First post, by Malik
- Rank
- l33t
I was about to write in Kreshna's Most underrated games? thread, but noticed my topic was going a bit way off, and decided to fork out the thread, and not hijack that one. (Maybe this topic had a similar one posted earlier....but anyway...just a refresher.) 😁 :
After all these years, what I've learnt, is that, reviews, even when similar across the majority of reviews, do not always coincide with what games I have enjoyed.
During pre-internet days, we used to depend on reviews of major games magazines. I'm not sure how much the review of a single person affects the magazine reputation as a whole, but it did have an impact on buyers' decision. Hardly we realized that the magazine's rating is actually the preference of a single person('s review).
But then again, I also don't depend on average or aggregate reviews like metacritic. Yes, they may seem to reflect what the majority of players feel, but sometimes, I just can't shake off the feeling of the effect of hype in today's connected world. It's like mass wave effect, not unlike social media craze.
In the end, I just enjoy playing again and again what I like, irrespective of the game whether it received high score ratings or not.
And I could not always concur with the most award winning, most highly-praised games. People may charge me with blasphemy, but I could never ever enjoy the award smashing Half-Life. I tried to like it. Very hard. I tried playing again and again. But could never enjoy it. Likewise, I felt more involved in the SSI's GoldBox RPGs, especially the combat, rather than Baldur's Gate real-time combat. People praised Morrowind more, but I prefer Oblivion. And so on...
And finally, unless there are gameplay-breaking bugs, poor coding, input or user interface mess-up, people can enjoy the games of their liking, irrespective of how good or bad the games are rated.