Having just read a brutally honest review of, and quite possible eulogy for, the new Godfather II game on Eurogamer it got me to thinking: can games still be a commercial success after such an editorial battering? It’s somewhat ironic that the Eurogamer homepage carries such a huge ad promoting it while its highly respected games reviewers lambast the game and the developer! Hey ho the vagaries of advertising I suppose.

Anyway back to my first point, it happens in movies a lot; the critics despair, but the cinema going public lap it up, one need only look to the golden, but ugly geese that is the latest Star Wars trilogy or indeed most of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s body of work. However, in gaming I suspect that most gamers respect the opinions of reviewers and research the games they buy far more thoroughly than movie-goers. Bear with me, I know that a certain section of the gaming community will go out and buy the latest Sonic or Disney game, no matter how dire the reviews are, but the majority will do a little digging first.

Here’s why:

a) because console games cost on average 40 quid and you kick yourself if you find out you’ve blown it on a duff game
b) because movies are a more subjective genre, we all have different opinions of certain classic films, it’s a Marmite thing. However, if a game’s broke it’s broke
c) because gamers as a community respect the opinions of other gamers and naturally gather together, you need only look to the Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG) such as World of Warcraft and EVE Online to see that

So Godfather II may get a few sales thanks to the Godfather licence and the gratuitous violence, but I doubt it’ll be the kind of cash cow that Halo 3 or GTA IV have turned into and that’s in a big part thanks to the reviewers, whether on or offline. Games industry, your fate is in their hands.