The recent outrage expressed amongst n4g members regarding a Gamespot reviewer giving a 7.5 score for the very popular Ratchet and Clank game got me thinking. One poster reasonably used metacritic as a reference to show that the reviews are balanced overall, and so I did a little bit of amateur research, using metacritic.com as my source
I compared 5 games for the 360 and 5 games for the PS3, checking their average review scores against the user ratings for those games, my question being whether the games reviewers are 'hyping' games from one console or another. The results are interesting, although there should be some caveats I guess. I am not sure what kind of percentage of user reviews are simply posted by fanboys who have not in fact played the game. This could change things, especially with regard to some of the games I list below. Having said that, I assume fanboys for the 360 are doing it to the PS3 games and PS3 fanboys are doing it to the 360 games anyway, and theoretically at least, there are more 360 fanboys than PS3 fanboys, due to the installed bas of each console.
The games I checked for the 360 were Gears of War, Halo3, Bioshock, Forza2 and PGR4. I looked at the PS3 games, Resistance:Fall of Man, Heavenly Sword, Warhawk, Motorstorm, and Ratchet and Clank.
My amateur research showed that every single 360 title, ie 100%, was rated higher by the reviewers than by the users, and that only 40% of the PS3 titles were rated higher. Does this tell me that the reviewers are biased? I am not sure, but it makes sense to take a look at a number of reviews before making your decision to buy, and maybe check out what the consumers feel about the game too. It definitely feeds the flames of dissent amongst PS3 owners that their games are being treated unfairly by the reviewers and therefore, that Microsoft is buying high scores for its games.
What may be more reasonable is that the reviewers are simply getting carried away with successful marketing campaigns and unconsciously rating certain games higher than they perhaps should be doing. It may also be an indication that reviewers are out of touch with their audience and maybe need to address how they score games so as to more accurately represent what their audience will think of the game. If they don't do that, then I guess games reviews will continue to lose credibility.
Here are the figures, first the title, then the review score, then the user score;
Gears of War - 94% vs 8.4
Halo 3 - 94% vs 7.6
Bioshock - 96% vs 8.9
Forza 2 - 90% vs 8.9
PGR 4 - 85% vs 8.4
Resistance - 86% vs 8.5
Heavenly Sword - 79% vs 8.8
Warhawk - 84% vs 8.5
Motorstorm - 82% vs 7.4
Ratchet & Clank - 89% vs 9.0
If anyone else has enough time to do a more through analysis, I would be interested in reading it.
Dragon Age: Dreadwolf has been renamed to Dragon Age: The Veilguard.
Honestly, it could be called unicorns and faeries for all i care, as long as it's a great game, whatever.
that looked pretty cool
i hope what was done with Batman how it was a hit could be done with spiderman and all the other super heroes games. We need better ones. Iron Man yuck that needs allot of work done on, it has potential of being a great super hero game but its being developed wrong
There are so much PS3 fans in the world, satisfied with the last offering from Sony. They could, in the same way that knewed disagrees in the negative posts about PS3 or positive posts about the 360, turning the users score down with a forceful avalanche.
Ideally, you'd like to see scores which resemble Forza 2, PGR 4, Resistance, Warhawk, and R&C. When the reviewer and user scores are similar, you more likely to have a trustworthy result.
It is interesting that when there's a difference, the XBOX reviews are higher whereas the PS3 are lower. Good job with the data hunting!
Everyone knows that Sony beat EVERYONE upside the head last gen. It dominated the market and it showed. People now are gunning for that spot and unfortunately the media has been 'turned' to back others because of personal feelings or money. Its no different in politics, TV stations, radio talk programmes, cable networks, newspapers all have their agenda's and show who they support. The video game industry is the same.... Sadly
i have all the console and enjoy playing different games on all the consoles. i love a few games on the xbox 360, and i love a few on the ps3 and i only enjoy one on the wii which is zelda. anyway, after i saw certain games that have been reviewed by certain reviwers, and i actually own the games that were given a low score cause of miniscule flaws ,i came to the conclusion that the reviewers are biased. heavenly sword is an awesome game and has way better graphics than halo 3 , but was given the same score in the graphics department has halo 3 . ratchet a clank for instance isnt my cup of tea, but after playing the demo, i kinda liked it, it takes a good game that i concider childish to make me like it.
listen, reviewers are biased cause a lot of these reviewers are bribed by microsoft which a lot of us saw microsoft did with one reviewer that actually declined the bribe of duffel bag filled with a $1000 worth of video games and food. listen, i dont like halo 3, i love gears of war, there is no way i would rate halo 3 a better score than a new ip like gears of war. gears of war actually did new things which needed to be done cause 95% of all the fps and tps have been the same since goldeneye 007 days and syphon filter. gears of war deserves at least a 9 out of 10, halo 3 doesnt deserve a 9 or close, 8 would be a good score for halo 3. halo 3 isnt even high definition.
anyone that played lair for ps3 knows it doesnt deserve a 4.5 out of 10, unless they are mentally retarded. you use motion controls to control the dragon and not a fcvking analog stick. the lowest score i would have rated lair is a 7.5. sometimes i have to wonder about the bull ship that is spread about the xbox 360 and the ones being spread about the ps3. we all know the failure rate for xbox 360 is over 33%, yet still i dont see it all over the fcvking place, i dont hear these adam sissie boy making a sissie show about it. but the ps3 the system that is the underdog thise gen is being dragged through the mud and has a lot of negative rumors surrounding it which most are untrue.
i'm on my 5th xbox 360 and i hate that, i really do worry when playing my games ill have disc error or that my system will have rrod. i still like the 360 cause it had a few games i liked , namely gears of war. i like the ps3 games that i own a lot cause the ps3 exclusives shows how much the ps3 is more of a superior system that all the other consoles.
The reviews are alright it is only the obsessed that feel the reviews must be wrong. Lets not forget that those user reviews can be anyone at all. Heck they don't even have to prove they own the game to rate it. So we could have a non 360 owner who will never look at Halo 3 and then jump on the website and give Halo 3 a user rating of 4 and be happy with themselves and the same goes with non PS3 owners.
I think some reviews can be a bit much due to the hype train or the fanbase that follows said game. So sure that is one thing but I don't believe the reviews as a whole are biased towards one console. That's just an obsessed point of view. IMHO that is. If Super Mario Galaxy got a review of 2 I would have to read that review to see what the heck he hated about it but I would still buy the game. Just as I did with Liar, I bought that game and the reviews didn't fair well.