On Reviews and Review Scores: Do Different Opinions Warrant Insults?

OnlySP: What is the purpose of a product review? A review is a summary that highlights what is good and bad about a product to help make a decision on whether or not that product should be purchased. I also pictured a review score to be a summary of that summary – giving you the basic understanding of what the reviewer thought of that product based on that score. If the score is not enough for you to help you decide whether or not the product is right for you, you can go back into the review and see more detailed information on why he or she gave the product that score. You can then use this information to determine whether or not this particular product is right for you. That’s what I thought a review was, anyway.

[admiralvic]

Depends the logic and how much weight said logic has. A great example of this is Joystiq's review of 1001 Spikes, since the reviewer put a lot of weight / importance on some very mild annoyances, which in turn made the 3/5 (meaning its appeal is limited to those that like the genre and can overlook its problems) seem baffling.

For those of you who don't want to read the review ( http://www.joystiq.com/2014... ), the biggest issues are over the game having a life counter and that the ability to skip levels. The first one is ONLY an issue because you technically have unlimited lives and the counter seems pointless. Not only is this complaint silly, as you would not only have to die 1,001+ times and ignore all the other ways the game gives you lives for this to even be relevant (I got all the trophies and lost MAYBE 400~ lives total), but it's something that the average user would never even be aware of and in no way changes how I or I imagine most people look at the game beyond maybe adding a bit of relief that enough perseverance can result in victory.

The other complaint is even sillier, since the reviewer felt that giving people the ability to skip levels ruined the experience, even though they outright admitted that some content is inaccessible unless you beat every level. So basically the complaint is that it would have been better to stop progression, than give people the ability to continue and return when they please. This also ignores the fact that the super difficult new levels can't be skipped and a few other things, though thats another topic for another day.

So going back to the original point, while this opinion is different than my own, it's also hard to sell the validity of said opinion and with it being the main focus of the review, it's also hard to say the score is really fair either.

[thorstein]

Do Reviews and Review Scores deserve insults?

Depends on how well reviewed it is, but I would also want a better definition of what a reviewer thinks is an insult.

I find it incredibly ironic that a critic can't take criticism.

Personally, reviews mean very little to me, I don't understand why critics are given even half the respect they think they deserve. "Those who can, do. Those who can't, criticize."

If we were to add up the contributions of all critics ever of their critiques of all art/ media/ whathaveyou we would still have nothing of value. And that is what a critic really is, in the end: a non-contributing zero.

The best part about creating something is when you create it and it's just you and no one else...before these zeroes rip apart in one day, what they couldn't create in a lifetime.