Game Critics

You don't, but it can be helpful if you find a critic that strongly aligns with your preferences, or even strongly misaligns with your preferences. Just like a reccomendation from a friend, you can use it to consider if something is worth even giving a try. ▶ this video

There really are a lot of terrible game journalists. The ones who aren't terrible tend to be independents rather than writing for big publications. An amusing and yet thoughtful take on the problem comes from Videogamedunkey ▶ this video and link

I never thought I would see videogamedunkey in top hot posts on HN but here we go. As others have already pointed out, he usually makes silly videos but has been consistent for many years if you like his kind of humour. From time to time he makes a video-essay which are usually great, I would recommend a "Game Critics"[0] and part two if you liked the first one. [0]: ▶ this video

Dunkey presented a fairly well-argued idea why major publications tend to give 9+/10 reviews to games, even when the actual text of their review clearly points to major issues ( ▶ this video ). The tl;dw version is that gamers, by and large, tend to disparage media outlets for giving poor ratings to games that aren't already widely disliked by the hive mind. It comes from the perspective of someone who does unbiased VG reviews, and I think it raises an interesting point that might otherwise be overlooked. (Of course, payola should certainly not be discounted as a factor.)

I actually wonder why crowd-sourced reviews have become so ubiquitous, to the point of almost being necessary (along with five-star ratings). Has anyone legitimately attempted to challenge the status quo here? I'm reminded of videogamedunkey on YouTube and his video about game critics[0], where he goes into some detail about the preferences and integrity of the critic being just as important (if not more) than the review and rating. Professional critics build a strong reputation around their taste and preference and they gain notoriety from doggedly sticking to those principles. So you'd likely trust the opinion of Roger Ebert or Mark Kermode if you share their taste in cinema, and even watch something you normally wouldn't if even they recommended it. You're very likely to subscribe to a publication whose critics align with your own tastes because they're effectively curating content for you in the form of recommendations. None of that applies when you have reviews from a succession of total strangers - you're not going to research dozens or hundreds of commentators to establish a logical consistency in their point of view and decide whether or not their tastes align with yours. More often than not the reviews are low quality and low value, spread across a five-point scale but essentially treated as a binary like/didn't like system. At that point, crowd-sourced reviews tell you nothing you didn't know already: some people enjoyed it for one reason and others didn't for a dif