JStein0222
Member
I'll say it - I've found Colin Moriarty on IGN to be the only reviewer that I would take 100% of their word as near-fact. Guy is just smart, you can hear it in his reviews beyond (BEYOND!) just the scores.
How did reviews get so broken?
- Thread starter NotTheGuyYouKill
- Start date
CecilRousso
Member
GameAddict411
Member
StreetsAhead
Member
Depends on the country. In my Australian high school the system was:
90~100% = A+
80~89% = A
75~79% = B+
70~74% = B
65~69% = C+
60~64% = C
50~59% = D
0~49% = Fail
consoles wars is one of the biggest reason imo.
A lot of sites have begun to favor certain opinions and certain demographics. You can easily go to a website, and quickly see a bias in either the site itself or in the forums to which much of that site is dedicated to.
Some strange things tend to happen. Look at the games that are backed by valve. Left 4 dead is probably one of the most average games of last generation. It was short, was horrible when played alone (ie, no dedicated single player), lacked content and variety, had practically no story (though what was there was nicely told through the safe houses). The online multiplayer was good, but even then it was generally weak in content. Had any other developer backed the game, it would've been universally panned, but because it was valve, and because of the general love for valve as a company, it received completely un-deserving award and recognition.
The problem isn't the bias to valve, but to valve's philosophy on game design. You get certain puritans and elitists that will completely ignore shortcomings of titles simply due to pedigree. Mario galaxy is another one, it's a fantastic game, but around the same time mod nation racer came out on the ps3. Now, here's the glaring issue, on gametrailers, they scored a story for mod nation racers, yet for mario galaxy they completely ignored the story. Why? because the philosophy of the game-makers and its pedigree. No one expects mario games to have a story, but that doesn't make it fair to ignore that aspect entirely, and expect a community driven kart racing game to have one (just because it's a new ip/developer). As a result we get inherently skewed reviews.
Another reason is the lack of standardization across game reviews. I'm not saying that everything is equal, a lot of things in games are subjective, but even then, categories need to be prooperly expressed and games need to be compared to their counter-parts not to some moving goal post, or flavour of the month, or popular opinion.
A lot of sites have begun to favor certain opinions and certain demographics. You can easily go to a website, and quickly see a bias in either the site itself or in the forums to which much of that site is dedicated to.
Some strange things tend to happen. Look at the games that are backed by valve. Left 4 dead is probably one of the most average games of last generation. It was short, was horrible when played alone (ie, no dedicated single player), lacked content and variety, had practically no story (though what was there was nicely told through the safe houses). The online multiplayer was good, but even then it was generally weak in content. Had any other developer backed the game, it would've been universally panned, but because it was valve, and because of the general love for valve as a company, it received completely un-deserving award and recognition.
The problem isn't the bias to valve, but to valve's philosophy on game design. You get certain puritans and elitists that will completely ignore shortcomings of titles simply due to pedigree. Mario galaxy is another one, it's a fantastic game, but around the same time mod nation racer came out on the ps3. Now, here's the glaring issue, on gametrailers, they scored a story for mod nation racers, yet for mario galaxy they completely ignored the story. Why? because the philosophy of the game-makers and its pedigree. No one expects mario games to have a story, but that doesn't make it fair to ignore that aspect entirely, and expect a community driven kart racing game to have one (just because it's a new ip/developer). As a result we get inherently skewed reviews.
Another reason is the lack of standardization across game reviews. I'm not saying that everything is equal, a lot of things in games are subjective, but even then, categories need to be prooperly expressed and games need to be compared to their counter-parts not to some moving goal post, or flavour of the month, or popular opinion.
kinoki
Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promise only; pain we obey.
Reviews aren't broken. It's just that the industry has a very homogenous group of people writing them. What does anyone expect if you have 18-30-something white male reviewers? They're just a part of the PR-machine. Reviews aren't going anywhere before we have a more varied group of people reviewing games. Scores aren't wrong, they're just representative of the group reviewing games.
Imp the Dimp
Member
Review scores are utterly worthless to me. Might as well roll a dice.
tassletine
Member
Sorry but the US education system is so fucked up. How can a ratings system that rates 70 as average/medicore survive when it's actually educating you to ignore the very definitions of those words.
Psychology. Why bother with a game that got a 7/10 when there are games that got a 9/10? What's the tangible difference between a 4/10 game and a 5/10 game for the average consumer? As soon as the score drops under 8 or 7 it's already far enough under the quality bar that whatever good the game has isn't gonna outweigh the negative in most peoples eyes.
The reason is the same reason that using a similar system for games is silly.
School grades are not "ratings" - they are grades. Simple representations of the weighted percent of questions you answer correctly in each subject. Only being able to answer 70% of questions correctly is indeed quite mediocre given the relatively low bar of standards in most education systems.
The problem stems from extremely homogeneous ideas of what a review should entail which goes back to the days of magazines, an industry that hasn't really matured alongside the gamers that grew up with it, "review" outlets having a suspiciously cozy relationship with publishers, a target audience of immature gamers whose only interest in the review is to use it as ammunition in console wars arguments, etc.
I generally make my purchases based on track records of developers or a series, gameplay videos, demos, the impressions and discussions of those who actually have played the game properly rather than listen to those whose opinion amounts to production line superlatives and hyperbole.
I generally make my purchases based on track records of developers or a series, gameplay videos, demos, the impressions and discussions of those who actually have played the game properly rather than listen to those whose opinion amounts to production line superlatives and hyperbole.