No real critical video game raters.

[Trodorne]

outside of the parody people who make jokes saying this game is balls swearing every second word, yeah i love yatzee but he is paid to rip a game apart. and i can not go to IGN, Gamespot or other video game raters that are main stream cause they rarely rate the game for its actual qualities. most of them have not picked up a game in their life.

so this topic is based on if anyone likes or dislikes any critics or rating systems made by mainstream or indy critics. is there anyone you find that you think has a middle ground?

IMHO i think we should kind of do away with these so called mainstream rating systems and do what people should be doing in the first place. go rent the game if you don't like it at least your not going to play it again.

[Victoria]

There are plenty of bloggers that 'review/rate' games. A popular franchise has recently just returned that are pretty well known for their well written reviews.

And that place is EGM. I always read what EGM has to say about the latest games coming out. Also, there's really no place to rent games anymore, except for GameFly and such sites like it.

You can still go to GameSpot/IGN, but don't look at the website review scores, pay attention to the 'user scores', and take a look at some of the 'user reviews'. Some of them are written quite well, and some of them are crap. So you kinda can get a little guess of if you will like the game or not.

I mean, even IF you read a review/see a rating, you'd rent the game to see if you like it anyway, since a review/rate is based on someone else's opinions. They're meant to be taken with a grain of salt to begin with.

[Zargabaath]

You can still go to GameSpot/IGN, but don't look at the website review scores, pay attention to the 'user scores', and take a look at some of the 'user reviews'. Some of them are written quite well, and some of them are crap. So you kinda can get a little guess of if you will like the game or not.

User Reviews - on Gamespot at least - tend to be higher than even the aggregate of professional reviews. Which I would say is another good thing to look at, at Gamespot, therefore the person whom is intrigued by a game has two averages to look at.

Some of the "user reviews" may be well written, but that is just some of them.

I haven't had much problem with how Gamespot has rated the games that I have bought as I kind of see eye-to-eye most of the time. Plus I actually read the review which allows me to sift through what is more biased talk and what is more objective.

Instead of looking at one source for a game's review, go to many to get a feel for the game - that is what should be taken away.