Crtic scores vs user scores - which is more reliable?

At first glance, this might seem like an unnecessary post because most gamers would immediately say they decide the purchase of a game based on the review by their favorite gaming site or sites. But wait! Its not as simple as that. Critic review scores do not always indicate how good or bad a game is. More often than not, user scores are better indicators of the quality of games.

Most people don't give much importance to user reviews and scores, and dismiss them as 'angry rants of whiny gamers'. Agreed, user reviews tend to be more negative and hard hitting than professional critic reviews. But they're also much more honest. There are several aspects which need to be considered here.

Professional reviewers are paid to rate and review games, and are often required to follow certain formats. They tend to focus a lot on the minute details, and often fail to properly judge the 'enjoyability' of the game as a whole. As a result of this, most professional review scores only indicate how 'perfect' the game is (usually on a scale of 10 or 100), rather than how 'enjoyable' it is. A technically advanced game with dull gameplay is likely to get a higher professional score (Crysis 3 is the best example of this) than a technically flawed but immensely enjoyable game (such as Deadly Premonition). But user reviews and scores are usually based purely on the enjoyability quotient of the game, because users aren't paid to go into the technical aspects and most gamers aren't even aware of these little details. We as gamers obviously want enjoyable games more than technically perfect games, so it would definitely make more sense to go by user scores rather than critic scores. Its a no-brainer, really.

Another notable aspect to consider, is the average scores of several professional reviews and user scores. That would help you take a better decision about a game's purchase (after all, games don't come cheap anymore, at least at launch). Sites like Metacritic and Gamerankings are your go-to sources for average scores. But even while considering the average, it is generally a better idea to give a higher priority to average user score than the average critic score. To illustrate this, consider the last few Call of Duty games. There is an extremely high discrepancy between the average critic and user scores on metacritic (with the critic scores being much higher than user scores), and in reality most gamers haven't really liked these games. Hence, the average user score is definitely more accurate in this context.

Considering the fact that most AAA games in recent years have been duds and games don't exactly come cheap, it would be wise to do your homework before spending your hard earned cash on a game purchase. But you can afford to take risks with Indie games, because they're often much cheaper than AAA games and have actually been better than the biggies in recent years.

Something off-topic - It looks like I'm back with a bang after my two-month hiatus, with 3 posts in 2 days!

Planned changes and enhancements

Yeah, I understand that right now this blog is pretty cumbersome to navigate and its not really easy to find the stuff you readers need. I have planned some changes which include, but not limited to, adding proper tags for all posts and dividing the page into sections. It might take some time, because Blogger is somewhat inflexible in this regard (which means I need to make manual modifications to the built-in template and add some custom code). I'm also planning to write reviews for selected games.

I'm hope I can keep my current readers engaged, and at the same time attract new ones too.

Finally, a new gaming rig!

So I'm back, after a hiatus of over two months! Really crappy stuff were going on in my professional and personal life (some issues still remain), but I'm good enough to get back to gaming and writing this blog again!

A little 'accident' (if I might say that) resulted in me getting my hands on a spanking new gaming rig which made me poorer but happier. My naughty 5-year old nephew poured a jug of water into my PC cabinet, which rendered my processor, motherboard, graphics card and power supply (some of the most expensive components) useless. He dealt the same treatment to my keyboard and mouse as well. Surprisingly, my other components (hard disk, optical drive and RAM sticks) survived this brutal assault. I knew it was time to replace the blown components. Thinking in terms of gaming, my PC was due for an upgrade anyway.

Before I describe things further, let me get my new specs out of the way (which includes some older components that still worked):-

• AMD FX 8320 3.5 Ghz 8 core processor
• Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3 motherboard
• Sapphire AMD Radeon R9 280x 3GB Dual X graphics card
• Corsair 800W Power Supply
• Corsair Spec-01 cabinet
• Transcend 8GB DDR 3 1333MHhz RAM
• Seagate 1 TB internal hard disk
• Asus DVD writer
• Logitech 5.1 surround speakers
• Western Digital 3TB external had disk
• Viewsonic 21.5 inch 1080p monitor
• Cooler Master Devastator keyboard and mouse combo

The first components I bought, were of course the motherboard and processor. I went for a low end motherboard since I was on a somewhat tight budget. The stock heatsink of this processor was too noisy even under minimal load, and I was aware that it could only get worse (along with much higher temperatures too) once I started playing games. So I had to invest in a decent after-market cooler for the processor. I chose to go with a Cooler Master Hyper TX3 EVO (the only one I could afford), and its doing a pretty decent job of keeping my processor cool without noise. I probably have to invest in a better cooler when I overclock my processor, but then again I'm not likely to overclock it in the near future.

Next, it was time to choose the most important component for a gamer - the graphics card. I did a lot of research, and finally settled for the card mentioned above (Sapphire R9 280x) because that's the only one which fit my budget and also provided splendid performance (actually it crossed by budget a wee bit). This card is pretty power hungry, and I didn't want to skimp on a power supply this time (as I had been doing all these years). So I went for a 800W power supply from Corsair which was an overkill, but definitely future-proof.

Finally, only the keyboard and mouse were left. I had always used standard keyboards and mice, which wouldn't last long. This time I wanted to go for a gaming keyboard and mouse, so that they would last a few years at least with heavy use. I settled for a Cooler Master Devastator keyboard and mouse combo, which offered the best bang for the buck.

With this, I was all set to begin my next chapter in gaming, or rather continue from where I left off but with a ton of improvements. As of now, I'm thoroughly satisfied with my rig, as I'm able to run even the most resource-hungry games (such as Crysis 3 and Wolfenstein: the New Order) at 50+ frames per second on the highest possible settings (1920x1080 resolution). I'm also getting immense benefit due to the increased framerate while playing competitive multi-player games (such as Counter-Strike and Titanfall).

To sum it up, I'm a happy man now because my new monster of a PC is running circles around most games! Stay tuned for my next post, which (hopefully) won't take as long as this one!