Negative Review: 223 Hours Played

I’m sure I am giving them more credit than is due. It’s certainly just my perception biases: I went through several months where everything I looked at on Amazon seemed to be full of paid reviews, but I haven’t actually noticed it on Steam. I’m sure they were/are there, I just never looked at the right games.

I think games elicit more review behaviors than a lot of other things. Who’s going to be a fanboy over a motion detecting sprinkler (besides me, I guess)? Or reviewbomb one?

Let me introduce you to Instant Pot

… for one model.

I mean… gamers are not the only group passionate about their things. over 25k. Age of Wonders 3 has 4k. I mean… people are just excited about some things.

Ok, you win! I do see people praising their Instant Pots all over the place. Sous Vide cookers too, although those top out at 3,600 reviews.

Oh yeah, that was mentioned in the cooking topic here too. I am sure I will get one eventually.

Now for Amazon, I look at the overall rating, sure, but I focus on the 3-4 star reviews to basically see what the issues are and if they matter to me…

For Steam, I usually look at a few recent review, with content in them and the discussion board to see what people are talking about today and if the developers respond at all. If I see some dev running around locking topics and not really responding politely, that has a much bigger negative affect than negative reviews.

If I see like it’s Mostly Positive but Mixed today, I go on the hunt to find out why it changed… usually easy to find too. Like others, kind of know I am interested all ready and I am looking for reasons to take a plunge or walk away, and if there is a review bomb situation… well that I do care about so yeah that has an affect and I want it to. I might care about what they’re unhappy about too.

I think 2-4 are very valuable. Because they took thetime to rate but aren’t fan boys and aren’t slamming it.

And with Amazon there’s more than the product to review.

There’s the service and level of communication from the seller.

I’ve left one bad review on amazon and it was because the seller was incompetent at getting me the product, didn’t communicate there were problems with the courier, didn’t communicate a working tracking number.

I had to get in contact with the seller to find out the courier, then find the courier, pass them the number, be told the number was incorrect, work out the delivery based on the name, all to find out that the item would never have been delivered because the seller fucked up the processing.

So yeah, very negative review, for a product that was and is very highly reviewed.

No such problems with steam.

Amazon has separate reviews for products and merchants. If you look at the past orders on your account, you’ll find options to “Leave seller feedback” as well as “Write a product review”.

If you leave a poor review for a product, you won’t affect the merchant’s rating (which needs to stay above a certain threshold to continue selling at Amazon), and if someone buys a different product from the same merchant they won’t see your review.

It’s been a while but I believe it was under seller review.

Anyway, I have about 60 hrs clocked know endless legend, but most of that was desperately trying to find the hook.

Which I failed in.

However I haven’t (and probably won’t) leave a review.

I have 2000 hours plus in AoW 3. At this point I am very familiar with various shortcomings.

I won’t leave a review for that either (mostly because it’d turn into a dissertation )

I try to ignore the number of hours played when judging a review. Outside of extreme cases, the usefulness rarely correlates with time played. A good informative review stands on its own.

Looking back on my own experiences with games I ended up viewing negatively after many hours, there are two main cases.

The first is time-consuming genres where you only get a full picture after a one or more complete games; grand strategy and rpgs come to mind. Sometimes, the game had little to offer beyond learning how it works, but it’s hard to know before reaching that point.

The second one is looking for more of the same after finishing a great game. Sometimes there isn’t anything new that’s great in a given genre or sub-genre, so I keep giving some games more time than I should.

My main gaming resolution this year is to invest my time wisely and to stop playing games that are no longer enjoyable. I am getting better at it, but it’s not always easy. I think the thousand hours negative reviewer would gain a lot from doing the same.

You can have a negative review and a ton of hours if it’s a competitive game, and the changes made really hurt the experience , or if a business decision is really consumer-hostile.

In fact, I think most folks will get burnout and a negative experience from competitive games at times- competition will always lead to frustration because you will plateau, and always at a level below where you want to be, unless you’re a legit pro gamer- and it even happens there.

It’s perfectly possible to spend a huge amount of time with a game and still find the experience less than enjoyable. Simply put, people can keep playing a game for a variety of reasons beyond immediate enjoyment.

Easy example-- I know in the past I have put 100+ hours in RPGs that felt, on hindsight, rather dull and perfunctory. But the completionist in me just wouldn’t quit before finishing them.

As for Steam reviews: I think they’re great. It’s fairly easy to ignore the jokes, trolls and memes and focus on the real content. For games that may interest me, I usually skip the positive reviews and go for the negative ones to get a sense of any perceived shortcomings and to identify any potential dealbreaker. I’m typically looking for straightforward opinions to aid my purchasing decisions, and in that respect they work fine. The yes/no rating is bullshit, though.

awful

No game can be played for 200 hours.

According to Steam I’ve played XCOM 2 for 594 hours. Granted that’s the original game and the WOTC expansion. Still, 297 hours each.

I think is bug in counter.

I dunno. Almost daily for two years?

MMOs don’t count, right? ;)

You know what, Persona 5 is one of those games. Come at me bro!

Well, it’s not that bad, but it’s waaay less spectacular than people give it credit for. It takes about 100 hours just to get to the end credits, which is a lot even by JRPG standards. I certainly felt a lot worse about it when it was over than when going along for the ride. Sure, the presentation is more than spectacular, but the story and mechanics are at best average. I’ve never seen so much repetition in dialogue in any game, ever. In any game, ever. There isn’t much challenge to the game either. I guess a lot of these “223 hours” games are not the kind with a fixed linear story, but it’s still nuts that you have to “pay” that much time just to see any game’s story to the end.

I shudder at the thought of the inevitable extended edition, with even more bloat tacked on. If this is the best JRPG ever, I wonder about every other game that isn’t the best and I’m pretty happy I jumped off the JRPG wagon ten years ago.

I see what you did there. ;)