CAA: Christian Anime Alliance

In this show, we talk about the Penny Arcade and IGN feud, wrap up the big games of the year, and discuss a huge story that could change the face of game journalism.


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Question to the audience:
How much stock do you put into game reviews? Favorite sites or magazines?

I don't put stock into game reviews. I put game reviews in the stocks. Seriously, I generally don't read game reviews -- likely because I don't buy games any more. *is too busy making his own to play any*

I find game reviews provide valid criticism on a technical level (controls, graphics, bugs, etc) but the rest falls under personal taste. An outside opinion should be supplementary, not a substitute to your own.

I generally listen to what metacritic has to say.

I take every game review with a grain of salt. These are opinions we're talking about. While there may be objective things (such as glitches), those almost never form the basis for a review. I mean, Gears has got some serious glitches, but people didn't drop its score for that, really.

Even metacritic... It's just an arbitrary average of arbitrary opinions... Even the numbering system is flawed, because for some a 3/5 rating (6/10) is average, for some 5/10 is average, for some 7.5 / 10 is average. That hurts those averaging systems.

With final exams and papers finally over, I had time to listen to the podcast earlier today.

I tend to look at game reviews for very basic information and little else. What sub-genre does it fit into? Are there any major technical issues? What is the balance of quality story and quality gameplay? Those kinds of things I can usually tell from the text of the review regardless of the bias of the writer. Ratings and such aren't that significant to me.

I have to say, I agree about too many people on Uncharted... And the "5 soldiers" problem on Heavenly Sword was clear in this too, since you see one of the guys dead on the spikes, and the same guy fights you later on, and again, and again...

I tend not to listen to very many game reviewers. Instead, I usually follow specific developers that I know produce games that I enjoy. Paying attention to who does what on a dev team can really pay off with gaming goodness.