A four-panel meme [annoyed bird]:
[Panel 1]: A pigeon says, “Here is why that game was nothing for me:”
[Panel 2]: The pigeon states well-argued criticism. Someone interrupts, “Skill issue!”
[Panel 3]: The interrupter is a raven shouting over the pigeon, “There are settings and mods for this”
[Panel 4]: The pigeon is annoyed. The raven shouts a clown-face emoji.
Used to be the case you’d get discussion, now it’s very much just trolls or diehard fans of the game that trawl through the reviews refuting any criticism. Honestly, I noticed a shift in general, standards for games has definitely lowered. I think a lot of the new generation literally don’t know what they missed and their baseline is live service shite.
Indie games are the way to go, I don’t play any big games anymore, because they are always dogshit disappointments. The way I see it, generally the more it’s marketed, the worse it’s going to be.
Rebutting criticism in my opinion is fine… if its not reflecting the OP’s(OP as in the reviewer) opinion but something the OP is doing wrong game wise. Like mentioning the lack of an ability that would be super helpful (such as fast travel) but the person had missed how to actually activate it. That would be a proper response to say “Oh it is in the game you need to do X”
Telling someone that the game isn’t that hard, or just a skill issue, doesn’t help anything. Same with the comments about gametime before refunding. Especially with drawn out games where it can easily take hours to actually realize the game, and by that point you have an 80$ game that you don’t like.
Yeah, of course, not all responses are bad. Some are informative and add more context, but a lot are just trolls.
Some games are supposed to be hard and that’s the only place that kind of comment would be justified.
If a game is so slow to start that it can’t show you what it is about in 2 hours, then it is just a poorly designed game, or intentionally designed to tip you over the refund window.