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[UFO]

I love Abandonia.com, and the large amount of old games it features, and its helpful reviews, but one thing that really bugs me is the editor's ratings. There are way too many 5's. It seems like the only people who reviews a game are those who have played it when they were children and loved it. Maybe the new games should be reviewed by someone who hasn't played it before, or at least someone who doesn't already love it, so the ratings can be a little more balanced and less biased.

I see a lot of games that have received ratings of 5, but the user ratings are 1 or 2 points below it. I don't like relying on user ratings when looking for games I might like, because they are less reliable and less professional, even though they aren't biased. But the editor ratings aren't any better.

I'd just like to point that out, so you might be able to fix it if convenient, or just ask that the reviewers be a little more harsh and less biased in their ratings.

Also, the Prince of Persia review:

Just who could resist a challenge of putting oneself in shoes of a Persian prince who's only mission is to rescue his princess captured by an evil sultan! What else do you need to create a game out of it? A weapon (sword), some obstacles (spikes, crumbling panels to jump over, falling stones...). And there you go! A legend has been born. This happens to be the first PC game I played in my life, so perhaps that's why I'm so sentimental about it Graphics are superb, so is the sound, gameplay...need I say more? NO! Download and play!

is not helpful in the least. The reviewer relies too much on the game's popularity, and the fact that most people have already heard of it. But, admittedly, I didn't (I didn't have a computer until 1995). So I had to search the internet for another review before I could play the game right (its lacking a manual).

Thanks.

[Mighty Midget]

Just a quick notion on user ratings: Remember that it's an average of the ratings given and that the average of say, 5 and 1 is 3. Some people love a game, some people hate it, some think it's "ok". I'd be not the least bit supprised if I find the average to be 3 or thereabout for a game.

About the ratings generally: I agree that these ratings don't offer much insight in a game's qualities as I prefer them. But that goes for any rating, no matter how "un-biased" sinse all ratings are biased, based on personal preferences.

[Dave]

It's not the first time that some guests offended a member for his review (this is not your case), it's not easy

I agree with you when you said who starts to make a review is often a lover of that game, but you know it's hard to write a good review and it's hard to find people....we are talking about old games that probably are still played by the 0.0001% of world gamers (or less).

About the ratings, in the past I've suggested to change the system to 1-10 instead of 1 to 5, but this is another speech.

[guildie]

Yea, the editor rating, then the user ratings can be confusing. I'd agree with the 1-10 idea k:

[Icewolf]

If someone feels that a review isn't good or doesn't really show what the game is about, we redirect that person to the community reviews. There you can develop your own review and discuss it with other users.
When you get positive feedback about your review, you may ask if the crew will replace the review.

[Japo]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Icewolf @ Sep 5 2007, 09:17 AM) [snapback]308928[/snapback]</div>

If someone feels that a review isn't good or doesn't really show what the game is about, we redirect that person to the community reviews. There you can develop your own review and discuss it with other users.
When you get positive feedback about your review, you may ask if the crew will replace the review.[/b]

+1

Also a review is a review, not a guide, the latter would be much longer. Guides can be made available in the Extras section. And a review is always done by a person who's subjective by definition. Maybe you would prefer Wikipedia articles instead of reviews, I'd rather not. True there are lots of 5s but I agree with most of them and besides a lot of people contested my review about SC3 because I gave it just a 2. If you give a 5 a lot of people will think that it's too much no matter how frigging good the game actually is; and if you give a 2 or even 1 a lot of people will think it's too little no matter how infamous the game is worldwide. And all these people will be right because everyone is entitled to his opinions and likings --so is the reviewer.

[Sebatianos]

And trhere's always something else to be considered.

Regarthless of how good this site seems - it's NOT PROFESSIONAL it's fan based.

I guess as the person with most reviews on the site I can present some insite into about 1/5th of all reviews on Abandonia. Yes, most of the games are the ones I've played in the past and usually liked very much. Otherwise I wouldn't even want to share the experiance of the game with other people, so there would be no review.

Being non-bias is impossible. There is no single human capable of that. Sometimes people can get close, sometimes they are far away from it. But the very fact you decided to review a game, spend your time on it and will get nothing then your personal satisfaction of having your review put up on a site, means you most likely feel something toward a game. It's as simple as that.

The ratings again are very different. Some people will simply look at screenshots and hate the game from the start (because it would be from a pre-VGA era and would have only 4 colors) and would give it 1 point only (without even playing it). On the other hand, some people would just see the title and give it a 5 (let's say a Spider Man fan would see a Spider Man game on the site and give it a 5, just because it fetures his favorite character). The only way this could be eliminated would be by having to add comments to the mark you gave it, and disable the possibility of rating the game more then once. This also means that if somebody has anything against the game, reviewer, site, genre... he could just go and click the low rating for days until getting tired of it.

But I have a question for you UFO, Prince of Persia is a very small archive and even with the slowest of connections it wouldn't really cost you anything to simply download it (don't know who reviewed it, but the hint was to get you to download). Would that really be so difficult? It's not like you have to pay good money for the game and most downloads are fairly small.