How to Spot A Legitimate Game Review
The industry of game reviews has become a little murky over the past decade or so as many individuals are finding it to be much harder to find an actual legitimate review – mixed scores between critics and individuals mean the middle ground is hard to find, and all of the features that are tacked on for reviewers also make their experience extremely difficult for the individual to match too.
Whilst some services rely on good reviews to get off the ground or offer other means outside of the game like this PA Online Lottery bonus code, not all titles are able to do the same – so how can you spot a legitimate game review, and how can you tell if things aren’t all as they seem?
Be wary of publications that use a press game mode – Often the developers include a difficulty in the game aimed specifically for reviewers at the big publications – they really tone the game down into an experience that can simply be ran through with little difficulty in hopes that a reviewer can finish the game and push out an opinion piece early on. However, this style of gameplay isn’t what the end product or realistic expectations could ever be, and your best bet is to stick to any site that openly claims which difficulty was played and for how many hours for a better representation of the game itself.
(Image from medium.com)
Be wary of favoritism too – It’s no surprise that some publications have favourites amongst developers, particularly where money is involved too, but this is also another of the big obvious pitfalls. The common victims here are the games that see a yearly release with little change, but still manage to continue securing the high scores – if there’s a game you know doesn’t deserve a 4/5 rating but consistently gets it year after year, then it may be time to start looking elsewhere for your gaming reviews, at least for reliability on expectations.
Check past reviews – The beauty of the internet is that everything is archived at one point or another, this means you can go back and check on previous reviews an individual has made even if they’re not longer publicly available on the site they’re using as their review home. If something looks legit but something is telling you that all is not as it seems, take a look back at previous reviews and see if their opinions have continued to line up, or if it’s repeating the same score for the same games over a certain period of time – it will be surprising to see how many would rate a game a certain score, only to say a later release was much better but give it a lower score to boot.