Scores out of Ten for Game Reviews - A Bad System

[Deleted]

I think is so so damn stupid, why is it still being done? I have a number of reasons as to why this should be abolished and some alternatives after.

- No matter the score, if its not a 10, people will complain.
- There are people who use the score to decide if they should get the game, these people are missing out on good games.
- What sense does it make that one game is .4 points better than another?
- Having certain scores 'official' doesn't mean anything, its just someones opinion.
- When someone is obviously not in the age range of a game, and gives it a low score, it prevents others from buying (see point 2).
- One of the deciding factors of how 'good' a game is should be its presentation. Does it have any bad glitches? Are any plot holes filled? Does it look rushed?
- Too much importance is put on how it lives up to hype. Not everyone reads about games while they're in development so they won't understand why the reviewer is angry because of high expectations.

Some alternatives:

Spoiler: The 3 Letter System

]The 3 letter system. 3 categories that really do matter, are graded from A to E. A being the best, E the worst. An AAA game is great, while an EEE game obviously sucks. The first letter is Substance, the second is Involvement, the third is Hook.


Substance - How much stuff is there to do, features, mode, etc? If it feels like there's enough, of if they cheaped out. This is for things like 'bonuses'.
Involvement - Is the single player campaign satisfying? Letter will be lower if it has less action or less activity. Is there a good amount of challenge? Points for originality or just being fun.
Hook - Is the multiplayer good? Do you want to play the single player more than once, the average 'life span' of the game.

An example rating (do your own if you want to give more examples):

Street Fighter 4 - CBA
C - It has an arcade mode, versus (with online), and training. Considering what other Street Fighter games have had, this is a little dry. However the Challenge mode is a good addition, but not casual friendly, except for Trials.
B - Its a fighting game, and a well done one at that. Seth is so damn cheap though, which might be okay in Japan but not here in NA. The Challenge mode is appropriately challenging, good for competitive or hardcore players.
A - If you like Street Fighter you'll be playing this one a lot, the whole game stands on re playability and its hard to get bored of the game if you play with all the characters.

Spoiler: Stats Web

This will be a 5 sided figure on a sort of radial graph. What this does different from conventional rating, though, is help a less informed person more. The 5 criteria is somewhat similar to the 3 Letter System. It has a 1 to 5 for each category.

The categories are Substance, Challenge, Appeal, Visuals, and Involvement

Substance - Same as 3 letter system. Except now it involves multiplayer, how good the game is overall.
Challenge - Much like Involvement, does the game have a good blend of challenge and simplicity? How much does it appeal to the hardcore crowd?
Appeal - The opposite of Challenge, how casual-friendly is the game? Does it have a good learning curve, or does it ask too much from the average player?
Visuals - Basically how good the game looks .Art, music, story, everyone should know this already - standard for every review.
Involvement - Same as in 3 Letter System. Does it leave the player bored? Or does it always have something new to do.

Example Rating for CoD: Modern Warfare 2

Substance: Its good a shooter, but I wanted a bit more. The lack of modding support of dedicated servers is a big minus.
Visuals: The game looks awesome, nice graphics everywhere. It looks slick, plain and simple. Sounds are good too, I don't like music in war games, so that's nice.
Challenge: This game is great for hardcore players, and is probably the most played.
Appeal: This game also doesn't so so menacing that any casual 30 year old guy new to video games would run away from it. Anyone can pick this up, and learn to play. The removal of Dedicated Servers though, admittedly makes it more accessible for casuals, if they're not used to all the PC jazz. The perks should be easier to obtain, but its not so hard that new players will have a disadvantage.
Involvement: There's not much to do other than Campaign and Multiplayer essentially. It won't be long until you get all the perks, and reach the 'end-game' with nothing new to try.

tell me what you think of these systems.

 

[rex922]

I think this system is ok but someone out there will use this system and use an average of all the scores to give the overall out of ten score.

But i honestly do not really care anymore about game reviewers since some of them are paid-off by big shot publishers anyway or they are "blackmailed"

 

[John Funk]

We thoroughly agree, and that's kind of why we have the review system we do: We don't give scores. You can't boil a game down to a score. That's why the entire written (and/or video) review is there, and you're better off reading it than just looking for whether we gave something an 8.8 or an 8.7.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

Reviews should be based on the square root of 2 because the square root of 2 is equal to the length of the hypotenuse of a right angle triangle with other sides of length 1.

 

[JourneyThroughHell]

I think is so so damn stupid, why is it still being done? I have a number of reasons as to why this should be abolished and some alternatives after.

- Mo matter the score, if its not a 10, people will complain.
- There are people who use the score to decide if they should get the game, these people are missing out on good games.
- What sense does it make that one game is .4 points better than another?
- Having certain scores 'official' doesn't mean anything, its just someones opinion.
- When someone is obviously not in the age range of a game, and gives it a low score, it prevents others from buying (see point 2).
- One of the deciding factors of how 'good' a game is should be its presentation. Does it have any bad glitches? Are any plot holes filled? Does it look rushed?
- Too much importance is put on how it lives up to hype. Not everyone reads about games while they're in development so they won't understand why the reviewer is angry because of high expectations.

Umm, that's all really minor complaints you have there. There are bigger problems with the system. I don't mind it that much, it helps me sum up my feelings about a game to my not-so-gamer friends.
Your systems are a bit lacking espescially the first one since such reviews can easily stop a gamer from bying a great game as well "e.g - Street Fighter 4, a CBA". It's just basically a thin substitute for the score system.

 

[Hazzaslagga]

i quite like your idea with the stats web thing but it won't become more popular then out of ten system. some people will probably just look at the rating (perhaps scan the review)and then decide wether they should get it or not. it would be nice if one sight did this as i generally look at 3 or more reviews before buying a game along with user reviews(i always look at the 4 or 3 star reviews as they seem to point out any flaws rather than just praise the game)

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

I prefer the "if you liked ________ about _______ game, you'll like ________" system.

 

[Hamster at Dawn]

Street Fighter 4 - CBA

Hey, that's what I thought when I saw the game on shelves!
Seriously though, It's not a bad system. I like the graphical representation. Neither system is perfect but they're better than scores out of ten. It should be noted that most reviews do give separate scores for different aspects of a game but they're not always very representative. I think you've done a good job of choosing things which are important to games.

 

[Adramelech]

Any sort of overall rating for a game/movie/book/album is deeply flawed. The "** out of ****" or "thumbs up/down" thing is leftover from a time when film reviews generally occupied small blurbs in newspapers and a quick glance rating was needed.

On the internet, where gaming sites regularly feature 3-5 page reviews filled with videos, screenshots and information, such a simplistic "wrap-up" system is not only misleading but completely unnecessary. Generally, people focus on the numbers and not what was actually written in context. Of course, this shows flaws in the way people think as much as the system itself.

If you can't be bothered to read several pages detailing the finer points of a game along with its pros and cons, you're probably not intelligent enough to really care what you're playing anyway.

 

[Rafe]

You can't be arsed for Street Fighter?

Scores out of 10 are a good easy way to compare as quantitative data. They also give you a fast quick impression. They're not so bad, that three letter system however seems pretty good.

Written reviews are great for rich qualitative information, but its very time consuming to compare.

 

[Deleted]

I think is so so damn stupid, why is it still being done? I have a number of reasons as to why this should be abolished and some alternatives after.

- Mo matter the score, if its not a 10, people will complain.
- There are people who use the score to decide if they should get the game, these people are missing out on good games.
- What sense does it make that one game is .4 points better than another?
- Having certain scores 'official' doesn't mean anything, its just someones opinion.
- When someone is obviously not in the age range of a game, and gives it a low score, it prevents others from buying (see point 2).
- One of the deciding factors of how 'good' a game is should be its presentation. Does it have any bad glitches? Are any plot holes filled? Does it look rushed?
- Too much importance is put on how it lives up to hype. Not everyone reads about games while they're in development so they won't understand why the reviewer is angry because of high expectations.

Umm, that's all really minor complaints you have there. There are bigger problems with the system. I don't mind it that much, it helps me sum up my feelings about a game to my not-so-gamer friends.
Your systems are a bit lacking espescially the first one since such reviews can easily stop a gamer from bying a great game as well "e.g - Street Fighter 4, a CBA". It's just basically a thin substitute for the score system.

But if someone was going to buy only A or 10 or 90%< games, then they're stupid already. E and D should be the only bad letters.

We thoroughly agree, and that's kind of why we have the review system we do: We don't give scores. You can't boil a game down to a score. That's why the entire written (and/or video) review is there, and you're better off reading it than just looking for whether we gave something an 8.8 or an 8.7.

But that's one of the problems these new systems hope to get rid of. If its out of five, then games with the same number are 'more or less the same' one isn't better or worse universally. It own't go away completely though, fanboys will always complain about the smallest differences

 

[Hutchy_Bear]

The rating is an overall indication of the review. You need to read the review in order to understand what the rating means. There is no point in having elaborate rating system as it would just reiterate what has been said in the review.

 

[Deleted]

The rating is an overall indication of the review. You need to read the review in order to understand what the rating means. There is no point in having elaborate rating system as it would just reiterate what has been said in the review.

But when you see a 10 or a 9, thats not a 'quick and easy' way to summarize a game because you don't know what the missing 1 is. Ten means perfect, and I doubt you find all 10's perfect. Numbers only work with movies, because they're not as diverse as games.

Games have too many different elements to be 9's for the same reason, for example one game could have some glitches, while another could have a bad ending, but both still got 8.

Basically, a number doesn't tell you anything about a game, 3 letters or a simple image will tell you a lot.

 

[The_Deleted]

I really do not get the hate for the 10 point system. It's easy to read and it's always fun to read a review of a shite game.
If a game scores highly, why would you need to read the whole thing. It's awesome! Nuff said.

But a game that's 6-8 obviously has some issues that might seal the deal for you. Anything below a 6 is just bargain bin buy or a movie tie in.

 

[Axolotl]

Games shouldn't be reviewed in any way.
There should be a video of some gameplay footage, showing the features.
Then people would buy the game based on what they see.

That would just be effectivly trailers, secondly many games won't give an accurate impresion from just watching somebody play it (Planescape Torment for example) and thridly what are dead tree fans supposed to do?

 

[Katana314]

I think that your system falls into the same trap as numbered scores do. Namely, you oversummarize huge aspects into something not conductive of the whole.
There's really little substitute for reading the whole review. Someday I'm gonna post a 1.0 review for Deus Ex, then explain that I love it and the 1.0 is just to get people looking.

 

[Marlun_42]

Reviews are an inherently subjective system anyway, so boiling a subjective argument down to a simple number/letter/etc. would have massive flaws that would prohibit using that grade by itself as a reason to buy a game. Why not take the extra time to read the entire reviews from several reviewers to get a broader scope of what is good/bad about a game and make your own decision. Or better yet, rent a game first and see if you want to buy it based on your own experience with it.