Giant Beastcast Ep. 75 - Do Game Reviews Still Matter?

[@AnArmyOfBees]

I think this made me realize around 26:25 that I REALLY. REALLY. hate the "KZbin Voice" that keeps popping up any time a KZbin Personality™ talks: Never-ending, constantly out of breath and always excited to advertise out this game that they were sent because they're basically free publicity hahaha we're totally legit and super trustworthy!!

[@Virjunior01]

Secretcode depends on who it is with what title; Projared is good enough at Monster Hunter to lead me to believe he easily has over 500 hours in over all titles, maybe more. and me, I have 3 times that in 4u, and 850 in 3u, and put together with the other titles, approach 3000 hours of experience. so if you gave me an advance copy and paid me to hawk it, it probably wouldn't be any different from when I was having fun trying to convince people to give the game a shot - and NOT being paid for it. Now say Suzy from GameGrumps (oh, and whatever her independent stuff is) were to pull that shit, and watching her play is literally painful (does no combos, struggles with hand-eye coordination, frequently carried, obviously doesn't care), I'd immediately recognize a schill. She's likely got less than 50 total hours across all games, and could use ProJared's beginner's guide.

[@jzga1]

No joke, searched 'Nintendo Switch' on youtube and rows and rows of thumbnails of KZbinrs™ making the same :o REACTION face, and couldn't help notice that two of them had the same facial expression, very similar facial hair, similar angle of their face on the thumbnail itself, and similar baseball cap backwards....... different people. Video Games 2016.

[@IronicHavoc]

It kinda reminds me of kids' show hosts.

[@Harkness78]

good thing i don't watch any of those bullshit youtube "trend setter" channels. That does sound super annoying.

[@TheReviewSpace]

Game reviews are not necessary but you do want to hear other people's thoughts on games just for culture. Without game, film, movie, music etc discussions, we don't trade ideas & feedback around for the sake of reflection.

[@kingpin6989]

I've never used reviews to tell me if I'll like a game, only I can judge that. But I trust Jeff and Giant Bomb to tell me if a game is a buggy piece of crap or if the company that makes it is crooked, or if it's not well made, etc. IMO other than a demo the best way to research a game is to watch gameplay footage, like Giant Bomb's quicklooks and judge for yourself.

[@Virjunior01]

excellent discussion, and totally correct in conclusions drawn.

[@TheArtkaw]

KZbinrs get games ahead of the press now? Uh oh...

[@vincentnguyen4062]

TheArtkaw that's been the case for awhile. Whether the publisher lends them a review copy or they get one at a store breaking street date and they don't have to follow any "embargo" to just stream the game out on youtube like game journalists do.

[@TheArtkaw]

I can see why big gaming publishers are doing this, but I'm kind of old school in that I'm all for an honest, early review that can warn me about shady microtransaction practices, or buggy gameplay, or poor execution...

[@Virjunior01]

TheArtkaw exactly. that's "old school." i feel ya, man. i don't read reviews often anymore, but that's probably because I've not cared about most of the big offerings of the last 4 years, instead, spending most of my time with 16-bit, handheld, and Monster Hunter. I don't need much else. Battlefield 1 doesn't interest me, nor does CoD, and after beating Halo - Halo Reach (each on normal, heroic and legendary), I only played through Halo 4 once, and never even touched 5. Didn't watch Star Trek 3 or Star Wars 7. i feel the damn machines at work. the sequelitis in so much media. I like the personality and care you see in the charm of older games that only went up to 2 or 3, and one-off titles... as well as thoughtful articles coming from a place of passion for the art form, rather than... uh... all this mess we've just heard about.

[@TheArtkaw]

Hmm... I'd chalk consuming less modern media to life more than anything else (at least for me). There's a certain point where people draw the line and say, 'I'm good.' - fatique of the Gears of Wars, Marvel, DC, Walking Dead, Halos, CODs, etc. And that's fine. The fact that you're in a retro gaming and MH binge is cool enough. Heck, that probably and even deeper rabbit hole if you're an avid collector.

[@Virjunior01]

TheArtkaw i see that, but it's not really "life..." if i see something engaging, I'll make time for it... but Nathan Drake doesn't do it for me. Weird, right? but the old jokes against Square-Enix (and Monolith's Xenosaga) were "I want to play a game, not watch a movie." I understand titles like this and The Last of Us are great, but the reason I realize I play games is to be the asshole number-cruncher I really am. I love Metroids and Castlevanias, RPGs... basically anything in which I can find loopholes through creative optimization, joined with my reflexes and pattern recognition. Modern triple-A games don't really do that in a satisfying way. I guess that's why the last one I sat and beat in one night was DmC (Ninja Theory).

[@tonka92]

Thanks Myggen! Welcome back

[@experiment506]

Okay now I need to know why spastic is bad

[@Kriss_ch.]

In the UK, it's got a different meaning from the US. "In the UK "spastic" is considered by the general population as an offensive way to directly refer to disabled people", as wikipedia puts it

[@Iggsy81]

same in aus, it's offensive to disabled people so you would never use it

[@experiment506]

Is that how that one mobile game quick look happened. Were they really dumb enough to BULLY them into reviewing it? I msut hear more stories of this that is incredible.

[@Antiformed]

"Skyrim HD", what a fucking joke. With the amount of mods available! How about a re-release of FO3 or NV that don't make you jump through hoops just to run stably on modern computers, let alone with mods.

[@kdhlkjhdlk]

Patient gamer. I buy games a year behind, and get to ignore all this shit. Hardware is cheaper too. Fuck all this bullshit. I get patches and usually all the DLC, and get to skip every No Man's Sky turd, or failed Kickstarter.

[@allclevernamesgone]

Game reviews totally matter. If we didn't have game reviews we would be playing broken shit games like Nintendo put out en-mass back in the late 80's/90's. Reviews lift up the quality of games and protect the consumer.

[@ggmann13]

damn I wish this were still true

[@lucascoval828]

Butt! It hurts! 😱😱😱