Gamers love to read reviews for games they are interested in. However, this isn’t always the best way to judge if you should buy a game or not. I can count many times where I have held off on buying a game as it reviewed worse than I had hoped, only to pick it up on sale a few months later and have a great time.
Remember a review is about many things and although it can be used to find out if it has any game-breaking issues (Remember Cyberpunk?… Poor Cyberpunk), a reviewer’s personal preference can influence a final score. For example, I am not a gamer that enjoys Dark Souls-like games (Judge me all you want, I know it’s cause I’m not very good at them) so I’d rate them slightly lower because it’s not my kind of thing I enjoy.
Case in point, Alien isolation. I wanted this game so much, but after being stung once before by Colonial Marines, this wasn’t going to happen again I thought to myself.
Launching in 2014 and published by Sega, Creative Assembly gave us a game with loads of call-backs to previous movies and stories from the Alien universe. It looked like Alien, it felt like Alien and had one of the best and most interesting enemies of all time.
The Alien had two brains (two AI scripts). One knows where you are at all times and one controlling random movement for the alien’s body. They work together with one feeding the other information to hunt you down and give you one of many terrifying insta-kills featured in the game.
The game is loved by almost all and fans of the game have been clamouring for a sequel ever since it released. But yet, due to one bad review on IGN, it took me years to experience in all its glory. In honesty, this was my fault as overall the game did receive many great reviews. So that got me thinking of many games that got reviews that gamers (on majority) don’t seem to agree with.