You know what? I wish more publications were like that.
If they know what their fans are looking for, they know accordingly how to review the product they're looking at.
They give reviews from the fan's perspective and accordingly can give the sort of score a fan would.
If a company suddenly came out with a game that would actually be disdained by the fans, it seems more likely that they wouldn't give it a deserving score in the fans eyes.
It puts them on the same wavelength as the fans, it's a bit more mutual.
So you'd rather be told what you want to hear than what you should hear?
Like I'm sure every Duke Nukem fan wanted to hear that Duke Nukem Forever was gonna be a great game, but reviewers realized it was a shit and couldn't just say what people wanted to hear. I want the people who review games to be acquainted with the series or the genre but I don't want them to be (or act) blindly obsessed with it so even if it is a dog turd they'll throw a high number at it because it hits the right fanboy notes.
You've misunderstood me completely.
In fact, you've pretty much stated what I meant. Fans of the Duke Nukem series would want to hear that the game would disappoint its fans.
All I'm trying to say is that the reviews should reflect what the actual players of the games would say about it.
Let's say for example, the Megaman Battle Network series.
Fans of the series love the games, let's say 4 is about to come out.
Most reviewers would rate the game poorly because of a mostly unchanging formula. The fans would neglect these reviews because they know what to expect from the games.
But then if a review came out from the fan's perspective, and detailed why this game is bad even in the fan's eyes, how it betrays what made the series a fan favourite?
You see where I'm going with this?
Another example to really hammer it in.
Let's say that Dragon Quest X, all of a sudden, turns out to be real-time combat instead of the turn-based combat that the fans love. The game features less of the recurring elements that the fans love like all the known spells, tiers of weapons and armory, recurring abilities and monsters and so on.
The gaming journalists may review the game favourably, objectively, but the fans may hate it for not really being a Dragon Quest game at all.
There is so much more to a game being good than "Is this game good?" Part of what makes games good is that you can expect things from a defined intellectual property. When the next in an installment doesn't live up to expectations, the fans should know. When it hits the mark and does everything the fans would like, and more, the fans should know!
Battle Network 4 and Duke Nukem Forever are examples of games that would be scored negatively by fans and critics alike.
Battle Network 6 however would get negative critic reviews but actually be praised by the fans by delivering a satisfactory experience.
THAT'S what I'm trying to say.
Edit: I could go on further about how tons of critics reviewed Mass Effect 3 positively but fans of the series largely felt betrayed by it.
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Sicklyboy:
