Review Disparity

If you are looking to buy a game and there is no demo available for the game what do you do? Read some game reviews of the game and, hopefully, make an educated decision on your purchase based on the reviewer's "expert" opinion. If you are still uncertain you may chase up another review of the game and see how they compare. What do you do when one game magazine reviews a game with 10/10 and the other 6.5/10?

This is a huge difference in score. What I am talking about specifically is the score given to Half Life 2: Episode 1 in PC Powerplay (10/10) and Atomic (6.5/10).

Having played the game I know which review would get my interest and it is not the 10/10 score provided by PC Powerplay. Atomic magazine is critical of the game. Finally a magazine is willing to criticize one of the biggest game franchises. It deserves criticism and not mindless praise. The game is lacking in a number of areas. Namely AI and being completely linear. Just because a game has impressive graphics doesn't make it a good game. It makes it a good looking game. Another interesting thing to note is that the Half Life 2 review in PC Powerplay is written by the same so-called gaming journalist who wrote the review of Sin Episodes in the same episode (refer to my cynical gamer post "The Secret to a Successful Game Review" below). In this five paragraph review of Sin Episodes (which he has given an 8/10) he spends 2 paragraphs talking about the characters tits and another talking about price. He only devotes 2 paragraphs in his entire review to the game itself. How old is this guy? 12?

It's nice to have magazines that are filled with funny pieces, nice warm and fuzzy comment and some poor satire. But the bread and butter for these magazines should be reviews and previews. If they can't do this function with some objectivity and be able to criticise the medium which they promote then why bother? At least Atomic had the guts to criticise the half life franchise rather than publish crap about it.