Reviews: Are they really opinion?

With Jeff's latest review, his MK vs. DC review, there has been a lot of people just saying, SC IV a 3 and MK a 5, not fair! And admittedly, I was one of them. But people are saying "its opinion!", and yea, they may be true but if Jeff gave Gears of War 2 a 1 star and Rock Revolution a 5. There would only be like 1 or 2 people saying, "oh, its opinion". And it would blow up the inter webs. But that really brings me to my question, are reviews still entirely based on opinions?

Well, what else would they be based on? It cannot be a "fact", so it must be an opinion.

Reviews are opinions. I don't understand what else they could be. Now if we are discussing the legitimacy of an opinion, that is all debatable. Some reviewers have been swayed by advertising dollars or other benefits and have given a higher score to a game, but I believe the staff at GiantBomb is 100% trustworthy.

A lot of people? I've only seen one person complain about that review. And he's an idiot.

"A lot of people? I've only seen one person complain about that review. And he's an idiot."

"BiggerBomb said:

"A lot of people? I've only seen one person complain about that review. And he's an idiot."

You haven't taken a look at the comments on the review I don't think, there are many complaints on there."

The only way  a review will feel correct to you is when the reviewer has similar tastes. In the case of MK for exaple i doubt that jeff has the same tastes as the people who will play this game. If someone more casual should have done that review  it would have reflected the taste of the general MK player better in my opinion and hence would have looked more "correct" to those people.

Giving gears 1 star and and Rock rev 5 stars would still be an opinion. It would be the opinion of a mad man, but it would be an opinion.

I see what you mean. Some reviewers try to be unbiased and look at it from a technical standpoint and say things like "I'm sure a lot of people will love this", hiding their real feelings about it. GameTrailers have gotten some rep from doing that. Still, I'm sure most reviewers don't fight their opinion, so the opinion is still there.

I think Jeff has gotten unfair treatment for his fighting game reviews. I love the Dead or Alive series, but whenever I play a different fighting game, I play it with all my Dead or Alive bias in my head. I haven't enjoyed a single fighting game other than DOA after I played DOA 3 (although I found DOA Ultimate to be horrendous). Fighting games are more different than you'd think.

I think the problem is a lot of reviews AREN'T opinion anymore. For me sites like GiantBomb and personal blogs are the only place you get a real opinion. A lot of the more, what's the word, "respected" press take a broadsheet approach to journalism. It's almost like they have a checksheet of things to check whereabouts the game meets it's grade.

What I'm saying is GiantBomb and personal blogs can get away with saying "this game is fucking awesome and here's why" whereas the other sites you may read (or magazines) give a more... fleshed out response. "The dialogue is good but the voice acting is woeful and the sound design rarely matches the tone of the cutscenes". That kind of thing.

For example - the recent Transformers movie might be to someone the best thing they've ever seen because they went to see it expecting explosions and robots and they totally got that. But to Empire magazine they would go into detail about the plot and acting, etc etc. When person A probably only wants to know if there are explosions linked together by wafer thin plot. To Person A that might be a good thing. But when you're reviewing that's probably a bad thing.

I think this applies to games and I think Giant Bomb does a good thing of balancing the "broadsheet" style "need-to-knows" (they are still writing to inform at the end of the day) with their own personal conversational style and opinion.

I'd rather have a personal review than a more corporate review to be honest... but the problem with personal reviews are they are less objective and therefore can look biased.

On a more cynical note though - I think a lot of sites "play safe" with their review scores in order to secure readers who favour a particular system. Like seriously, could you imagine Gears 2 scoring less than a 9 on any site? Or Little Big Planet? Even if the person THOUGHT it... they're kinda not allowed to do it right? ;) If you see where I'm coming from.

Jesus people! Reviewers are human beings like yourselves but they live to express their opinions and get paid to do so!

It's pretty much impossible to review anything without injecting some of your opinion into it. After all, you are writing about what "you think" will incline others to play or avoid based on your views of the game. That is why it is better to look at several reviews, and try and find the common denominator among the sea of words.

Just my own personal opinion here, but I feel that you run a real risk of not doing the best possible review unless you have a couple of people working  on it.  Once should love that type of game, one should find them boring, and one should just feel lukewarm about it (in terms of genre only).  Using this method, things should end up more balanced. Take me for instance: I'm just not into sports games. To have me as ths sole reviewer of a Madden title just wouldn't do the game justice --- even if it was techinically a good football game.

Yes they are, anyone who says otherwise is an idiot