Ever wondered what Dave, who lives halfway across the world, thinks about Helldivers 2? Well, now you can find out exactly what he thinks about the latest weapon debuff! It looks like Sony is planning to get its hands on the world of written user reviews and bring them to the PlayStation Store.
This fact was first discovered by Reddit’s cusman78 when he received an email invitation from Sony asking him to write a user review for Helldivers 2. The image below is from the page they sent him, which also has an option to flag the review as containing spoilers.
Other users joined in to support cusman78’s claims. One user named chalky_83 said he received an email asking him to review Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, but couldn’t because he owned it on disc rather than digitally. Darkblade887 responded that it was the same situation as Resident Evil 4.
It seems that only people who own the game digitally can leave a review. This is probably to ensure that only people who physically own the game can leave a review, which is how Metacritic allows people to review games and movies they haven’t played or seen.
People also seem to indicate that if you visit their page via an email invitation, you can see reviews written by other people. However, when you go to their store page, you usually don’t see any reviews.
It’s currently unclear what methodology Sony uses to select participants. It could be random, or it could be based on things like playtime or trophies collected. What’s clear is that this is some sort of limited test, but Sony doesn’t seem to be worried about the news getting out, as there doesn’t appear to be any form of nondisclosure agreement.
Personally, I think this could be a good addition to the store. Sony has been allowing star ratings for a while now, and this is the logical next step. User reviews on the Steam store can be very useful, but there are also some major drawbacks, such as people leaving negative or positive reviews for things that have nothing to do with the game.
What do you think? Are user reviews helpful? Or do you feel like you have to wade through a lot of garbage to find something helpful?
