Caltrops - Reviews





	[quote name="skip"]<b>No scores</b> I'm really hating how Noo Game Journalism is still having long-term effects on game reviews. Forget the social justice stuff for a minute. If that's your site's main metric, that's fine. There's sites that grade games by how they cater to the disabled and/or Christian and that's great too. No. What I hate is the trend to <a href="http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/02/the-spotty-death-and-eternal-life-of-gaming-review-scores/">remove scores from reviews.</a> I noticed this in the board gaming world as newer reviewers ramble on about their toddlers/latest movie watched/irrelevant anecdote for four paragraphs before even mentioning the game. Or they're cracking lame jokes in skits and it's impossible to figure out if the game is any good, under what circumstances, and if there's better alternatives because that UNIMPORTANT shit is buried at minute 19 in their 23 minute video. But hey, they got to use that funny duck costume and talk in a Scottish accent, lol! [quote]"How should we score an excellent game with severe networking issues?" Eurogamer asked rhetorically. "A flawlessly polished game with a hackneyed design? A brilliantly tuned multiplayer experience with dreadful storytelling? If you expect the score to encompass every aspect of a game, the task becomes an exercise in futility. Add an inflated understanding of the scoring scale in many quarters—whereby 7/10 and even sometimes 8/10 are construed as disappointing scores—and you have a recipe for mixed messages."[/quote] If you shitheads hadn't devalued what a 7 means we wouldn't even be having this conversation. The only reason more sites haven't done it is because of Metacritic. [quote]Against all of those arguments, pro-score editors can point to one simple fact: readers overall seem to like reviews that have scores. [/quote] Yeah, no shit readers like something that reviewers don't. I don't have all the fucking time in the world to read rambling Wot I Think pieces or watch some skits to figure out if a game is good or not. Most reviewers are marginal gamers, forget about writers. What sort of gibbering moron would think getting rid of scores is a good idea? [quote]"When I read through the comments on an IGN review, for example, all I see is people talking about the score," outspoken scoring critic and Kotaku News Editor Jason Schreier told Ars. "Compare that to, say, comments on an [unscored] review from Kotaku or Rock Paper Shotgun, and it's night and day. I think a lot of people really do want to read and talk about good criticism; we've just created an atmosphere where numbers drive the conversation instead. We can fix that!" For Schreier, sites deciding to finally drop review scores is a burgeoning trend that's been a long time coming. "[Scores] strip the nuance from video game criticism, forcing reviewers to stuff games into neat little boxes labeled 'good' and 'bad,'" Schreier said. "Sometimes that's OK—Aliens: Colonial Marines, for example, is pretty clearly a Bad Video Game—but many games are way too interesting to sum up so simply." "Take Destiny, for example," he continued. "Destiny is both brilliant and infuriating, both simple and complex, both polished and unfinished... It's one of 2014's most interesting games. It's something we'll be discussing for years to come. And it's a major disservice for gaming outlets to assign it 6s and 7s as if its merits and flaws can be summed up with a single 'average' number." ..... Despite the decision of Eurogamer and others, gaming review scores don't seem in danger of going totally extinct any time soon. But Kotaku's Schreier thinks that a world without review scores would be one with "healthier, stronger video game criticism and far more interesting discussions... Review scores poison the well for discussion, inviting unhealthy comparisons (which is better, Hearthstone or The Last of Us?) and fostering an environment where readers don't talk about what's written in a review, only the number next to it."[/quote] Quoted everything he said because it's all just so fucking amazing. Seriously this is all I want: - Videos under 15 minutes. Make it easy to skip to the end to get summary thoughts/score. - Formatting for videos/written reviews is consistent and I can always find a summary statement/score at the beginning or end. - Make your grading rubric obvious, easy to find, and consistent - Text clearly discusses the game and you are limited to 1 sentence discussing a relevant anecdote. Two if it's necessary to understand your perspective.[/quote]