I completely reject this attitude personally.
As long as the reviewer states that they aren't into a genre/type of game, then the review can become incredibly useful to consumers whose tastes also don't necessarily align.
Reviews exist for consumers to make purchase decisions afterall.
Actually, I
kind of agree with that, but I wanted to specify that it's the aggregate who should stipulate a balance of such perspectives towards the weighed average. And, that weight/balance should depend on the actual goals of the game. If it wants to mainly cater to the pre-existing fanbase for example, you don't need 90% of the reviews coming from non-fans who don't even care for that genre of game, because most of those reviews are going to be out-of-sync with what most of the intended customer base are looking for.
So again, I do agree with you on this in a way, the issue depends on how the aggregate balances out their reviews. Though, I still do think regardless if a reviewer isn't into a genre or game type, they need to keep their internal logic consistent, and try meeting the game halfway and judge it on its own terms. And JUST the game; don't turn it into a soapbox to criticize an entire slice of the gaming market.
A reviewer who doesn't like a genre, but loves a game in a genre, provides an incredibly useful review to people who also don't like that genre, and can sell copies of that game / get people to expand their horizons.
I can agree with that.
If I am buying a game outright / say it's a sequel to my favorite game.. I just don't care about reviews.. unless I see a 50% average or something, I'm buying the game.. and those reviews become useful to me.
Most of the people in this thread fit that for GoW Rag... and yet they will obsess over reviews..
It's just so odd to me.
I think part of the issue is that reviewers who weigh into score aggregates have shown some times even over the course of this year that they are very hypocritical or hold very strict standards for certain types of games that they do not apply towards other similar games. This is nothing against the game, but the Elden Ring reviews still highlight this problem very well.
That game, at launch, had certain technical issues that were objectively worst than HFW, yet while those technical issues were weighed heavily into the HFW reviews, they were treated as an aside in almost all of the Elden Ring ones. Reviews for HFW that dinged the game design as being "more of the same", a lot of Elden Ring reviews failed to demonstrate how that game was anything substantially new for the Souls formula outside of now being open-world. Games like Sifu were criticized for being too difficult, but an entry in a series of games known for their difficulty, is simultaneously being praised for being a "real challenge".
A lot of Elden Ring reviews had reviewers with poor internal logic consistency. Either that, or the websites they were reviewing for lacked it, and aggregates like MetaCritic don't really implement a balancing weight of reviews in line with the conditional market satisfaction/growth goals of game releases, though part of this is down to the publishers not communicating what those are in a clear fashion, or working with aggregates to communicate to them what those should be for a particular release.
Which is why I still think publishers, review sites, and aggregates like MC should establish a much better, cohesive system. If a game is appealing to hardcore fans of a specific IP, the review websites should get reviewers who are already fans of the IP to review it, and MC should stipulate that, say, 70% of the aggregated reviews come from such perspectives. It doesn't mean you
can't have negative reviews or reviews from non-fans of the IP or genre, but there should be a hardline way to manage their weight to the average, so that they don't weigh more than they should for that particular game and its intent in terms of satisfying its existing market or growing that market.
