I’ll be honest, I just look at the steam store page for the game. If the initial impression from the images is good, and it’s a genre I want to play right now, I watch one or two of the videos and read a few top reviews. Then I just go for it. I don’t watch streams or anything. I am usually perusing indie games so it’s at most like $20 on the line, not the end of the world if I hate it, or if it needs a few years of patches to feel worth playing.
I dont value reviews at all, I instead just look up streams / LPs of the games and decide if I want to play them after half an hour or so. Sometimes i’ll scrub through if its a slow start and not like a story-focused game.
I like Adam Millard - Architect of Games, as well as Power Pak. Maybe it’s basic, but I actually find that Tomato on twitch has very similar tastes in indie games as me, so I tend to keep an eye on what he’s playing from time to time. I’ve picked up some great, recs that way. Splattercat, as well.
I like patient gamer communities, since I can get a fan consensus, a lot of hype or hate has died down, and there’s been some time to work out the kinks and send out updates.
Interesting to see all replies! I’m curious to find new sources as well. I usually go through a set of bookmarks to sites such as eurogamer, kotaku, pcgamesN, ign (sorry for that), as well as checking reddit and lemmy.
I don’t think I’ve ever really liked the way Metacritic does it. GameRankings was my go-to for years (RIP), but I’ve preferred OpenCritic for review aggregating since they started up.
There’s a lot of churn in video games criticism right now, and this year in particular highlighted some issues I have with how some outlets are doing things with their reviews. Things like rushing to press without finishing games (even just 20 hours in some cases), and omitted technical performance/bug discussion. I was enjoying The Washington Post’s game section but that got shut down. Eurogamer and Gamespot were previous favorites of mine, but they seem to have changed their criticism style and I’m not a fan of what either are doing.
I do have some PC outlets I still like (PC Gamer and Rock, Paper, Shotgun for anyone else reading), but I can’t say I have an outstanding favorite otherwise at the moment. I pretty much just browse OpenCritic and pick out reviews at the extreme ends of the score spread and some random ones in the middle at this point.
I try to do the patient gamer thing too, as I’m always happier with games that have been polished (and they are cheaper). The threads in those communities are great for finding games. The Fediverse has one at !patientgamers although it’s still not super active yet.
I always look for let’s play series by 2-3 different YouTubers (1-2 episodes) before I decide if the game is for me. Scores are meaningless if I am not interested in that genre or specific gameplay mechanics
Just because a game says it won’t work on Deck doesn’t mean it is true. They just haven’t tested thousands of games to verify compatibility. Sometimes it is as easy as getting and selecting a very specific Proton version, but other more involved fixes may be necessary. When in doubt, search “[game] + Steam Deck” to see if someone else has tried and succeeded (or failed).
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