Crimson Desert Highlights How Weird It Is to Review Games Now | Unpacked

Post-launch changes are not always positive. I recall the changes to microtransactions in Crash Team Racing and Gran Turismo. The real problem here is with devs using reviewers as beta testers, effectively misrepresenting the game as released to reviewers as a final release when it is really anything but. The reviewers then catch flak for reviewing the game set before them. To paraphrase an infamous quote, "Do you guys not have playtesters?" It's likely due to publisher pressure to push the game out the door, ignoring that pushing out an untuned product does the game's sales no good at all. Once again, publisher greed is hurting games.

I honestly have put less and less stock in both professional reviews and community reactions to games over the years. Especially as far as the community is concerned, there doesn't seem to be any decent games anymore. It's either God's gift to interactive entertainment or a horrible atrocity that deserves to be drug through the mud, then have the devs tarred and feathered. Even with more (rare) nuanced reviews, the online community doesn't see nuance anymore.

I don't like the idea of wide spread re-reviews because it pulls attention away from new games. And, it further encourages companies to release unfinished games if they can count on a re-review in the future. Companies patching games is already impacting how critics review games, it seems like critics are less likely to point out technical issues/bugs under the theory that those will eventually be fixed. If a company wants reviews to be based on the game having certain features & bug fixes, the company should implement those features & fix those bugs before charging money.

Didn’t sound like you forwarded many solutions. Why not a 2ndWind_community vote on games to revisit) Yahtzee did his ‘ten years ago I was wrong’, you instantly get some content there.

I think reviews from gaming outlets like IGN are useful for gauging whether or not a game is worth purchasing at launch. Buying a game after launch, around a year or so, is when I check Steam reviews to see if any changes were made to the game to improve it substantially.