originally posted in:Sapphire
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Critics of games, music, films, etc.
Assuming the majority of us are sensible and will respond with "yes, but I don't let their opinions become my own", what would you say is more damaging to consumers: making decisions based purely off critical reception or the opinions of a specific critic/website ("I won't buy anything that scores lower than 80 on Metacritic!"), or blindly buying/preordering things that you essentially know nothing about based largely on marketing and/or brand loyalty ("there is no possible way this game can be bad - I love 'Aliens' and 'Borderlands'!")?
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I tend to draw a line between enjoyability and quality. You can determine the quality of something objectively, in music for instance you can look at the complexity and creativity of a piece of music in an object manner, giving it a certain "ranking". This does not mean that this piece of music is an enjoyable piece of music, or the other way around. An example: Sometimes I like to listen to really bad seventies disco music. Not because it is quality music, but because I enjoy the cheesiness. Same goes for movies or games. Take, for instance, Die Hard 3: With a Vengeance. Sure, it's an enjoyable movie. But is it quality? The story is shallow, as are the characters etc. Following this philosophy I tend not to trust to much in reviews for movies or music or games. Because they cannot describe if someone will enjoy something or not. You'll have to try that out for yourself.