Reviews serve an important purpose in helping gamers decide on which products to spend their time, money, and brainpower. Different publications approach reviews differently, with many using a 10-, 20-, or 100-point rating scale, and others eschewing a numerical score altogether. Regardless of the type, format, or content of reviews, they all come back to the simple goal of helping a reader decide whether or not to play a game.

Most publications that print reviews will tell you that an individual review is the opinion of the author, and that they are not definitive or representative of what every person in the business thinks. What isn’t as often stated is the extent to which a review, numerical score or no, can impact the expectations you have for a game, which can completely warp your experience.

Take Grand Theft Auto IV, for example. This is a game that was received very well, garnering one of the highest Metacritic scores for its generation, and regularly included in “best of” lists for the systems on which one could play it. It was another installment in one of the most critically acclaimed series of all time, and the gaming community embraced it immediately. A player had every reason to believe that this would be a great game, regardless of experience with any previous entries in the series.

Here’s where I make a shocking admission: I did not like Grand Theft Auto IV. I found its checkpoint system to be archaic and disrespectful of my time, and the characters to be not just unlikeable, but worse – boring. To me, the only marked advancement over previous entries was the graphics (which were great, yes – but they’re not everything). As a long-time fan of the series and an avid reader of game reviews, I fired up the game expecting something extraordinary but was left disappointed and frustrated.

Considering that I can recognize that Grand Theft Auto IV is by no means a bad game, I can also discern that my personal distaste for the product is more a function of the expectations I had going into the game, and not the end product itself. Based on previous experiences with the series as well as the critical acclaim, I was expecting the best of the best, and instead I got something that was merely above average. My expectations were not met, which makes me think much more poorly of the game than it deserves in reality.

On the other hand, I just played The Order: 1886, which received overwhelmingly negative reviews and has been roundly criticized by players. I decided to give the game a chance for two reasons: 1) I needed something at its price point to complete a buy-two-get-one-free deal, and 2) The platinum can be earned in only six to eight hours, and I’m into that sort of thing.

In this case, I had read a few reviews and knew in advance the things I would be annoyed by. I started The Order saying, “I will put up with the frustrating aspects of this game in order to experience the positive ones [which reviews also pointed out] and to get an easy platinum.” But here’s the thing: because I started the game expecting to not like it, I found myself pleasantly surprised basically throughout.

This isn’t to say The Order is a great game and you should go out and play it immediately. It was by all means a mediocre, generic third-person shooter with a lack of innovation and many lazy game design decisions (you can’t track many collectibles in the game that are required for trophies?!). But even a mediocre shooter is okay, and The Order had some positive attributes: beautiful graphics, an interesting steampunk-crossed-with-historical-fiction setting, and (a few) cool weapons.

Don’t get me wrong. If I had been pulled in by the marketing of this game and shelled out $60 on release day expecting something brilliant, I would have been pissed. There are many people who absolutely hate The Order, and I suspect that group is comprised mostly of individuals who bought the game with high expectations.

The lesson: a poorly reviewed game can be much more fun than you expect, as long as you enter with your eyes open, knowing you’re going to have to deal with some annoying factors (this is pretty much how I justify playing any Assassin’s Creed games these days). Don’t let a middling review score keep you from a game completely, but if you do decide to pull the trigger, do your research. Knowing the things that are likely to annoy you in a game will blunt their impact, helping you have more fun. And isn’t that what we all want?

Photo credits: “The Order 1886. PS4. 1080.P. Gameplay Part.11.-14.” by Rob Obsidian is licensed under CC BY 2.0 ; “Grand Theft Auto IV murals, Hotel Figueroa, Los Angeles, CA 2.JPG” by Cory Doctorow is licensed under CC BY 2.0