IGN is the gaming website that many of us love to hate, especially for its infamously inflated numerical scores. They even once got an angry letter about it that must be read to be believed. To be fair, it’s a bit less generous than its reputation would indicate, but it’s still a source of a problem so severe that you can’t trust an 8/10 in a video game review anymore. If you’ve ever wondered why we have no numerical scores in our reviews, it’s because IGN has ruined the entire concept (also it’s totally arbitrary, but that’s another conversation).
To give you an idea of just how humbling this sale would be, News Corp. has tried to find a private buyer and so far found no takers, so it’s putting IGN and its network of sites up for sale at $100 million. They paid $500 million for that network.
We thought we’d take a look back at IGN’s reviews, and see if we can’t figure out why the mighty have fallen so, so hard.
Samurai Warriors 3
Somewhere out there, some of you are giving them money to sell you the same game over and over again. If repetition and mindlessness is what you’re looking for in your life, go do some pushups or eat cupcakes till you’re sick – either would be more satisfying than purchasing and playing Samurai Warriors 3.
Understandably, the fans were a bit upset at being dismissed as stupid.
Kirby’s Return To Dream Land:
This needs a little explanation: The previews of this game on IGN were rather famous for pointing out that Kirby was returning to some much needed old-school gameplay. Then, when the review came along…
If anything, Return to Dreamland is mostly disappointing because it doesn’t really attempt to do anything we haven’t seen before. Maybe games like Mass Attack, with its clever group-based gameplay, or Epic Yarn, with its bold visual style, have spoiled me, but I want to see Nintendo take risks with this franchise.
Double Dragon Neon:
Let’s address a sad truth nobody wants to hear: The brawler genre is not very good anymore. … Double Dragon: Neon doesn’t bother to keep up with contemporaries such as Castle Crashers, Shank, and Scott Pilgrim – and you should let it fall behind.
Worth noting: 9/10, 7.5/10, and 8/10 apiece on IGN alone. This game got a 3.0. So the brawler is not very good because it comes from the ’80s?
OK, so beating on IGN for its… variable reviews is like beating a dog for eating its own vomit. And this sale is probably almost certainly going to herald a lot of people getting fired, which is unfortunate no matter what you think of the site.
Still, they totally should have seen this coming. Overall rating: 7.9.
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I read Uproxxx and IGN multiple times a day. I go to Uproxxx for it’s hilarious posts (no intention of sucking up, but at least one of you guys makes me laugh once a day) and I go to IGN because… well, because it’s there. It also targets almost all the things I like, video games, comic books, movies and TV. Their reviews, editorials and articles are some of the dumbest, poorly written things I’ve come across from a big name website. Their misleading subject lines are obnoxious. Their reviews? Seemingly random, and lately unnecessarily harsh. Their members are stuck in the “if you don’t have something nice to say you should just go fuck yourself” mentality of the early internet days. BUT, they are usually the 1st group to have breaking news. I may need to go somewhere else to read anything worth reading about such news, but still, IGN usually makes me aware of it’s existence. That being said, 7.9 seems a little harsh. I’d give them at least an 8.1.
Oh man, you got me with that last line. Kudos!
Not being owned by Newscorp anymore can only be a good thing for IGN.
That depends on who they sell it to and for what price.
Eh, I dunno — up until recently I wrote a lot of stuff for IGN. Year later almost everyone I knew there is gone. Newscorp has been keeping them going on bread and water for years. Pretty much any owner would probably be better.
Watch as Cheezburger buys them out: “You guys work for minimum wage, right?”
Huffington Post: “You expect to be paid?”
I lost interest in IGN when it became apparent that they were never ever going to give an honest review of a major studio release.
I can’t really get into what I know of the inner workings of the site, because I have friends there still, but suffice to say, it’s more a question of experience than honesty.
Whelp, I suppose that could be the case … but after seeing the kind of swag that gets sent to guys who merely review games on YouTube, I’m going to bet that people get much better stuff if they review for a site that gets as many eyeballs as ign.com. Not straight up payola, per se, but it’s gonna have to be hard to slam a game that comes from a company that gives you all kinds of great free stuff … or gives you early access to the game so your review is one of the first out there …
Hopefully this will spell out some change for IGN, as I have a hard time reading their site withouot cringing at least a little. I still go from time to time, but when I’m there I mostly feel like they have a shorter attention span than I do and just say random shit at random times about anything they cover. There seems to be no real consistency.
Am I the only one who doesn’t have a problem with IGN’s reviews? The always seem on par with what a game gets on Metecritic. Like if they give a game a 9 the game’s Metascore is usually hovering around a 88-92.
Also complaining about review consistency always strikes me as strange since different people review the games. It’s not like one guy is doing them all.
idk, whatever.
i agree..if i disagree with an ign review, ok cool. i disagree with reviews from a lot of sites, doesnt make their site bad or anything, just different opinions. why does ign get most of the review hate backlash?
I don’t go there for any of their video game related content for all of the reasons listed above, but I am a HUGE fan of their entertainment coverage (TV, Movies, and Comics)
Heh, I always forget they do more. I do agree, their coverage in that area is solid.
I go there because it’s the only video-game news website that’s not blocked at my work
I get the impression they’d rather not do review scores, and they seem to catch a lot of flak for those. Their scale says a 7 is good and an 8 is great, so I’d think it would make sense to be stingy with the 9′s and 10′s, but then I guess it turns out that people who work at game developers sometimes get paid (or not) based on Metacritic scores. That’s kinda weird.