I don't understand the issue with the voice acting. Where I live you do come across people who speak like Nigel - it's 'well spoken' english as was also the accent of the main character in Dead Reefs which was interestingly also criticised. Maybe this accent doesn't travel well! The only dodgy accent I've come across in The Lost Crown so far is the Welsh one!!!

Upsydaisy i didn't know that... That's sounds great... I read the review too... Really unfair indeed... But i think it only matters if you liked the game and not somebody else. The most of us know that this game is a true masterpiece and this can not be changed by all reviews in the world...

Yeah Volkana the point is that there are people who will buy or play games based on reviews. There is a big difference from an A to a 3.5/5 in a game so if i am going to buy something which i cannot try before hand i will check for other peoples' opinion. Who is better at giving you an opinion than a reviewer who is supposed to have an experience and it's his job? If the review tells me the game is not good i will not spend my money to find out if that's true or not, it all comes down to if I TRUST the reviewer.

Spyros

This is why I say Demo's are the way to go...

Reviews by individual likes will differ with other people..

Now ...Lost Crown had no demo..It was pot lot for me & others.

Plus before I bought the game there was no review at all..Most games you buy there is no review until the game is in the hands of the reviewer...BUT if you know the developer from previous games it does help...

I agree with Butcher most people buying the games are based on the reviews, so it is much responsibility write a review. Perhaps a person to read this review for Lost Crown can no longer buy the game because of this unfortunate analysis of the game. I agree that voice acting is not good but that does not make the game bad, the game is true masterpiece. The rate fair would be a 4.5.
Another example is Darkness Within: In Pursuit of Loath Nolder the game had rate 2.5 for the same site, is absurdity! The game is very good and if i had based on that review i not had buy the game. I do not know in what the site Adventure Gamers are based to analyze a game, but i am sure that has much equivocation by parts of them.
I personally do not try me based on the quality of a game by a single review i try find other reviews (i always read reviews of GB and Just Adventure)wich i trust very much!

Love Maria

Usually when I read game reviews, I read them from at least three different sources: Game Boomers, Just Adventure and Adventure Gamers. If I'm still undecided I look for threads or player reviews and then go from there.

As for the voice work for Nigel Danvers, I thought Jonathan did a great job. Nigel is very well-spoken. Some of Nigel's lines seemed a little dodgey in places with the pacing but perhaps that was intentional. If you've finished the game, read my post here about why that may have been intentional. Just a theory though!

You are right Spyros when you say that people choose what to buy based on the reviews but if you want to be sure you must read a lot of them and not just only one. Personally i read whatever i can find including what it's been written here in our discussions. You can't base your shopping on one gamer's mind, after all we are all different...

If I've heard little about a new game, the first place I check is Metacritic.com. All the game reviews gathered in one spot and giving an average score. I usually read a few that I trust. I've found Just Adventure a little too lavish in their praise for many games. The review by Adventure Gamers seems fair and would not discourage me from trying it. It seemed fairly positive, pointing out a few flaws.

http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/pc/lostcrownaghosthuntingadventure?q=lost%20crown

I thought the voice acting was good
I really enjoyed the game. I hardly read reviews. And the only reviews I do read come from this site.

Doesn't anybody make up their own mind about a game? I don't always read a review but if I do, I make allowances for a reviewer's personal bias. It's always there, but the main thing is the review will also mention what the game is all about and that's where making up your own mind comes into it. The Lost Crown, for example, is about ghost hunting and using ghost hunting equipment and that tells me very plainly that this game is not for me. For those of you who like that sort of thing, I would think you would run and buy the game no matter what. After playing it is when you can decide if a review was good or not, from your own point of view, of course.

I didn't read the review, and probably won't, so I can't give my opinion on it. I don't tend to read reviews for anything - games, movies, books, etc. It's not a conscious choice and I never really thought about it until now. I guess I'm one who likes to form my opinions based on first-hand experience. If I like the look of it or like the past work of the person who created it, I give it a chance. I've enjoyed all of Jonathan Boake's work in the past so chances are that I will enjoy his future work as well.

I'm about 3/4 of the way through the game and hoping to finish it tonight. I do have to agree about Nigel's voice but it isn't the accent that throws me off sometimes. I have no problems there. It's the emphasis he puts on some words that has made me furrow my eyebrows at the screen a few times. It almost sounds like some sentences were cut in half, recorded at separate times, and then pieced back together - sometimes with exaggerated pauses between words you wouldn't normally pause between. That would be an editing issue, if that's what happened. Or maybe Jonathan intended it that way.

But seriously, if that's the worst thing we can find to complain about on a game, I'd say we're pretty darn lucky to have it in our hands! No matter what any reviewer thinks.

It occurred to me last night that although this game was supposed to come out last fall, having it come out now seems more fitting with all the references to Beltane - which is right around the corner. Hmmm... wonder if the Universe had a hand in that?

it's true that many adventure games buyers like me choose to buy a game after reading a few reviews. I found that some people love an adventure game that has actions in it and others like adventure game more with a good plot and others like adventure games that have many sorts of puzzles. Those that write reviews are not different even if they try to be objective and when they've written a few reviews you come to sence that and you're able to take that in consideration, don't you think? Sali

Hmm i wonder if the worst ever reviewed adv game is in fact the best, and was just reviewed but i person that couldnt complete it lol.

If a game reviewer criticizes things I consider relatively unimportant in an adventure game, such as voice acting or even graphics at times, but states the story and puzzles are good, I will give it a try. Criticisms of Anacapri come to mind, and I loved that game.

As far as reviewer objectivity,I think it is impossible to keep personal choices out of the review. It is much the same for movie reviewers. I tended to agree with Ebert rather than Siskel, and so I would be more likely to listen to his advice over others.

Dyl'smom

We're living in a world where AdventureGamers give worse scores than GameSpot. Who would have predicted this?

No review of a creative work (game, art, music, fiction, poetry, or scientific report) comes without the personal context of the reviewer.

To take the music parallel, if my father (an RCM trained musician) were to review a Hawkwind CD, I guarantee he'd hate it, and would not be able to see the musicality in it that I can.

Would you really expect him to do otherwise? Do you really want to read game reviews that are completely devoid of emotional reaction to the gaming experience?

I am a professional web programmer, and that means I look at a lot of web pages and web applications in particular with a critical eye, and so much of my professional comments on such applications are tied up with usability and overall impressions - two very subjective areas that go straight to how the website makes you feel. Get those wrong and you turn away users, get those right, and your users feel comfortable about using your application, even if there might be some glitches to work around.

Gremlin

Hi Gremlin, thank you for a very interesting response - it's late now, so I will get back to a full reply this weekend! I appreciate what you're saying but I've got more to say!

I have a little different take on the subject, more along what Nikolas was saying. While it is impossible to be totally objective since we're human and not automatons, I do try to see a difference between my preferences and what makes a good game. Therefore, I may not particularly like a game but give it a high score on a review, and the reverse is true as well.

Where subjectivity may creep in is that I have a presumption of what the expectations are of the audience.

Hmm, I wonder ... if a reviewer didn't care too much for the game, movie, music, whatever, would that reviewer unconsciously maybe give a higher rating? Sort of bending over backward to be fair and unbiased and objective?

Sierramindy -- that's possible, I suppose, but I wouldn't think that it's common.

nickie: Thanks

Gremlin: I'm finishing my PhD in composition! Tell your father hi from me!

Now, honestly, even aesthetics can be taught in schools! Since I deal with composition I can speak better in musical terms (without the terminology of course), rather than anything else, but I do think that this applies to all creative arts. Aesthetics can be taught and there can be flaws in aesthetics. Style even can be flawed in some cases. And while nobody will teach you "composition", they will certainly teach you "techniques of composition". A lovely semantics I guess!

Thing is that, again, nobody is able to be perfectly objective, it's inhuman, the reviewers, or teachers, or everything should not be biased, first of all, and should attempt to detach themselves from what they like or not and attempt to comment on things which can be solidely backed-up.

Quality of voice acting, or the amount of voice acting seems objective enough to me in order to comment on. Bad quality recordings (which is not the case in this game), sohuld definately be commented, no? Same as some Greek guy trying to act in English! (I'm Greek, btw). Quality in graphics could also be commended. It is possible to tell the difference between a deliberately bad BG, or graphics, for some purpose, or the deliberate black & white scheme, which did not bother the reviewer in this case, but actually commended the choice and spoke of style and choice. It is possible to comment on a puzzle that is overused and is cliched (not happening in this case).

As for anyone trying to review something they don't like, problem is not that they don't like it, but that they've not spend enough time on the subject in order to be objective.

But of course the above are unique and rather utopian situations, rather than the truth! And tbh, I've seen plenty of really positive reviews for various games (adventure and non adventures) which really seem out of place, with lame excuses about bad music, or awful graphics, or whatever really. So the other side exists as well.