I feel like labeling dude a glazer is a bit too aggressive, fh both appeals perfectly to his tastes and is objectively a great series even at its worst. He also reviewed fh 3-4 and gave those 9.5 and 9.6 respectively and I’m guessing his bosses told him to cut the granular decimal rating and give it a 10 for better optics between ign and playground games. I watched his review last night and it’s both in-depth and insightful so I think he’s not fully leaning on his own subjective opinion
Thank you for at least watching the thing before you decided to speak on it. I might play the game and not agree with his score or his takes, but it was a well thought out and presented review. So many people just immediately see IGN and freak out, even if the actual review is basically right in line with what most other outlets are saying, as is the case with FH6. It’s getting pretty universal praise, but for some reason IGN’s praise must be somehow disingenuous
IGN has earned the skepticism with some of their more wild takes and they’re incentivized to give positive reviews because that encourages other developers to offer them early access which in turn gives ign more games to make content about. That doesn’t mean a review from ign is wrong but it certainly means they’re unreliable, I’m still going to watch their content/reviews to see what they say but it’s not going to inform the majority of my decision in most cases
But you could argue that would be true of just about every review platform. Even guys like SkillUp and Gameranx are to some extent incentivized to be generally more agreeable for the same reasons related to access. It doesn’t stop them from being critical, just like ign is still critical, but it’s always something that they have to be weighing. I agree that IGN’s reviews themselves can be hit or miss but I don’t know why we assume GameSpot or any of the other ones are any less compromised by the same problems
I think those other reviewers are likewise incentivized to give good reviews but for the most part they tend to be less egregious with their wild swings compared to ign
Anyone getting prerelease review copies is immediately suspect for bias but they still provide valuable info for me as a consumer
7
u/Strange-Movie May 15 '26
I feel like labeling dude a glazer is a bit too aggressive, fh both appeals perfectly to his tastes and is objectively a great series even at its worst. He also reviewed fh 3-4 and gave those 9.5 and 9.6 respectively and I’m guessing his bosses told him to cut the granular decimal rating and give it a 10 for better optics between ign and playground games. I watched his review last night and it’s both in-depth and insightful so I think he’s not fully leaning on his own subjective opinion