When you are deciding on which free Internet games to play, you might choose to read some game reviews of the particular free online games and Flash games that you are considering. Game reviews can be useful in helping you narrow down your choices of which games to play, but sometimes they can come with some pitfalls that you might want to avoid.



Although you like to play free games such as Pac Man, Battleship and Tetris on your computer, you likely do not have a lot of extra time to read reviews, because that is time that you could be spending playing the games instead of reading about them. But even so, there are certain aspects that you are looking for when you read a game review. To be respectful of your time, hopefully the author of the review will be concise, and the review will be to the point focusing in on what you want to hear. The point of any review is whether or not the game is any good and why.

Some reviews, you will notice, use a number system which provides an at-a-glance rating for the game being reviewed. But in order for this to be informative for you, you will likely have to read several reviews for games you are familiar with, and see what number they got and if that matches with the number you would give it if you were rating it. Then you will begin to see how closely the written reviews match the number ascribed to it, and how closely they match your particular preferences.

By reading several reviews of games that you already know well, you will also be able to determine if the reviewer really knows the game. The reviewer will hopefully have played the game at several levels so he or she is well-versed with all aspects of the particular game. This will help ensure that you will get a useful analysis when you read a review for a game new to you.

There are several online sites that offer game reviews. Although no longer in publication in a hard copy format, Computer Gaming World Magazine is archived at the Computer Gaming World Museum, and contains articles and reviews concerning online games. 8dimensional.com offers a game review index featuring thousands of online game reviews. Gamespot.com offers a fairly extensive review portion on their site. You simple choose "pc," and they will take you to your particular game's reviews. At the beginning of the review it gives a very brief overview of the reviewer's impression of the game, along with a numerical score. It then gives, quickly, the good and bad aspects of the game. After this, it provides a more in-depth review, with pictures from the game in question along with the reviewer's commentary. If used wisely, game reviews can be helpful in aiding your decision to play a game or not.