Why is everything an either/or proposition? Me generally disliking user reviews does not mean I blindingly worship professional reviewers.
Sorry if I made you believe that. I didn't mean blindly worship, but more liking/believing one over the other.
What I dislike about user reviews is that for one thing review bombing is a thing and can happen for reasons not tied to the game, like if the playerbase gets their knickers in a bunch because of a wrongly coloured person is in the game. Or if they feel a dev has "abandoned" a game and so they only had a fun time in that $20 game for 50 hours but they are mad because they are owed one million fun hours. Or the classic "at the time of writing I have 200h and this game is now horrible it's just a cash grab at this point AVOID" but their stats say they now have 400h and the game is like $30, or "game is basically dead" and they somehow rack up hundreds of hours and the game is $30.
I've kinda been there. And I have a couple of games I probably wouldn't recommend that I have a too good chunk of hours into.
Lots of people get caught into the habit and sunken cost of playing a game. I had similar with dota2, was kinda playing it almost as a habit instead of enjoying it, and hoping for good matches.
And similar for Stellaris, while I like it, I'm also doubtful I'd recommend it for new players, due to the huge amount of DLC's, and like a lot of Paradox, you do lose out a lot when not having DLCs. And jumping into it now, it's not an "incremental" 30$ every half year (or year, whatever), but a more lump sum.
The only metric I have for a game is "do I like it" and no one can answer that for me, but honestly I prefer reading about games in articles by professional writers and not mad ramblings on Steam, but somehow two thousand thoughtful words in good english is being biased and bought by the industry but "after 2000h i can sfaley say this game is bad" is Good and honest and pure.
There's multiple metric for me, graphics (style and quality) can be seen from gameplay vids, monetization can be read (bad mtx, cosmetic only mtx, none). I'm not saying that one single steam review is a holy grail, but the quantity of the reviews gives a picture. From dev behaviour, up-to-date reviews, performance, monetization, cheaters, etc.
Proffesional gaming journalists have been taken for plagiarism, for writing article on games they haven't finished, or having spoilers in it. And of course dubious practice....
Like BF2042, got a 7/10 from IGN or 80(100?) from Pcgamer, while it is massively negative on steam and ran like shite and to my understanding (from friends) was shite to play.
I have lots more to say about this.
All of this reminds me of why I don't care about games anymore, or rather the talking around the games, and most of all "gamers".
I could also keep going on this. Cuphead, doom, DMCV, Pokemon "Too much water", Kane & Lynch
