The review divide

 Who to trust?

The art of the review is a muted talent, fraught with enough intricacies and complex sub-issues to dot the night sky instead of the glittering skies, and I'm joking it's about as easy as it possibly gets of a hobby to pursue. But if you want to be a good reviewer, then a bit more nuance has to go into what to cover, how to frame it, and all those finer little details sprinkled atop. But reviewing quality is hardly a matter to consider in the modern age, where easy access to the omniscient internet renders everyone and anyone able to convey their opinions to the world- with that sort of freedom the only real friction is directly conflicted opinions for which there is no recourse. I recently met someone who considered Fallout to be a terrible franchise, having never actually played it themselves or really knowing all that much about the games at all; and the dissonance between their vehement opinion on the games and their lack of knowledge on the topic made me really think on the level of discourse we see in the modern day.

Because there is a lot of loud conversation when it comes to quality and standards of games, and rightly so given the extremes that the Industry developers and publishers are constantly pushing to demand such scrutiny. Pushing for cheap monetary gains in distasteful places that doesn't quite hurt the quality of the game in the traditional sense, but the experience of the user- where better for that to be reflected but in the harshness of a review? Or maybe games of the modern day that think themselves grand enough to charge above the ceiling of prices, yet deliver titles no more as ambitious or polished as their yesteryear, cheaper, counter parts. Sometimes the decently lacking field of professional review channels fail to cover all these sides of a project, whether due to rank incompetence, nefarious actions on the development side or just a divide in boundaries. In such a scenario; opinions are bound to clash and egos are going to rub up against each other in the fray.

But with the results of user reviews and critic reviews diverging to such a wild degree, it feels like the capacity of the average man to trust the opinion of the seasoned reviewer fizzles and begins to wilt. Remember, the worth of a career reviewer is predicated on the assumption that they are knowledgeable about the topic they cover and articulate enough to express some degree of objective fact mixed in with their subjective takes to act as a guide for consumers. That's all critics are supposed to be, guides. But with a distinct lack of integrity or oversight it really has seemed like the professional game reviewing circuit often falls outside the bounds of their description and collapses into the realms of cultish screeching. Who remembers when the Spiderman PS4's PC port was slammed in a review for apparently being 'copaganda'? When Persona 4 Golden was criticised for being deeply outdated in it's sexist writing? (That one seriously makes my blood boil; that guy literally lied to make his weak point.) When Hogwarts Legacy was awarded a 1/10 under the belief that the game 'didn't deserve to be rated on it's merits'? So many modern reviewers take their position of authority with none of the responsibility, leading them to think of the role as their soapbox to scream off of- further devaluing that reviewer-reader relationship.

Not that the audience themselves aren't prone to wild fits of  inane fancy and undeserved rage, they are flawed and human just like the professionals they critic. Typically whenever there's a game that makes a grand failure in it's promise to the player, the metacritic response by the general public is blown up to the extreme way beyond what's appropriate. Take Redfall, for example; an utter dog's dinner of a AAA game devoid of any of the unique charm and potential that made the attached development studio famous to begin with. Redfall's worst crime isn't its bugginess, but the rank mediocrity attached. Which is to say, the game is probably a 5/10 in the most painful way. And yet if you look at the audience score, you'd have thought the disc just bursts into flames when put in the console. One-out-of-tens pouring out of the windows- people declaring the game killed their first born- emotions running high as they always do. The same is true in reverse, games that do well are lauded as the second coming of the Dark Soul. There's no room for nuance or discussion in the public space, it's all one extreme or the other.

Speaking of extremes, one common issue that the world of reviewing has seen is that of Review Bombing, wherein some sort of recompense and social action is staged through the flooding of 'bad' review scores to try and scupper the average on aggregate sites. As that number takes all the nuance out of the review discussion, sinking it can literally be hitting at the potential revenue of games as bad scores turn people away- even when the reasons are unjust. We hear reports often about smaller games getting flooded with bit reviews that ruin their reputation for no good reason, and it's only the general public acceptance of 'average review scores' that have empowered these bad actors to be able to actively effect a game company with such methods. In all honesty, most review bombs either take things way too far or totally deviate from the purpose of what a review is supposed to mean, and once again it can happen both ways.

Because what do you do when a game you believe in and like is being flooded with 1/10 reviews on a site that presents an average overall score? Well if you're one of the Metacritic-involved-masses then the answer is that you flood 10/10 scores to try and balance the table- but oh no! In doing so you've only further muddled the pool so whatever score which might have once represented the people becomes a bloody casualty in some vague popularity war that no one really knows or cares about. Sites have tried their best to work around these bombings, throwing in spam filters, going around and erasing spam reviews and even adding a 'lifetime review' with a 'recent review' for comparison, which is helpful for identifying any recent controversy that might have popped up; but there's no real 'solve all' to cure this issue up once and for all.

In fact, this is a problem that stretches beyond games and is becoming a taint of modern entertainment. As the public class becomes themselves more empowered to give their opinion out under the belief that it is meaningful and has a value, that opinion can become weaponised. The same sort of narcissistic conclusion that game's journalist have reached, even when their ethics are designed to temper those beliefs. Just look at Rotten Tomatoes to see how the movie market is effected with impassioned audience scores and vast chasms between what the critics like and what the audience like. Sometimes this is indeed indicative of just varying tastes between a stuffy reviewer class and a more relaxed audience, but the rage reviews and strategic manipulation has it's place there too.

Honestly, I think we're reached a point of 'simplification' when it comes to the review scene that has pushed the needle so far that the purpose of reviewing as an industry has become muddy and lost. Subjectivity and taste are irrefutable aspects of any review piece, but with the exsistence of aggregate sites we plaster over those crucial elements of reviewing and just pretend they don't exist. No single 'most critics say' score is fit to influence consumers without it becoming unfair. The relationship between a reviewer and a consumer should be one of mutual trust and aligned tastes, not big percentage numbers and a digital tomato or a rotten green splat. The review divide marks an aspect of the industry that is not fit for purpose, and in desperate need of an overhaul.