GameSpot's reviews

[Erkki]

I know here at thumbs we are all supposed to think that review scores suck etc., but I must confess that overall I really like GameSpot's review system.

Sometimes, nothing beats a good textual treatment that doesn't try to sum it up in numbers -- like the reviews at Idle Thumbs. But most of the time, I'm simply browsing around and don't have time to read that much (it may also be because I'm a relatively slow reader). That would especially be true if I wouldn't even know which sites/reviewers have tastes similar to my own so I would have to read a lot of reviews instead of blindly trusting one.

So for these cases, I really like the short summaries that provide a lot of info that fits on one screen, for example the attached The Darkness review summary. And I like that I can see all of this without even scrolling to see the text, and that I can sort games by the review score etc.

That doesn't mean that I think the score is necessarily a good indicator of the game. Actually, I almost never agree with GameSpot's scores, but I do think they are not too much off. I can sort a list of games by the score and there's a good chance that games I like are near the top, rather than near the bottom. With exceptions.

As for their text reviews, I haven't read them for a long time, because I think they are mostly worthless, but I like the video reviews (although the text in them is probably the same, just shorter) because they show you the game and sum up the reviewer's opinion at the same time, and in less time than it would take me to read the text.

It seems they've introduced some new features, giving various medals/badges to games that deserve them (see attached example again). My first impression is that I really like this (if it ends up being representative) and if games would be searchable by this, that would be especially cool.

Mostly I think of GameSpot as a huge database, that probably has something about most of the games that I want information on, and trailers and videos, and somewhat indicative scores.

There certainly is a place for both such databases, and sites like Idle Thumbs that never want to become a database and take the contents of the review more seriously so that they are always a good read. I'd actually like to see more of the latter.

Note: probably similar things can be said about several other sites, I just brought up gamespot because Thumbs and GameSpot are almost the only gaming related sites I visit these days.

[Thrik]

Yeah, the way they present the overall information these days is fairly sound.

I also approve of Game Daily's style, which is to have a long review but also give you the option of skipping to a "one minute review" which additionally serves as the review's conclusion. A natural-seeming way of doing it, but not so useful for sorting a whole shitload of games.

But then for getting a general idea of decent games I'd use Metacritic, which has an advanced search that I suspect a lot of people have never looked at but can give great results.

[ysbreker]

I'd suggest you'd add eurogamer to your daily read. First of all it's a European site instead of a US one. So you get European release dates and games that are actually going to be released in the EU. And secondly they have great reviews and a very nice 'TV-show' which is also worth a watch.

[elmuerte]

I'd suggest you'd add eurogamer to your daily read.

It's http://www.eurogamer.net/

[Marek]

GameSpot recently changed its rating system (and in my opinion for the better).

Scores are now rounded off at .0 or .5. No more separate scores for graphics, gameplay, tilt, etc. Instead are the medals, which I think are infinitely more useful.

See: http://www.gamespot.com/users/Jeff/show_blog_entry.php?topic_id=m-100-25043938

[Erkki]

Thanks for pointing that out, Marek. I actually didn't notice all of the changes and even forgot that there used to be separate scores for graphics, sound etc. (never looked at them much).

[ysbreker]

It's http://www.eurogamer.net/

Whoops! Changed it right away.