Most PC game reviews seem to have been made by someone who spent a couple hours or so looking at the various early screens in a game and who never really played it, certainly not enough to understand it and write a decent review.

Therefore, I ignore reviews except for screen shots.

PC game reviews are about as biased as you can get. Companies pay for positive reviews or at least to postpone the review until their initial sales are capitalized on. Gamespot is notorious for this. There were big name games that didnt have a review on GS even 2 weeks after the intial releases because the games were abysmal, but the publishers (*cough* EA *hack*) paid for them to postpone the reviews until after the majority of their sales had been met. The reviews on Gamespot themselves are heavily unbalanced when looking at review sites like metacritic where the GS review is way at the bottom or way at the top compared to other gaming sites/magazine reviews.

Now I do agree that reviews should be "revisited" so to speak or have release bugs taken into account when setting up the review.  Granted there have been some releases where the bugs prevented the game from even installing let alone running and no patch could correct such behavior, but to dock reviews based on factors that are fixed within days is absurd.

Taking directly from the gamespot review of Demigod, how the lack of a tutorial or single player campaign was a negative, this is highly inconsistent with other games they've not mentioned this in with similar characteristics. For one, anyone who has played a single player match of Demigod already knows how to play by the end of the match. If someone needs a tutorial to play DG, then they are either a noob to gaming in general or just lazy. As for the single player campaign, DG is not about single player. Perhaps this is the fault of Stardock for promoting the fact that it has a single player experience etc... but the primary purpose of the game is to play online in a tournament setting. By the same reasoning games like unreal tournament, left 4 dead, or any other MP based game with SP parts should be docked heavily in their scores. Further, games like half life 2, mass effect, etc should be docked for not having MP when clearly they could.

I just think that reviews should be based on factors that appeal or disappeal to particular genres of gaming. Meaning, if a game is strategy, rpg, etc, it should be treated as such by a reviewer who favors said type. Further, MP and SP should be reviewed and weighted independently because often times people do not care that it has SP if they want it for MP or vice versa. Also should be considered the games focus and whether or not it delivers what is advertised.  Longevity of the game needs to be factored as well as price of the game. In fact, they should indicate what they feel the game is "worth" compared to other titles of similar type. There are many first party titles that release for say $50US that should really be in the bargain bin at $20US at most.

There are general things that should be factored as well like how good the sound and graphics are, how well the game controls (because I dont care how good the game is, if you cannot control it well, it's garbage in my book) for the platform released, and how well balanced the game is (this is subjective as it balance is typically adjusted over the life of the game) and further how buggy the game is (as often times there are bugs in the engine itself that will never get resolved - rubberbanding in titan quest anyone?). Overall value of the game should be a primary factor, not just that it sucks or doesnt suck based on the reviewers bias toward the game.

I've rated quite a few games, both games that I like or disliked, and given them fair reviews (not necessarily all positive to the ones I liked and likewise vice versa to dislike) and I've found many people find my reviews helpful when deciding whether or not to purchase a specific title for a specific price.

I think Stardock should start up a branch in their company for gaming reviews They've proven themselves honest and trustworth with their releases and I think they could do the same in the review world.  Perhaps when the economy improves we'll see "Stardock Reviewing Monthly" or some such business.  I just want to see more honest reviewing that isnt based on which publishers pay more for postponed and positive reviews of horrible products while smaller companies get the shaft.

Wow, you were lucky then.  I had my computer set to DMZ and still had issues with MP. Then again RA3 to this day does not load on the first attempt. It hangs at a specific bit range (when SecuROM is checking its stuff) and I have to manually shut it down and retry. This usually goes for 10 minutes before it loads. Connecting to MP wasnt viable until about the 3rd or 4th patch 2 months later. By then, I had no interest in the game any more and was miffed that I wasted $50 (granted it was a gift and I didnt actually waste $50, but still).

I don't like this "they will patch it later" lame excuse.  When I get a game to play I don't want to feel like I paid money to beta test a game.  You brought up demigod,  you do know that the reviews don't only talk about the failed online right?  The lack of a single player I think is a huge blow in a game that is part RPG with short battles.  Sins gets the get out of jail card on this one because it is epic and some MP skirmish games can last as long as some single player games out there.

The review is supposed to give you an idea what you are about to face when you buy the product NOW and not a year later after it is patched.

That's the whole problem though, the games don't stay static, new content is introduced and issued fixed. I don't know about you but I don't purchase many PC games the first week of their release. I'll wait until they drop in price and take for example Dawn of War 2 which was said to have little multiplayer options that certainly isn't the case now. They are adding a new game mode, have released more maps, and are also improving the AI. That isn't reflected on the release day review of the game that doesn't exist any longer because the incorporation the steam downloads all those things for you. Demigod and DoW2 aren't the only games either I could name a whole slew of PC games that has changed for the better compared to the initial release day reviews. Right now you aren't getting anything but a glimpse of release day history reading them now especially if you're reading reviews of PC games that have been out for months.

Game reviews are terrible way of deciding to buy a game. Any game I've bought is based off a prior good experience with a game from that company or a friend recommending me one. Just so happened that 75% of the games I play ended up being from Valve and Blizzard lol

Best way imo if you are looking into a game is just watch gameplay videos of it. Having one sole person decide what a game's worth seems odd to me, look to the people playing it!!!

Reviews are bogus, period. For everything; some more than others at any rate.

PC reviews are probably the least tainted of all platforms. I like to think it's because the people doing the reviews are PC gamers, and therefore have a modcium of sanity and experience to base the review off of. And given that it's the oldest platform, they probably know what the fuck they're doing. Whereas a new console comes out, any Joe Blow can kick off his gaming career on it.

All reviews suffer from two glaring problems. The first is the 'final score'. At best, they're ambiguous, at their worst, well, utterly misleading. While breaking down the aspects of the game to figure into the score can reflect where the game failed, is it really fair to have a game with brilliant gameplay and a gripping story trashed on the final review because the graphics weren't up to snuff? Who the hell decided how technically impressive the game is was worth exactly the same 'weight' as the meat and potatoes of it? If a game was designed to be an awesome single player experience, and had a lousy multiplayer thrown in just to satiate the annoying whining dipshits, why would a '10' for single player be marginalized by at '4' for multiplayer?

Were I, in my infinite wisdom, to change reviews, the 'Final Score' would be replaced with, at best, a "Cliff Notes" version of the full-body review. Sum up your thoughts for readers, don't package a gameplay experience into a single number. That's asinine.

The second problem and the BIGGEST problem is that... reviews are hardly reviews anymore. Those of you who have read the 'main body' of reviews instead of the score should know what I'm talking about. Most game reviews reek of being massive, verbose advertisements for the game in question. Even a heavily flawed game rarely gets more than a line or two thrown out about the weak voice acting or the repetetive gameplay, but the reviewer will go on for a paragraph or more about how fun it was to chop off heads. I find CRITICISM to be MORE helpful when it comes to deciding to buy a game or not. You can go on and on about how fun it is to blast zombies, but who cares when you're bored as hell of playing the same lousy levels over and over again? An equal portion, if not MORE, of a review should be soley dedicated to ripping it apart. Gushing about how awesome it was to see the mountains in the distance in Oblivion does nothing to stop me from noticing how hideously terrible the gameplay is.

Maybe some of it has to do with being starry-eyed. Reviewers rarely get to invest large amounts of time into a game, and initially the razzle-dazzle will probably stick with them longer. But that's the fault of the reviewer, not anything less. AAA titles these days are just massive hype machines that wind up to deliver a substandard product, and an amazing amount of morons customers get caught up in it. They're TOLD it's going to be a great game, so they CONVINCE THEMSELVES that it's a great game. The human mind of those more 'fragile' than others can sometimes do some amazing mental gymnastics to convince someone of anything.

And nowadays, and the PC platform tends to be largely excemt from this, reviews are just about upstaging. How many games have you seen get 10/10 scores BEFORE, say, 2004? I don't think I ever saw ONE. Go compare multi-platform releases of the exact same game. Why did Bioshock on the Xbox score way more 'points' than the PC version? Why is anything 85% and below considered to 'suck'? Go look at Metacritic for Killzone 2, Halo 3, MGS4.

When's the last time you EVER saw that many 100s? NO GAME is worth 100 'points' no matter WHAT you score it on. There's no such thing as a perfect game. The most brilliant, epic game I've ever played, Planescape: Torment, still has spots where it can drop a point or two. I figrue there's two reasons for this. First of all is that console gamers are easily impressed, usually have little to no gaming experience, and ridiculously low standards. And if that offends you, you can pretend that the second reason is why, that the people reviewing these are pressured by their magazine and advertising dollars OR publishers (In the case of "Official _ Magazine" handing out 100's obligatory to EVERY exclusive title).

Frankly, the best review site? There isn't one. Piracy, maybe. I don't trust my stupid friends, I don't trust any media any more. I have EXTREMELY high standards most people don't even begin to understand. Everyone at work thinks COD4 is the most amazing shooter ever made, the best I can do is scream at them with my mind and sigh heavily. Oblivion is thought to be the best RPG ever made, and I think that every single, minute aspect of that game (EVERY ASPECT - GO AHEAD, NAME ONE! EVEN THE UNINSTALLER LEFT SHIT ON MY HARD DRIVE) was an abomination, and the developers deserved nothing less than to be castrated and tortured. I'd have been fucking ashamed if I had had any part of that atrocity.

Reviews are one of the worst things the gaming industry has going for it right now.

Well, I have yet to read a movie review I 100% agreed with, and I am not expecting to read a game review that I 100% agree with either. I read them for key words and key issues and for entertainment purposes. A lot of games not considered mainstream don't do well on reviews. So what? How long are we going to hear complaints about the Demigod reviews. If you have the game and like it, go write one of your own review about it. There are plenty of sites that offer an avenue for it. Add your opinion instead of spending time trying to silence someone else's.