Would you still play a game if you knew it had a low review score?

[rootCompute]

I almost always consider how highly a game is rated before adding it to my collection. Time, money and storage space are all limited, and I place a significant amount of value on how I portion them out. An aggregate of other people's experiences is usually a solid indicator of whether or not a game is worth your time, this fact has been borne out in my gaming life as an adult up to this point.

That said, part of me misses that blind exploration into uncharted waters of my youth. My taste for video games was shaped by what was available, not always what was best. Games can be bad in interesting ways like whimsical creative mishaps or boring ways like being lazy cash grabs or low effort trash, even ancillary issues not related to the actual play experience can affect a review score.

We also all have differing perspectives as individuals, and blindly following the pack mentality might cause you to miss out on something you'd otherwise enjoy. I don't often follow other people's opinions on music for example, but music also requires much less of a barrier of entry to form an opinion on it and its objective quality is not exactly as clear cut as an hours-long narrative experience.

I'm curious what other people think about this topic. How much weight do you put on a review score in deciding what to play? Are there other factors you find more important in your choice?

 

[Santas]

I don't really care about high rates for a game, but if it does have a low score I probably wouldn't buy it, though I would emulate if it was an old game, money is an important resource after all. As for how to decide if I will play a game or not, it's just the feels, man, sometimes indeed you can find excellent stuff and be surprised by how good they are, I found Usogui by clicking the "Random" on mangadex and tried the Yakuza series out because Kiwami 1 was on PlayStation Plus back then.

So yeah, money is important, but if it's not a worry, I actively look forward to trying games that I've never seen anything about before.

 

[The Repo-man]

Yes, not everyone likes the same thing, it's like that saying one persons garbage is another person treasure somewhat. I still do that even now I just play whatever I find fun. Of course tho because this is just me I only have a handful of modern console games I play and if I do buy another one I usually try to find some kinda info on the game which most of the time isn't allot to go on.

I'm pretty sure I play stuff other people don't like but thats okay for a game to be fun you can't really let opinions get in the way of that, you can listen to opinions however but still the choice to play a game YOU want to or not is ultimately up to you. No one else can make the choice for you.

Pack mentality can't tell you what to think that again is also your choice.

 

[Zeo]

I only took it as a reference in general or a warning if the game itself has bugs and is unplayable in some way

There are some games that people say are bad yet i ended up having fun

 

[_oBSOLEte_]

I just go to the RetroAchievement site. I browse and filter games by the category and system I feel like playing and then I sort the list by number of players. Then I pick something that looks fun to me.

No marketing hype, no score, no review, no sunk cost bias nor buyer remorse. Just people playing games.

 

[Carlnshake]

Yep. My taste is pretty niche anyways

 

[TruxtonTatsujin]

It's nice to know what the general consensus is, but if I think it looks cool I'm going to play it regardless. When you've played enough games you can kinda just tell what you are and aren't going to like by just a quick glance.

 

[rootCompute]

Interesting replies all around, and more uniformly on the other side of the debate which I did not expect. It's nice to hear that many other people maintain their ability to think independently when it comes to entertainment.

I just go to the RetroAchievement site. I browse and filter games by the category and system I feel like playing and then I sort the list by number of players. Then I pick something that looks fun to me.

No marketing hype, no score, no review, no sunk cost bias nor buyer remorse. Just people playing games.

This definitely seems like the way. If it comes down to ratings, I prefer an aggregate of actual player's opinions/playtime over an aggregate of game publication reviews. IGN notoriously missed on a lot of games that ended up as cult classics back in the day. On Steam, I highly value user reviews in sorting from a massive catalog, then just find something that looks enjoyable and dive in

 

[RageBurner]

I never bow to review scores. If I can play and make my own judgement, I will. If not, then that won't influence me.

 

[A man on a computer]

Mainlined review sites are just the advertising arm of the industry. Their reviews should be ignored.
I mean, God Hand was given a 3 out of 10 by IGN.

 

[rootCompute]

Mainlined review sites are just the advertising arm of the industry. Their reviews should be ignored.
I mean, God Hand was given a 3 out of 10 by IGN.

So true. It's difficult to take any individual review site seriously especially when it transparently exists to drive clicks for ad revenue

 

[Stingy Perry Stingy Perry]

Definitely yes some reviewers are really biased remember GodHand is such a great game but it got butchered in reviews.

 

[Bonkers225]

My favorite game of all time is White Knight Chronicles 1/2, and that game scored about 6/10-ish from reviewers at the time. Bubsy is also one of my favorites, and we all know that story.

 

[Sfjeov]

To be honest, I'm more convinced by video clips of the gameplay instead of review score of the game itself.

 

[jankusanagi jankusanagi]

If the game seems interesting to me for any reason, I'd check it out, reviews be damned

 

[JackNoir413]

if you mean reviews from people who get paid to review, then i absolutely would considering reviewers are brain damaged most of the time.
you really should only consider what reviews say if they say things like "the game keeps crashing" but otherwise they're pretty worthless since everyone's got their own taste for games.

 

[rootCompute]

I guess to slightly push back on some of the perspectives in this thread, I find games that are reviewed highly end up being great when I'm looking for something outside what I'm used to playing. For example, I'm not usually into air combat/flying games but I recently played Ace Combat 04 Shattered Skies on PS2 and had a wonderful time!

The thing about review scores that gives me some pause: if I know a game is highly reviewed going into it, does that color my opinion of it subconsciously before playing? Did I have a good time with it because I liked it, or did confirmation bias set in? (And vice-versa with poorly reviewed games)

 

[jon2]

Frankly, I don't look at review scores; I'd rather view a playthrough video of the game to decide whether or not I'd get the game

 

[Glossy Cat]

I rarely look at review scores. But I'd still play a game even if it had received a low review score. I once read a review for Spawn in the Demon's Hand after I'd enjoyed playing it. It received a low review score and the only thing the person complained about was the camera which really wasn't bad at all.

 

[Shameless]

Review score are kinda useless without actual context on the person writing em. If the overall majority consensus on a game is that its good, it still doesn't mean ill enjoy it. Like those new Doom game are objectively good games but i dont like em because there just not my type of game these days.

 

[TrashChamp]

Nope. Not at all. If I hear someone complaining about a game it certainly doesn't make me want to check it out but I've learned that I don't agree with the critical consensus most of the time.

I'm actually more suspicious of games that review very well, since I find they have huge flaws critics ignore or simple unchallenging gameplay. Where as when i play a game that has middling or bad reviews I don't know what the hell I'm getting. I could find something to laugh at for 20 minutes before turning off, or maybe my new favorite game. It also means more games are open to playing. I have a similar attitude with movies and tv shows as well, so I can always find something I'm at least a little bit interested in checking out.

If I had listened to critics without checking something out myself I would have missed out on my personal favorite game of 2023, Wanted:Dead. That game has big time flaws but its also a really enjoyable action game that feels like it was made by genuine people instead of executives.

 

[gekiganwing]

Sometimes yes.

Loop8: Summer of Gods was mentioned on at least one worst of the year list. However, Super Derek gave it a qualified recommendation. I've considered buying this game, since it seems relaxing. So... would I pay $40 US for this game on Steam or Switch 1? At the moment, no. I have plenty of other story-rich games in my queue. Since it should be Steam Deck compatible, and since it has been reduced to $10 a few times on that service, I plan to wait for the next sale.

 

[Fray Guillermo]

I'd give it a try at least before commiting to it because a game is much more time demanding than say, a film or a music album (both of which I have lots of bad rated stuff logged and enjoyed), although not that I care about scores anyways

 

[alpha_wolf24]

as a Sonic fan i can tell you 100% yes

 

[Cantarella]

kinda depends

if I see all the user reviews are really low then there's probably some kind of problem. But, I don't care about a high score bc my tastes can diverge pretty heavily from the norm. regardless... i usually go to the 'mixed' reviews if available bc they're the most likely to keep it real.

though I will say, this is if I look at reviews at all. most of the time I just look at some videos/images of the game to see if I vibe with it and then make my decision from there.