Sunday 25 November 2012

Review Scores

Before I start I just want to make it very clear that this post isn't going to be about how some people think that certain reviewers are in the pockets of X Y Z company giving stupid high scores in order to promote sales, this article is going to be on the concept of a review "score" in general

So, with that out of the way, lets get down to it

Personally, I'm not really one for reading/watching reviews, I'd much rather formulate my own opinion on a game and not have it tainted by listening to what someone else thought of it before I've even had a chance to play it.  That said, reviews are not a bad thing, they can give a good insight into what a game is like if you're not sure that you want to spend some money on a certain title.

That said, reviews have had this strange habit for fucking years of putting a number out of 10 on the end of a review.  What is the point of this exactly? How to you quantify a fucking opinion?  If, lets say, game X gets 8/10 and game Y gets 7/10, that means that game Y is 10% worse than game X right?  Well how the fuck does that even work? I don't understand how that one point between the two games really matters and these on 10 scores is a practise that should be fucking abolished. 

If you are reviewing a game, give an opinion on whats good and whats bad, and then sum up those points at the end for those who can't be arsed to read the whole article in a little pros/cons list because at the end of the day, the number at the end doesn't really fucking mean anything.  I get that it's supposed to be a quick guideline but 9s and 10s are thrown around like fucking nothing in this day an age so the system has lost all meaning.

Also, the weight behind this numbers has gotten fucking stupid too.  If a game gets anything lower than a 9 its a fucking nightmare.  I've seen some videos that describe a 7/10 as "OK", I mean since when did 70% of something mean just OK!? 70% is pretty fucking good to me.

Either get rid of this system or give it more definition so we know exactly what causes a game to gain a point or lose a point.  Also, reading a list of bullet points is NOT harder than reading a number, shut up.

2 comments:

  1. If you take all the "....." out

    Remember that? LOL

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  2. Most publishers pay for the 9s/10s these days... same with most game charts. Go in to HMV and it's the guys with the most money that pay for the top spots a week before they go live. It's the way the industry works now :(

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