Seems kind of like the game is just suffering from reactionaries, but I definitely don’t put that much stock in critic reviews these days either.
Seems kind of like the game is just suffering from reactionaries, but I definitely don’t put that much stock in critic reviews these days either.
I think you need to own the game on steam to review it so there’s some gatekeeping there at least
I hate Steam’s review system, though. Binary yes or no is not useful to me. I want to know if a game is good (maybe a play eventually) vs absolutely amazing (where I might prioritize playing it right away). Such granularity is also useful because a 10/10 might be worth it even if it’s not my favourite type of game, but a 7/10 can be very worthwhile if it is the type of game I adore.
It’s a shame that user reviews on sites like Metacritic are just consistent trash. Too many users only know 0 or 10 and the user reviews are often review bombed. I wish regular users could at least give numbers like critics. No professional critic is gonna give a game a 0 because of a handful of problems, for example, but average people will totally give a game a zero for that. Only problem with critics is that they often have a perspective that makes them detached from the average person, since they spend all their time reviewing. Ideally user reviews would fill that gap, but users are incredibly fickle.
I think Steam’s Yes/No system is the best option we’ve got for user review scores. As you said yourself, for most people, it’s either 0 or a 10. And while granularity can help, it’s worthless when it differs on a user to user basis. One users 5 is another users 7. And is the difference between a 1 and a 2 even remotely the same between a 9 and a 10? Probably not.
The biggest argument I could see is that “Mixed” option where it’s neither option, but I feel like that doesn’t really help anyone overall and is just indecisive.
At least with 0-10, I know to ignore any review that gives a zero. And usually I’d view 10s as just a binary recommend.
If you just ignore a score of 0, then why even have it and conversely, why not show the same treatment towards the equally as ridiculous score of a 10?
for the most part it seems to work better than on Metacritic or other review sites with 5-10 star ratings. a lot of people are very unreasonable with 0 star reviews where they’ll give it a 0 for a slight inconvenience even if the game is completely playable
might as well lump the 0-4 star people together on a 10 scale
That should help in theory, but Steam is infamous for this problem, too, so it can’t be helping all that much.