+1
That would also be a great addition. Something like Steam where your own reviews are above/to the side of the rest, with maybe the addition of seeing reviews from your friend list too.

And ability to edit them, when we are at it.

If the reasoning for no editing is that someone could potentially change high voted review to something completely different, then at least we should have easy way to delete review so new one can be posted.

This sounds like a good addition to GOG to me.

I agree with several other related suggestions:
- Being able to find and edit our reviews.
- Being able to distinguish/filter for recent reviews and/or reviews of different builds/updates/versions
- A reference-point or definition criteria alongside the review rating scale (e.g., as the BoardGameGeek website has - with descriptions of what would qualify for each level in the rating system).
- A 10-point instead of 5-star rating system

I'm afraid I disagree with those who simply want a boolean "recommend/don't recommend" system.
As others have mentioned, this just means that it takes more reviews for the average actual rating to emerge.

It also is extremely simplistic: "Recommended" to whom? Fans of the franchise? Fans of the genre? All of humanity? If I rate a game 5 stars or 10/10, then it is clearly just a spectacular game (e.g., "Everyone should play this game as it is a masterpiece and will be seen as a landmark in game design against which future games are compared"), but if I rate it 5 out of 10, then it might be a case of, "Flawed and a bit uninspired, but there is fun to be had - Recommended if you are a fan of the setting or the genre because there really aren't that many examples out there".
I see no point in a boolean "recommended" rating, as it implies I'd recommend it to all of humanity regardless of their individual genre preferences. Which, as I said, I would probably only do for those truly landmark games.

I find myself most wanting to do reviews for games that I feel are under-appreciated or misunderstood, or flawed and a bit rough, but with interesting mechanics or a twist on a genre. That always means that they have flaws, so I wouldn't give them 5 stars. But I also feel like I wouldn't give them 3 because everyone has so little time for games that an "average" game is essentially not worth your time. And that only leaves 4 stars as my only option, and it just feels wrong to write a whole stack of 4-star reviews. That is why I'd like a 10-point rating system - so that I can use numbers 6-9 to describe games that are a bit flawed and rough around the edges, but deserve a second-look by a gaming community that has dismissed them and moved on.

I feel that's actually not a bad definition they did there. It mustn't be perfect, and reviews are subjective anyways, but at least some form of guidance helps.

Agreed.

Well, I guess it can't hurt. Though for older games there are better sites out there to get ratings from, including those from reviews written back in the day.

As for GOG's reviews, first thing for me would be eliminating the character limit. No way to write any halfway decent review in so little. Also allowing some formatting would be nice. And of course, joining the crowd of those asking to be able to find your own reviews.
But please, please don't go with that +/- awfully simplified rating system suggested by some here! Terrible idea. An out of 5 star system is the bare minimum, out of 10 being better, and out of 10 while also allowing for .5 or even .25/.75 may be even nicer (or percentage rating, but out of 10 strikes me as better).

As for the use of ratings in general, I tend to use them to select what to read. Tend to first look at why I may want to not be interested in a game, so look for more trustworthy sites among those that rated it lower, and then also for some among the high ratings, if they exist, to see why I may overlook the flaws after all.

How about 3 points? "I liked/recommend", "I disliked/Cannot Recommend" and "Caveat emptor!/My feelings are unclear."

All this is grand but when are we going to have the option to edit OUR OWN ratings and reviews?

Huh, looks like now would be a good time to delete my 1-star Quake review, as it has become out of date. Thing is, I REALLY don't feel like dicking around with The Chatbot, so count that as another vote for giving users the ability to delete/edit their reviews.

For me, the main difference is precisely the biggest problem with OC.

I am not interested in PS or XBox reviews that talk nothing about the PC version, which is what i'm buying. What's the point of reading a review that says oh, what good graphics if the PC version suffers from stuttering, freezes, bad optimization and maybe even crashes? And what about the graphic options? Are these enough and work well on the PC port? Can users minimize the impact of a bad optimized port using both in-game and config files graphic options?

Or what about the UI? How many times a really poor console UI has become a big issue in a PC port? And what about kb&mouse controls? Can we disable mouse acceleratation or change the default console camera to take profit of the PC version for instance or we will get frustrated with a limited and rushed port?

There are a lot of questions PC-exclusive that OC reviews don't even touch so reading that a game is fantastic in a console means nothing to me and can be pretty misleading about what to expect on PC. I find those reviews not helpful except for the generic parts about story, ideas, features, etc but it's like taking away the implementation of those ideas when making any review, and thus such reviews become useless (ie the classic "good ideas, bad implementation" that makes a game going from a sure purchase to a never ever one)

Even the main gameplay loop can be distorted playing it only with a controller and so the review could be different if played on PC with kb&mouse, for example: from a "hey, combat is really fun, the best part of the game" to a "combat feels frustrating and cumbersome because bad controls implementation" Imagine the first comment is from a console review and the second one from the PC port of the same game. That changes everything.

So, while agree with you in the other points, sadly the main difference makes OC almost useless to me until they separate each platform reviews and can read something specific for PC, as it should be. You cannot get helpful info reading a review from a mobile game as if it were the port of PC that probably it's very different, right? Well, this is the same.

I completely agree. OpenCritic gives skewed results and is useless since it doesn't separate reviews by platform. A game is very often not equal on different platforms.

Like GOG, I don't believe you should ever be able to do that, except in the first 24 hours after you do a review.

I don't believe in attempts to rewrite history, which is exactly what editing your review would be.

However, I do believe in being able to add to a review or be able to do a second linked one.

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Right now, you can kind of accomplish what you want or my suggestion, by doing a Review post on a game's forum page, then linking to that in a brief review on the game page.

I love the addition of OpenCritic! Thanks! Some people here don't know how to write a proper game review that actually addresses the game, so it's sometimes frustrating when trying to decide to purchase a game. OpenCritic fills that gap.

I will say, I do think the GOG reviews side of things can use an overhaul, as someone else in this thread has said. I am 100% in agreement with making GOG patron game reviews more like the Steam system. That combined with OpenCritic would make a fantastic combo.

Can it be disabled in the account settings somewhere? Of course i could just hide it with ublock but opting out gives me at least the illusion of creating a tiny blip on some marketing drone's huge blinking monitoring screen that says “no, i don't want this nonsense, please leave me alone”

Thank you for adding OC. Much better that MC imho