated. PushSquare is also independent and you don't see deals affecting scores. At the end of the day, I don't think you can expect more from a subscription free website.

Do I always agree? Nope, but I rarely walk away not understanding the reviewers point of view.

I have said on other threads but I don't like this focus on a score as opposed to the review attached. Sure Metacritic success might affect the success of a game but that is the consumers fault, not the reviewer. Going mad over a score is just ridiculous when you consider that all sites and reviewers rate on different metrics. Again, PushSquare get it right in that a 5 is average and a 6 is above average.

I feel it must be disheartening for reviewers to put so much effort into a review to then get abuse because someone doesn't agree. Ramsey being called lazy was rude and clearly off mark. That said but the community here are also pretty great and on the whole, constructive.

The criticism is fine, there'll always be people that disagree. As long as no one's being horrible, then it's good to hear contrasting views. Thanks for the kind words, though!

I have never had an issue with PushSquare reviews but that doesn't mean I always agree with their assessments. The scoring is just 1 person's opinion and I use PushSquare as well numerous others to get a more 'metacritic' style average score over multiple opinions. I don't read reviews necessarily for what the game offers but do look for 'keywords' across a lot of reviews too.

As someone who has written reviews myself, I do think it can be a bit rough when some make it personal, criticising you as a person but I never had any issues with people who constructively disagreed with my assessments. Good reviewers know that others will have a 'different' opinion and actually enjoy discussing with others why they came to the conclusions they did. Its also never easy giving a 'low' score, knowing that someone put 'time and 'supposedly' effort' into a game and a 'poor' review can affect livelihoods etc, its difficult but at the same time its unfair to the 'audience' not to be 'truthful'.

Like I said, I have never had any issues with any of PushSquares reviews or reviewers either and read 95% of them - even if I know a game isn't of interest, its still a good read.

I think that - having written at numerous sites and experienced different communities - by and large the feedback on reviews on this site is extremely positive. I've had some comments on stuff I've written at other sites and they can really be quite out there. The moderators are sticklers for the rules here, and naughty words are a no go, so all I can say is I've been told to put things in places I wouldn't necessarily like them, and that certain people wished that crimes of an unsavoury nature be committed upon my person without my consent. Caligula would have blushed.

But in general, I think reviews tend to generate a certain level of controversy for a number of reasons, and it's when people don't agree with something that they're most likely to speak out about it.

The problem is multifaceted, but you can preface the whole thing by saying that being mean to people on the Internet isn't any cooler than it is to act like that in real life. The anonymity of the Internet does act like a suit of armour for a lot of people, but it's not really cricket to get personal just because somebody didn't like a video game quite as much as you.

The biggest problem, I think, is a lack of consistency between different review sites. Some sites, for example, consider a 5 to be average because it makes most sense that way. Other sites - not pointing any fingers, or saying which is right or wrong - tend to stick to a 7 or something of a baseline for if something is okay, and above that is good. On some sites it seems like the game would actually have to climb out of the console and assault the reviewer before they'd go lower than a 7. As long as you're aware of whether a site typically is soft or harsh in their reviews, there's no problem dealing with it. But if it's your first time on a site and they give a game a score that fits their internal policy, but on the site you normally read it would have scored differently, I suppose that sets some less rational people off.

That environment is directly responsible for a lot of the hostilities surrounding review scores that people face, e.g. the backlash to Jim Sterling's 7/10 for the latest Zelda. 7 is a good score for a good game, but so many people are so used to anything that scores less than a 9 being the worst thing ever that they can't deal with it. This lack of consistency between different sites and their varying review scales is exacerbated by the fact that we now have sites like Metacritic that collate review scores and then assign the game a value based on an equation using those scores, even though a 7 on this site might be different to a 7 on another.

Most sensible people either a) recognise this discrepancy and deal with it accordingly, or b) don't care.

I've never really understood why people go nuts when somebody reviewing a game didn't like it as much as they did, or, even more absurdly, before they've even played it because it's not out yet, but then I don't understand many things. I guess all we can do is keep on trucking, write what we think, and hope that nobody gets annoyed and tells us to go [REDACTED] in the comments.

To be honest, I haven't played a Yakuza game since the PS2 days, and I wasn't planning on getting Kiwami, and I only skimmed the review, but I thought the score was a disgrace.
Only kidding, got to agree with what has been written here, this site is the first place I go for reviews and it's bang on. Keep it up.

@Gremio108 Ive seen you post before, so your in the regular contributers and forum posters section of the initial comment. You do need an avatar pic though bro.

I monitor the comments in the reviews and I can assure you that 90% of the hate comments are new users you post their insults and never post again. More then likely it's some bored obsesed fanboy that has no life which is really sad in its own part that more then likely Googled Yakuza review and found us that way and felt the need to make himself feel big.

I remember one review where the author was just slammed by a whole pack of idiots and I have never seen those fools again.

Sad thing is this is just part of the internet and until technology finds a better way of identifying people hiding behind a screen it will continue to happen.

For the most part I am getting tired of it too it's ok to disagree with a reviewer but to insult them is not ok which is why I stepped in yesterday and will continue to do so. As always if you guys see this kind of thing feel free to report them but please just do that. Don't get caught up in their game as 9 times out of 10 it just turns into insults and the comment section get derailed then I have a huge mess to clean up. After all that's these trolls main goal is to disrupt the comment section.

I appreciate all of our "core" users as they are some of the most well behaved users around the internet. Honestly other then a few swear words I don't have to step in to much which in turn makes my job easier. After all I don't want to babysit a bunch of people who should know how to act on a forum, and with that I want to say thank you all.

The thing is the site shouldn't be an echo chamber. I think, if the poster is constructive and calm, then you can actually improve the value of a review by having dissenting opinions in the comments. Maybe someone has a completely different view of a game to the reviewer, and that gives other people reading the site two different perspectives, which is valuable.

I never understood the reasoning behind taking review scores personally. I found the comments on the Yakuza review more funny than anything (especially since it was mostly just people who'll never post again), but trying to make it personal with the reviewer is just absurd. It'd be like me wanting to insult Kit Harrington because I wanted to knock boots with Ygritte instead.

For example, Sammy reviewed Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time in 2013, and gave it a 6. To me, the game is a solid 8, and I still think so even though my opinion has slightly soured on it. I wasn't a member back then, but even if I was, I wouldn't get so bent out of shape about it. I read it, and I agreed with a lot of what he said. I'm not gonna fight him because he gave it a lower score than I wanted. Nor will I fight him over his love of Taylor Swift or hatred of Jak II. Opinions. They're wonderful.

Seriously, why is it so hard to accept a contrary opinion? Is it really so hard to enjoy something that someone else doesn't like as much?

@get2sammyb Totally agree with ya Sammy, but as I said its all in the deliverence. While I am all for disagreements, there's absolutely no need to start calling names and insulting the reviewer.

Theres a difference between "I thought this game should have gotten higher to me the game play wasn't that bad yeah there's some problems especially at that one part"

And

"WTF you stupid jerk, get you head out of your backside this game was a 10, the gameplay isn't that bad you just don't know a good game and decide to write a lazy review..."

After all the reviewers don't have to spend their time writing these things. And in the end it's an opinion.

@Kyroki Hm, read like a 9.

@Tasuki Agreed!

@DerMeister regarding Ygritte, you know nothing DerMeister. Sorry, couldn't resist.

Seriously though, game criticism is to reflect the opinions of the reviewer when they played the game. I have played plenty of games and watched plenty of movies that I have loved. Disagreement is fine but the dismissing of someones work rudely, even though you could do no better (and based on the grammar of most of the haters, they clearly couldn't) is unnecessary and a reminder of what is worst of the Internet.

I love the reviews by the guys and gals on here. Quite often they feel more personal than other reviews, for instance, if a game is rubbish then they aren't afraid to tear it to pieces and take the **** out of it. You've got to love those quality sub headlines, too.
It's all good.

@Tasukip Yakuza kiwami isnt even out yet! The comments made no sense unless they all had pirated or stolen games. Good job as always Taz thanks for altering my posts when i cuss. Sometimes I dont even realise its a swearword.... Kitty patrol hahaha.