Forum Overview :: Reviews :: I used to like review scores. I guess I still do.

[quote name="Ice Cream Jonsey"][quote name="skip"][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][/quote] I feel like numbers from a site with many reviewers (like this one) won't have any sort of consistency, but for a single person reviewing games it can mean something. Back when I was still passionate about this sort of thing, I feel like I could explain why X-COM is a 99% and Civilization II was a 97% to me. I think the 0-50 part of the scale is very important, and something can be a 47% and still do some cool things worth checking into in an age where all games eventually become $7. I remember thinking the scores from PC Gamer had a sort of consistency, but then they gave Riven a 95% or something. (Maybe it was Myst, I can't find an original source.) And the reviewer that liked Myst or Riven was clearly not on the same page as the rest of the staff and it made everything that followed look dumb. It would have happened here too if we had scores. I'd give Duck Game a 95% and jeep would have given Dragon Age 2 a 17% and that would be difficult to reconcile (even though it's probably accurate nnnnnnyyyyyyahh). [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!"[/quote] There's a game called Night Vigil on Steam. Looks like the guy that made it probably spent a year on it. A year of his life, maybe six months, maybe 18, but somewhere around there. Anyway, there isn't a single review. He got no feedback from it. It always amazes me when guys who write articles for a living, who got paid to do so and who -- as a group -- come out about how terrible comment sections are then go sad sack because there isn't stimulating social intercourse due the presence of a score. Fucker, the paycheck you got was your feedback. They want more discussion about their dashed-off review than what some actual games generate. ICJ [/quote]