This is why I don’t pay attention to reviews
Years ago…back in the 80s and 90s…you have movie (and other reviews) that were thoughtful and fair. Given by people who had a lot of knowledge and experience to draw from.
That isn’t case anymore.
Now reviews are mainly about getting attention for the reviewer or platform. They are more about being negative or critical than being fair…and game reviews are more about the personal preferences of the reviewer than whether the devs succeed in making the kind of game they set out to make.
So increasingly I find them a waste of my time and I generally ignore reviews.
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So true. You quite literally have to see everything for yourself now.
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I usually watch three to four reviews on a game to find the small pieces of objective information to create a whole understanding. And with Elden Ring my annoyance for big time review companies just got bigger since that game is still riding the "review fad train" where reviews just parrot the public opinion and are just now arriving to actually talk about the bigger problems of the game instead of "10/10, why? I'm not telling"
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I haven't played Elden Ring (I don't like Soulsborne games). But I've noticed the "bandwagoning" that you're referring to with other games. Both positive and negative. Anthem and Mass Effect: Andromeda got hit with the negative version of that same phenomenon. Gamers just saw it these games as a chance to let BioWare have it because they didn't like how Mass Effect 3 ended....and a chance to give EA a black eye for a whole host of things they didn't like. At the time, what the actual games were like to play got lost in the shuffle. Yes, both game had an inordinate amount of bugs....but the core game play of both games was very good. Its taken years...but now you have people (now that the hive-mind has lifted) are going back and playing these games and realizing: Hey, they're actually pretty decent. But reviewers fanned the flames of that mob mentality, rather than giving a prinicipled and balanced look at what these games were really like.