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Gamespot to review Half Life 2 at noon (PST) today.

I don't understand how you people can read those reviews prior to playing...it has screenshots!

May read some reviews after I play, but I don't want to spoil the storyline.
 
Originally posted by: Qosis
I don't understand how you people can read those reviews prior to playing...it has screenshots!

May read some reviews after I play, but I don't want to spoil the storyline.
Click to expand...

I always read reviews of games before buying
Gamespot is pretty good - Firingsquad has been pretty crappy for the past year or so

I don't wanna waste $50 on hype 🙂
 
Originally posted by: Qosis
I don't understand how you people can read those reviews prior to playing...it has screenshots!

May read some reviews after I play, but I don't want to spoil the storyline.
Click to expand...

A good reviewer will never spoil the storyline, so you don't have much to worry about. I think Doom 3 is a good case for the need to read reviews prior playing the game. How many people went out and built new computers for what turned out to be a mediocre game?
 
Originally posted by: ggnl
Originally posted by: Qosis
I don't understand how you people can read those reviews prior to playing...it has screenshots!

May read some reviews after I play, but I don't want to spoil the storyline.
Click to expand...

A good reviewer will never spoil the storyline, so you don't have much to worry about. I think Doom 3 is a good case for the need to read reviews prior playing the game. How many people went out and built new computers for what turned out to be a mediocre game?
Click to expand...

The problem with that statement is that over half of the reviews were great! I swear the people doing the reviews get a kickback if they give it a good score or something cause there are some pretty sh#tty games that get 9's. Doom3 being one of them. Its now collecting dust on my shelf after I beat it. ZERO replay value.
 
reviews are hardly ever worth reading, theyre always miles off base and seem heavily biased on any major releases. ironically, i find print reviews worse than the online ones.

i've totally given up on magazines and multiplayer, both PC Zone and Gamer in UK are total fskwits who appear to do nothing except play an occasional round of counterstrike. I get a better review by reading a couple of pages of posts on a random forum. Have you ever read the hardware pages of a gaming rag? they were wrong when they were written, probably 6 weeks before it was printed. and yeah, i read them quite often - im on isdn and the disks are useful. looking forward to dsl in a couple of weeks (hopefully).


not going to read these reviews unless i hear of some shock score like 70%, it aint going to influence my purchase decision otherwise, plus i've learned the less you find out in advance, the more there is to enjoy on the day (and the more you enjoy it, since you werent expecting the grossly overhyped version). Hell, i even managed to enjoy doom3. [nb: rule doesnt apply to multiplayer]
 
Originally posted by: Davegod
reviews are hardly ever worth reading, theyre always miles off base and seem heavily biased on any major releases. ironically, i find print reviews worse than the online ones.

not going to read these reviews unless i hear of some shock score like 70%, it aint going to influence my purchase decision otherwise, plus i've learned the less you find out in advance, the more there is to enjoy on the day (and the more you enjoy it, since you werent expecting the grossly overhyped version). Hell, i even managed to enjoy doom3. [nb: rule doesnt apply to multiplayer]
Click to expand...

I agree. Critiquing a game is like critiquing a movie......pretty pointless. And I know because I was one class away from a Film Studies minor in college. You take a movie like Star Wars and you can thrash it to pieces when you break it down, but then you say how much you liked the movie in the end.

In general, I only read reviews on games I have no intention of buying. On rare occasion, a review will lead me to pick up a game. I wasn't planning on Rome:Total War since the other two Total War games didn't sound fun.
 
GS must be getting hammered. It's slow as hell and I can't even get to the review section.

[Edit] Review is up. HL2 gets a 9.2.

*goes back and votes on the original post*. I R teh WiNNaR!
 
They gave Doom an 8.5 and Halo 2 a 9.4. For those of you looking to put their scores in perspective.

I personally feel HL2 is going to be better than a 9.2 game based on the alpha alone.
 
Gamespot is very tough on *every* game not named Tony Hawk's Pro Skater xxxxxx . That's essentially one of the reasons why I take Gamespot scores with a grain of salt - the numbers they belch out are exceedingly arbitrary.

For example, they originally gave the original Metal Gear Solid an 8.0 or 7.8 I believe . When the industry unanimously praised it as one of the best games ever, they quickly upped it to 8.5 (which is still an insult to the game, for what it represented at the time it was released).

Usually, their reviews have some good information in them, but the score itself is often quite arbitrary. They dock games points 'just because' essentially; to make themselves different.

Generally their scores are about 0.5 lower than most other review sites, +/- 0.2 . Typically they give very high scores to original games and less to sequels, even if the sequels are considered superior/just as good. Of course, unless the game is called "Tony Hawk's XXXXXXX" . Then, all bets are off!
 
Originally posted by: jiffylube1024
Gamespot is very tough on *every* game not named Tony Hawk's Pro Skater xxxxxx . That's essentially one of the reasons why I take Gamespot scores with a grain of salt - the numbers they belch out are exceedingly arbitrary.

For example, they originally gave the original Metal Gear Solid an 8.0 or 7.8 I believe . When the industry unanimously praised it as one of the best games ever, they quickly upped it to 8.5 (which is still an insult to the game, for what it represented at the time it was released).

Usually, their reviews have some good information in them, but the score itself is often quite arbitrary. They dock games points 'just because' essentially; to make themselves different.

Generally their scores are about 0.5 lower than most other review sites, +/- 0.2 .
Click to expand...

I was a bit surprised by their score for GTA: SA, to imply that GTA SA is better than both Halo 2 and HL2 is ridiculous imo.

I'm wondering what this whole "surprise"m,ultiplayer thing is, considering that the review mentioned that CSS was the only multiplayer. Hopefully the "surprise" wasn't bogus.
 
Originally posted by: jiffylube1024
Gamespot is very tough on *every* game not named Tony Hawk's Pro Skater xxxxxx . That's essentially one of the reasons why I take Gamespot scores with a grain of salt - the numbers they belch out are exceedingly arbitrary.

For example, they originally gave the original Metal Gear Solid an 8.0 or 7.8 I believe . When the industry unanimously praised it as one of the best games ever, they quickly upped it to 8.5 (which is still an insult to the game, for what it represented at the time it was released).

Usually, their reviews have some good information in them, but the score itself is often quite arbitrary. They dock games points 'just because' essentially; to make themselves different.

Generally their scores are about 0.5 lower than most other review sites, +/- 0.2 . Typically they give very high scores to original games and less to sequels, even if the sequels are considered superior/just as good. Of course, unless the game is called "Tony Hawk's XXXXXXX" . Then, all bets are off!
Click to expand...

Thanks for the heads up. I've been reading GS reviews for years, but never really caught onto their rankings in particular.

Quite honestly, GS's review wasn't shining in all respects. I'm gonna check out the IGN one, but I may just wait to order until I've heard some of the AT'ers feedback on the game.
 
I don't trust IGN or GameSpot. As posted above GameSpot seems to rate games rather arbitrarily, I bet they played Half Life 2 at the same time as the print magazines did and Halo 2 went gold some time ago, so they should have had a chance to compare the reviews and scores for GTA:SA, Halo 2, and HL2 for some kind of consistency before publishing them - but they didn't. At IGN, the writing style often seems rather amateur, almost fan boy like at times. I doubt they have a trained journalist among the bunch.
 
IGN is my favourite review site. They usually are one of the more accurate review sites I read, and the rankings are generally pretty fair IMO. Occasionally they pan a game a bit too much or give a game a generous score, but most of the time they're pretty spot on.

They usually pick up on most of the good "hidden gem" games too, such as praising the Thief games, No One Lives Forever 1 and 2, etc, while Gamespot often misses the boat on these.
 
GS seemed like it was just trying to nit pick to sound smart and unimpressed. It the best FPS out on any platform according to most reviews, so 9.2 is just their way of getting attention IMO. I'm just pissed about Doom III getting 9+ on any reviews, it was a boring game. I could not make myself finish it, it was a solid 7/10.
 
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