Getting an opinion or review before forking out for a game is always a good move. It can be an expensive business if you’re looking to spend your hard-earned money on any game, whether you’re a PC, laptop or console gamer.
Online gaming review sites are often the go-to place for gamers to find out more about their titles, but in such a vast marketplace, finding sites you can actually trust can be another challenge. Several components will help you decipher whether a gaming review site is objective or whether there could be an ulterior motive at play, so let’s take a look.
Exploring their library – casino gaming review sites
It takes time to build a picture of gaming review sites that might have a vested interest in making one provider, platformer or designer sound better than another. We often see this in casino review sites.
Once you scratch beneath the surface, you realize that the higher-rated reviews are all for the same casino under one larger umbrella and that the website’s purpose is to encourage people to use these sites over the competition.
Clearly, there are a few things wrong with this. It’s not illegal, but it smacks of operating in bad faith, and if a review site is not upfront with you from the off, then there are plenty of their competitors you can check out instead.
It brings the legitimacy of their site reviews into disrepute, and it doesn’t highlight an objective pros and cons list of all of their reviews.
While some sites will still have an element of objectivity but still look to push people in a particular direction, the best way to find a review site that isn’t essentially using its platform as an advertising tool is to explore the depth of its reviews.
If casino sites have good, mediocre and bad reviews for companies that fall under the same gaming umbrella, this is a good sign. Objective betting and online casino review sites such as https://www.betkiwi.co.nz/ are examples of sites that use all of the tools to put together authentic and reliable reviews.
There are many ways to approach a good review site, which we will dive into in the next section, but if they aren’t impartial from the start, then this already means the foundation of their reviews is on shaky ground.
The importance of impartiality
It’s not just in casino gaming that reviews can be tainted by bias. While it is more common in casino gaming due to the sheer volume of money in the sector, console gaming review sites can sometimes fall foul of this as well.
Ultimately, it harms their brand reputation and the casinos in question, so it becomes counterproductive anyway. There are many reasons why online reviews are so critical – and it’s hard to recover if your review site is seen as a mouthpiece for one brand or platform.
Game design companies and developers understand the importance of a review. As long as the review is impartial, these sites will generate significant traffic and be sought after by industry professionals.
Let’s look at the GTA remaster, which was widely criticized by reviewers at all levels of the industry. Rockstar had gotten into such a comfortable groove of releasing some of the greatest games ever made that they took their eye off the ball with the classic GTA remasters.
Reviews of the game were so dismissive and disappointing that many ardent fans of the original games didn’t even bother to go out and buy it – myself included!
Many reviewers will have been nostalgic about the idea of playing GTA 3, Vice City or San Andreas all over again. Still, they were able to disregard this bias and focus on the negatives, which ultimately overshadowed one of the most anticipated remasters in gaming history. Review sites that can set aside their bias tick a big box.
Trustworthy components
Gaming review sites with reviewer profiles carry a lot more weight. You know that they aren’t using generic AI tools for their reviews. Another component to pay attention to is the depth and quality of a review.
If a site simply glosses over the fundamentals and mechanics and does not provide any sort of unique insight that shows it’s clearly played the game and has an opinion on it, then this is a red flag. Also, how long have they been in the business?
While this isn’t always a bad thing, as many review sites are looking to find their feet, the longer they’ve been in the business while exhibiting some of the other components in this list is a hallmark of a brand with a better chance of being reputable and trustworthy.
Final thoughts
In summary, you want a review site that is objective, detailed and experienced – regardless of the area of gaming they’re in. Whether it’s a casino gaming review site or a platform that has been reviewing PlayStation and Xbox games for two decades doesn’t matter.
If they exhibit a number of these characteristics, and preferably all, this will go a long way in building trust and causing you to seek out their opinion whenever you’re looking for guidance on playing or buying a new game.
