Do you look at online reviews when checking out a game or considering buying it?
When I’m browsing Steam and I see a game that interests me, I dive straight into the negative reviews. The issues that players commonly report are way more valuable for making a purchasing decision, since I can readily identify a game’s good aspects by looking at screenshots and footage much more easily than I can pick out what’s wrong with it.
Yeah I do that too. And I consider whether what users complain about matters to me.
The primary use of reviews for me is to serve as a noise filter for the games I should or shouldn’t care about. Over the years, I’ve grown accustomed to certain reviewers’ tastes and preferences and have a general sense of how my own taste compares to theirs, so in certain cases, if a reviewer likes game X, I can tell I’ll probably hate it, and vice versa. Of course, some of them have an 85% match on the games I like and a positive review from them is going to carry more meaning than most others. The content of the review is not as relevant to me as how they felt about it as a whole.
I will also supplement review opinions with technical info from Digital Foundry because I am sensitive to frame drops and do not want to waste any time on games that will infuriate me over the course of a playthrough.
I check butt threads and small pieces of youtube footage
Often only the latter
it’s all butt threads or things that are already on my radar because of other games/who made them for me, i’m literally never just coming across games and thinking about playing them
oh and obviously i play every game shown in every e3 press conference, i’m no casual
only on eshop games
at the point where yeah I generally know what I’m going to like based on pedigree or aesthetics, will check the sbsensus if im only 75% sure on something
my taste was definitely shaped as a lad by super play’s reviews in the 90s
A lot of the time if I’ve had a game wishlisted for a long while I’ll look at reviews and decide whether or not I should give the game the boot.
i weigh the opinions of selectbuttoners more heavily when i read stuff about a game especially if it’s someone i know has a similar taste to me. i also read the negative reviews on steam because for every couple of shitty ones it’s invaluable when someone is like “hey this game has lots of technical issues.” i think i spend time watching more gameplay than anything else when making a decision
definitely read the negative reviews and watch gameplay videos. sb opinions are like, sometimes useful for me, but a lot of tastes are very different so i try to stick to folks who i know like the stuff i like
huh this thread is interesting, it would literally never occur to me to look at user reviews before buying a game
I’m just looking at who made it, what they say about it if easy to find, then gameplay video, then if still unsure Ill dig deeper but by this time a critical opinion or butt thread has probably floated up in front of me.
Ill read user reviews on steam if Im concerned about technical issues.
i don’t read reviews either. when i wasnt reading selectbutton id just play things that interested me and stuff by my friends. now im playing things that interest me, stuff by my friends and stuff people here talk about
my brain is too shattered to suss out a systemic approach
I ignore most things until I trip over some minor incidental detail that sounds interesting to me
I’ll look for videos that give broad takes and show large chunks of Game Doings
I’ll prod people in chats? Sometimes? Can they tell me its deal?
I might search for Forum Takes if I recall fuzzing one out in passing, in the past?
sometimes the incidental details touch on Special Interests and maybe the way they’re implemented has the potential to make me mad and I ask myself
will this make me mad enough to keep playing so I see the whole thing and can be confident in the fullness of my irritation?
the last time i felt the need to acquire another game it was coz i’d already played one that i wanted more of but less obnoxiously, and Busted was there for me
otherwise my backlog will probably be enough to keep me for like… a good chunk of the foreseeable future
places like selectbutton have kind of ingrained in me a sense of stuff i love and made me more knowledgable of who makes what that i generally can tell what i’d be interested in from afar. it has made a weird thing in my brain w/r/t some genre that i can usually tell exactly what playing them will feel like after few screenshots
Yeah this.
I read user reviews on steam all the time and they almost unilaterally convince me not to buy a game, negative or positive. I don’t like most games, and positive reviews can shed light on why I would not like a game
But then I’ll instantly drop money on something like Devil Daggers and not read any reviews.
I let the games come to me. If I was meant to play a videogame, fate will place it in my hands without me looking at advertising, reviews, or indeed any sort of branding at all.
Like with movies, I mostly refer to reviews after I’ve played/begun playing a game, to have something to bounce my ideas off of. That said, I bounce off of the reviews themselves more often than not (most video game reviews are not worth reading).
i definitely don’t read or watch reviews unless they’re made by friends or something and i just want to know what they specifically think. otherwise, i mostly can tell what i would like or not like, or what i want to play, rather.
if i’m not sure about a game, then i read what people are saying here.
edit: actually i watch Digital Foundry stuff because i’ve become the kind of nerd that cares about framerates and resolutions