Gamespot reviews can't be trusted?
 

http://kotaku.com/gaming/rumor/games...iew-328244.php

gist of it:
The rumor is that a reviewer at Gamespot was fired because of his less than stellar review of Kane & Lynch, which Eidos was paying to have advertised on the site. Supposedly, Eidos threatened to stop their ad campaign because of it.

I don't normally care about Gamespot's reviews, but this certainly isn't good news if it's true.

Opinions?

Bias and bribery?!? OH NOES!!1! XD

No but seriously, this shit is, sadly, pretty normal for most major game reviewers. I mean these guys need advertising in their sites (and mags) and it's not unusual for gaming companies to set certain conditions on reviewers for special previews. If you want a relatively unspoiled opinion on games, then your best bet would be this guy or the many other individual game reviewers on the internets.

How about the fact that I've always known that 'reviews' are just one person giving their impression of their taste and opinions of something with a score and long description.

In te case of Gamespot, IGN, 1up and all the rest, these reviews go beyond a simple opinion with the action of the person writing the review telling people that there's a good game out there or to vent frustrations of a bad product. Since these places have attained such a large mass of people who come to their site as a trusted source for news and a guide for their game investments, the people on these sites have taken it to the next level.

They use these reviews to try to influence games they like or want to be popular to the forefront and the games they personally don't like they give lowered scores and obviously picky reviews full of 'negative' points that certain games have that they never point out when they are found in other games (or just don't hack off as many points for it).

In short, the review sites are just a big game of favorites, pretty much full of a bunch of people playing games and putting up random scores out of their ass based on how they 'feel' playing various games. But the dangerous part is, they have hundreds of thousands of people (and media outlets, gaming magazines, game companies, etc) all using them as a creditable source, and worse.

So on topic. No, this news, true or not, doesn't surprise me at all, lol.

Well, like I said, I personally don't care about "official" reviews. However, you can't deny that a good chunk of people do pay attention to sites like Gamespot and IGN.

While biased reviews might not be very surprising, this simply confirms it.

http://home.comcast.net/~olsen31/Images/eidos.jpg

I guess some people don't like the integrity of their games journalism spat upon.

I just gotta post this before Seil does:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2007/20071129.jpg

Hah! Suck on that, Seil!

In general, I just don't trust gaming reviews at all. The current system (a number out of ten, looking at the monetary value more than the artistic one) seems outdated and really elitist. This would be, for me, just the icing in the cake.

I used to trust Gamespot, at least insomuch as it being superior to say IGN or something like that, but then they gave Phantom Hourglass a 9.0 or something ridiculous like that. That game is okay, but it doesn't deserve anything higher than an 8 or something. Then they dropped their detail on the ratings to only .5 increments from their original .1 increments. And now this.

However, the fact that this is made known and everybody realizes that it's bullshit for them to do this, at least gives us some hope.

EDIT: Actually, the entire review system got broken a long time ago when 7 became average and 5 or less was the new zero. I mean, for people who can figure that out, it's not bad, but some people see 8 and think that that means the game is absolutely amazing and groundbreaking and the greatest game ever, and then see a bunch of other 8s and go "hey, game review sites seem to go pretty easy on games, unlike music/movie/book review sites" because they don't realize that when game review sites nowadays say a game is an 8 out 10 they actually mean it is a 3 out of 5.

Technically a 6.0 is an above average review, but when you look at the truth of the matter, it's actually saying that Kane and Lynch is a 2 out of 5 (worse than average). Which is probably true, I'd just like to point out to Eidos that many gamers will probably not be affected by the 6.0 rating because they believe that Gamespot and other sites grade on a true 10 point scale system. They will still be tricked into believing it's okay or even fun, Eidos. Don't worry. Your sales line will probably not suffer as much as you think.

Gee, thanks Banana.

Jerk.

They should just rip off the five star system from the movie industry and divide it in 5) Masterpiece, 4) Great Game, 3) Mediocre 2) Horrible 1) Downright unplayable. That way it would be far less confusing.

Isn't that what X-Play does?