Welcome to Gaia! ::

you can hear in em can u? o.0

yeah i geuss thats true...

today is my birthday
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME! rofl

i will when it comes out next wk.

lol yeah
i just play what i like i dun care about that. i once played a game when saw a video credic on it on tv as one of the worse games of the year. but i liked it alot. so i was like "oh,,, hm.. interesting, hmph who cares"

maybe there not living up to standards, or maybe the standards are byis or maybe someone dosent like em. could be anything.

Ratings from game websites or magazines all depend on personal taste. If you read the reviews on IGN they differ depending on the country. Australian ratings for a game might be 9 but the American reviewer might have given it a 7. So it's always helpful to read several reviews to get different people's opinion. some reviewers might all pick up on the same thing, like perhaps the game is too easy for example, and that would make you more confident of that opinion if several people have said it. If a reviewer really loves final fantasy type g ames he might give them a really high score but someone who enjoys them but isnt quite as fanatic might rate then with a lower score. If you a huge fan of something you might rate it higher than it's actually worth just because you love it so much.

I think reviewers seems to contradict themselves. sometimes they complain about something in one game and yet really rate that same concept in another game. I usually think critics seem to complain about sloppy controls and games being to short and yet for some reason reviewers seem to enjoy TombRaider Underworld...which in my opinion was pathetic..and it seems to go again the things which critics usually complain about!

But it's all down to opinion. Your best off perhaps not buying a game when it's brand new and giving other people the chance to play it (such as friends etc) and then you can ask them what they think. Normal players tend to have different opinions than critics.

Yeah, but the problem is, each publication has a lot of different reviewers. Who don't consistently review the same series. So you could have someone who's a big fan of platformers and shooters, and they tell him, "Review this RPG for us," and he says, "I didn't enjoy it that much, I'm giving it a 7," even though it's an awesome RPG for those who like RPGs. Then the sequel comes out, and the sequel is just okay, but they get a different guy to review it, a guy who's a big fan of RPGs, and he says, "This game's awesome. 9.0" So now, a fan sees this and he says, "This website says that the sequel is better than the original," because nobody looks at the specific name of a reviewer and what other reviews that one person has done. All they look at is the website that published the review. And sometimes it's not even a matter of taste, it's just a matter of the critic's idea of harshness.
For example, ideally, a game is rated from 1 to 10. So 5 would be mediocre. But most critics are too forgiving, and give mediocre games a 6.5 or something close, but STILL state that the game is mediocre. So that gives gamers the impression that 6.5 is a game not worth buying, and 5 is complete and utter crap. And as a result, another critic might say, "This game isn't perfect, but it's good, I'm giving it a 7." And 7 is good. But gamers look at it, and they say, "That crappy game got a 6.5, and this game gets a 7, so it can't be much better than that crappy game."
At the same time, the games that get ridiculous amount of publicity... Say, Rockstar, buys a crapload of Ad Space for GTA4 on IGN, and IGN says, "Well, they funded us, make sure they get a good review." So GTA4 gets a 10/10, even though it wasn't as good as the one before it.
And they HAVE to give it a good rating, because I remember in 2007, I think, some game came out, and GameSpot gave it a less than good review, so the publisher of the game pulled all the ads from the website and took their money back, just because Gamespot didn't give them the review that THEY wanted. So in a way, a lot of the companies who pay for ad space also pay for good reviews to their games.
The whole system is broken, and we're nowhere near fixing it.



Well, I watched some gameplay footage of FF12 recently, and the battle system is even worse than I remember it.

Yeah that's true. What one site classes a 6 some other site might rate games differently..so you can't always assume everyone rates things exactly the same either. It's the same for all critics reviews really. Don't pay much attention to them...with movies critics often hate the movies I really love...and yet ones I hate they really rate.
Your best option is to listen to other gamers who've played it. Perhaps read people's comments online in blogs...or on IGN.com you can read users reviews as well as critics. Or perhaps try renting a game to see if you like it before you buy it.