Gaming reviews are super useful for a whole host of reasons, but not all reviews are created equal. When you’re looking for a review before splashing out on a newly released video game, you want to be sure that the review was written by an independent party, rather than the developer of the game trying to upsell their own product. Similarly, when you’re reading reviews for the next online casino that you plan to use, it’s important to check that a handful of the reviews are all in agreement about the qualities of the casino site. Knowing how to find all of these things can be a little confusing, so we’ve rounded up exactly what to look for in every gaming review that you read.
Impartiality
The most important factor to carefully look into when reading reviews is that the person or company writing them is impartial. Often reviews pop up that is so clearly written by someone who is trying to overstate the credentials of the game or site that it’s obvious to anyone. However, sometimes it can be a little more subtle. Gaming companies can offer small rewards for 5-star reviews, although they shouldn’t, it’s not as rare of practice as you might think. A good way to make sure that you’re getting a fair review is to look for companies that specialise in reviewing games from the area you’re looking at. For example, reviews for online gambling sites are particularly interesting, as they have to take so many different factors into account. These sites need to look into the simple things like the breadth of games that are available and the kinds of bonuses that players can take advantage of but they also need to look into more complex factors. Arabian Betting also reviews the deposit and withdrawal methods for each casino, the security features, and digs down into the facts about which countries the site can legally operate in. This sort of reviewing requires much more work than the casual gamer would be putting in. It’s for this reason that if you want a truly thorough and impartial review then going to specialist sites is the best option.
A Style You Enjoy
Whilst the site mentioned above breaks the credentials down into small chunks of easily visible information, some of us prefer getting stuck into a more long-form review. These sorts of reviews can help you get a real feeling for a game and they’re a good choice if you’re thinking of buying a large platform release. Of course, you should be looking for impartiality (and all of the other factors on this list) when reading these reviews, but also you want to enjoy the process of reading them. Looking for a good reviewer who has a reviewing technique that you like will make absorbing the information that bit more enjoyable. For example, our game of the year reviews takes a slightly comical tone that makes the whole process a bit more fun for everyone. Weighty topics like this can start to become monotonous if they’re not handled with a bit of artistic flair.
Everybody in Agreement
The final factor to look for in your quest for worthwhile reviews is that everybody who’s reviewing the game more or less agrees with one another. Of course, there’ll be those ‘Marmite’ games, that some people love and some people hate, but they’re generally few and far between. It’s far more often the case that we can all agree that a game is great, or we can generally agree that a game is a rubbish. If you’re looking to buy a platform game then be sure to scroll past the first few five-star reviews. Often game sellers will position reviews strategically so that the best reviews appear at the top of the pile. A quick way to check whether this is happening or not is to sort the reviews by most recent first, if things appear more mixed then investigate a little further. Sites like Steam make this a little easier by taking an average of the reviews that a game has received and displaying that. Steam in particular then gives games qualitative rankings based on this, such as ‘overwhelmingly positive’ for the games that consistently score five-star reviews.