Yesterday I posted a 1-star review of this game that I think was highly detailed and informative given the available space. So I am a bit surprised that only 67 of 116 users marked my review of helpful, a ratio of about 58%. That's surprisingly low, but that isn't what has me suspicious about it. It's the pattern.

Y'see, shortly after my review was posted, it had a similarly low ratio; only 15 of 27 people liked my review. However, as the day progressed, I received mostly upvotes; by the time I went to bed, I'd received over 30 more votes and almost all of them were positive. Unfortunately, I'd neglected to write down the numbers. Now I wake up and I've received a big wave of downvotes again. Am I really to believe that all the people who dislike my review just happened to gang up on me at once?

I wish we could see a breakdown of individual votes -- when they were made and whether they were up or down. Then it would be a lot easier to prove or disprove fraud.

I also wish we had a comments system for reviews so I could find out why so many people dislike my review. I think a lot of people abuse the Yes/No buttons to mean "I agree/disagree with the review". It's not about whether you agree with it, it's whether you think it is fair and informative. I can understand people disagreeing with it, but I can't understand why so many would find it unfair or uninformative.

I marked your review as "not helpful" and you want to know why?

I quote:

"I've been gaming since the late 1980s and have probably played over a thousand video games, and if I had to pick one single worst game out of all of those, I would pick this one."

"single worst game out of all of those" Really now? While i agree that this game is not very good (it was an impulse purchase for me because i never got around to play it when it was released but it lingered in the back of my mind ever since for some reason), this is a bit dramatic now, don't you think? I have been gaming since the late 1980s and played thousands of games, too, and i have encountered much much worse.

If you would just have dropped the line "single worst game" i would not have disagreed with your review.

But it is an accurate description of my feelings towards this game, and I feel I have backed up that opinion to the best of my ability. You are, of course, entitled to your opinion, and if you think my opinion is way off base, that's OK. But disagreeing with my review does not mean my review is unhelpful. Or are you really saying that the title of my review turned it from a helpful review into an unhelpful one?

After all, if I've played a finite number of games, one of them has to be the worst one, right? And in my case, it would be this one. Is there a reason I shouldn't say so in my review? I think "this is the worst game I have ever played" is relevant information.

Well, what can i say, you are right. Just because i disagreed with that one line does not mean that your review was not helpful.

I would change my vote from not helpful to neutral (or even helpful) but that does not seem to be possible.

OK then.

By the way, I know I must come off as some defensive lunatic who is just upset that people don't like his review. I'm not actually upset, though, just baffled...

Naw, i understand. I explained to you why i did what i did, even if it was not justified. Maybe others did the same, i don't know.

Doesn't matter. Statements like "worst game ever" in a review's title WILL get you tons of downvotes. The first reaction one gets seeing something like this is that its senseless bashing, I'm sure many people went for the "no" button before even reading the review in its entirety.

But to be honest, I downvoted the review because you spent most space on bashing the production value and you were quite nitpicky about it (bad lipsynching, illustrations of staff despite nobody occupying that room yet etc. - not really a big issue in a business sim from the mid-90's). The other thing you mostly wrote about was the game's style/humor, something people are bound to disagree with you on. And despite the review being comparably lengthy you did not go into detail about the gameplay, the most important thing about a game. "You'll have to trust me when I say it's mostly tedious and without substance" just doesn't cut it and literally made the review perfectly unhelpful to me.

Same reason i voted it down.
When somebody starts a review with bragging about how long he is gaming and how many game he has played, that's an instant down-vote. Nobody wants to hear your life story and it doesn't matter how many games you have played.
And stating "i played thousand games" and calling this one the worst, makes one of those two things unbelievable.
Especially if it's true you played since the 80's, you would've stumbled over all the putrid mess companies like Zeppelin Games or Ocean puked out until well into the 90's.
I can easily name a ton of games of top of my head without looking anything up, that are easily way, way, way worse than Lula:
E.T. on the Atari, Ocean's horrible Highlander game, Rise of the Robots, Hugo (the troll), Dark Castle, Bubsy 3D, Custer's Revenge, Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust, International Athletics, Quest 64 or of course Big Rigs and if those aren't enough, i could mention every "Simulator" game german companies have been puking out for the past 10 years which are usually full of bugs, unfinished, unplayable and completely horrible in every way imaginable and if that isn't enough i throw in Charlie's Angels from 2003 and of course Limbo of the Lost.

I haven't played the english version, so i don't know how bad the overdub and the humor is, the german version has bad lip synching in the videos and i'm pretty sure it's purposely done because the same happens in all porn movies that have voice actors dubbing. It's a joke.
Same as the silly one-liners and actor names that use every stupid, childish Double entendre and even takes some jokes from the german version of the Simpsons.

The game has bugs and it's far from being perfect but it's also miles away from being the worst game of all time.

I think this problem on the internet with people getting upset about reviews would be lessened if the writer spent more time explaining their tastes. Something akin to, "These are the things that I liked (or disliked) in the past and that is why I like (or dislike) this particular thing that I am reviewing. Maybe you will like (or dislike) this too if your tastes are similar to mine."

Hmm, I think I might have been mistaken about the voting pattern I saw when I started this thread. Maybe the ratio was consistent after all. Still need a system for seeing individual votes so ballot stuffing can be proven or disproven, though. It wasn't bragging, it was relevant information. "Worst game I've ever played" carries a lot more weight if it's the worst game out of a thousand than if it's the worst game out of ten. Yeah, well, y'know, that's just, like, your opinion, man.

Also, I haven't played most of those games. I did say "worst game I ever played", not "worst game ever made" -- an important distinction. Being bad on purpose doesn't make it somehow not bad.

I voted your review "not helpful". You know why? Because when reading through the reviews for the game, your review was not at all helpful in my decision whether or not to buy the game.

A lot of your complaints boil down to it's low quality FMV from the 90s, which of course it is. The game was translated from German to English and thats why the lip sync isn't correct, you try dubbing German to English before? Not at all easy to sync.

You completely overlooked one of the main reasons people might play the game, which is art by Carsten Wieland and glossed over what was actually surprisingly decent strategy gameplay.

In other words, I marked your review as unhelpful, because it wasn't helpful. Whether or not I agree with it is meaningless, your review simply wasn't helpful and ignored or missed details on any criteria that I would use to buy the game.