Shamus made a very good point on his post here. I heartily agree with that.
Reviewers keep scoring games, movies, or what have you, with numbers. It can go from a humble 3-1 (bad, average, good), 1-5 (don’t buy, meh, so-so, just good, Very good), 1-10 (You really think I’m going to write it here?), and, of course, the great 1-100 (don’t even think about it.)
I can’t understand how these people are scoring a game with discreet score like that. What is the difference between a game that scored 87 and one that scored 88? Just by looking at the scores, you know that the reviewer thinks that both games are good. Now, where do we make that 1 point difference? Is it in the graphics? the gameplay? the story? or subjectivity?
Let’s say game A is scored 79 and game B gets 81. They’re only two points different, but game B will seem superior to A. How does the reviewer justify this?
Here’s an example of a 100-points-based scoring:
"Ookay.. the graphics is nice. I’ve seen better, but it’s crysis, so it still is great."
"Now what did I give to Crysis’s graphics in my last review? 95? Fine, I’ll give this game a 90."
"Hold it… I gave Bioshock’s graphics a 90… And to think about it, I gave Airborne and Unreal 3 the same score too…"
"Fine, I’ll settle with 92 then… No… I gave CoD4 that.."
You get the idea… and that anonymous reviewer haven’t even used 30% of the numbers between 1-100 in his review.
Game reviewing is a very self-centered task. You might not want to admit it, reviewers, but it is.
Let’s take Crysis as an example. I only played the demo, but I can say confidently that I love the graphics of the game (really, who doesn’t). I like its sandbox environment, I can plan my attacks on the enemy, I can flank them. If I feel things are going bad, I can run deep into the forest, rest a bit, turn on the cloak, and take down the pursuer. Sweet.
But a friend of mine says that he doesn’ t like it. He said it was the storyline that kills it. He feels that when a perfectly good forest-beach shooter turns into alien fest, It’s bad.
I don’t have a problem with the story at all. In fact, I feel that it’s a nice extra. But I can understand his feeling. I’m not into Resident Evil either. What I’m trying to say is, every person is different, game that can please a person cannot be guaranteed to please another in the same way.
My favourite reviewer never give any score to his review. instead, He rambles about its good and bad points and emphasizing it in an entertaining way.
A nice example can be taken from dan’s data too. He only give the goods and the bads of a product. and if that product performs well enough, it will receive his ‘recommended’ rating and for some rare occasion, a ‘Highly Recommended’ one.
I don’t mean that the major mainstream game reviews are bad, It’s just that they are sometimes… misleading.
