Final scores

[Strawberry Dragon]

One thought I had whilst writing a review.

It's really hard to know what to put for the 0/10 bit, as its kind of a relative scale. I know a lot of game review mags have a habit of using the scale

10 or 100%- excellent
9 or 90%- good
8 or 80%- average
7 or 70%- poor
less than 6 or 60 % - OMFG burn this piece of shit now!

whereas I prefer the scale

10 - excellent
5 - average
1 - shit

How about rather than an arbitrary number, giving a recommendation from a list of choices. For example

BUY THIS AND BUM IT - excellent
Buy this now - good
Buy this when it's in the discount section - average
Steal this if you are bored - Ok
Don't bother with this game - Poor
Destroy all copies - Shit

or even a rough guide as to how much you think it is worth
£1940303/ your soul
£30
£10
50p/ price of a CDR
0p
-£30/ pay to see it destroyed

This way its a bit more informative and easier for different reviewers to be consistant.

[Dog Pants]

This is a good point, I like it.

[FatherJack]

10 or 100%- excellent
9 or 90%- good
8 or 80%- average
7 or 70%- poor
less than 6 or 60 % - OMFG burn this piece of shit now!

whereas I prefer the scale

10 - excellent
5 - average
1 - shit

It's a good point, but you can understand why they do it - who would honestly buy a game rated 60% or lower, assuming your only source of info was the magazine review score?

It should be fairly clear from the review text as to what makes the game worth playing, the scores are really just an optional indicator, as everyone will review differently.

For the scores to mean anything, though - you are correct, there should be some consistency - but it's hard to achieve: everyone has in their head the best game and worst games they ever played, and will rate according to their own experience.

I would say a 5 game was average, as you say - not particularly broken, or annoying, but not much fun either, just meh.

For a game to get lower than 5 it would have to have serious issues which hamper or reduce your enjoyment of the game.

Game magazines are kept going by advertising, so it's rare to see a poorly-rated game opposite a full-page ad for it - we're not, so we don't need to appease publishers by rating high.

70% as poor is utterly ridiculous, a 7 game should be a good game, which has a few flaws, 8 very good and 9 excellent.

It's just a guide though - if you take it too literally, scoring a game 10 means it's the best game you ever played, or will ever play - as you can never give another one a higher score!

[spoodie]

I made this a new topic as I reckon will get quite a bit of discussion about scoring, plus I wanted to try out my mod powers.

Some interesting points made but I don't think we should change the scoring system as it's one that most people are familiar with and it's optional. But have a description of what each score could mean is a good idea, here's my stab at it:

Scoring
1 - Offensive, burn their embassy!
2 - Awful
3 - Bad
4 - Below average
5 - Average, passed some time.
6 - Above average
7 - Good
8 - Very good
9 - Excellent
10 - Amazing, best gaem evar!

Comments? I got a little lazy around the middle, using "average" 3 times.

[Dog Pants]

BUY THIS AND BUM IT - excellent
Buy this now - good
Buy this when it's in the discount section - average
Steal this if you are bored - Ok
Don't bother with this game - Poor
Destroy all copies - Shit

Just correspond it with this sort of thing

For example:
10 - Everyone should love this, regardless of genre.
9 - People who like the genre will love this, people who don't might like it as a foray into a different type of game.
8 - Genre lovers will like it, others might like if they're bored.
7 - Genre lovers will probably enjoy it, others probably won't.
6 - Maybe buy to pass the time if it's your sort of game, or worth a couple of days on budget.
5 - Worth spending a few hours sweeping up if you like that sort of thing.
4 - Worth having a go at if you're really bored and it's free.
3 - Probably best avoided unless you've seen something specific that takes your fancy.
2 - Really not even worth the floorspace. The kind of game that you'd play for a few minutes and then go back to Minesweeper.
1 - A game so bad it actually offends.

Obviously things are objective, so I've tried to include that: A Star Trek RTS will no doubt get some people wet at the crotch and weak at the knees - add a couple to the mark, whereas others (like me ) would rather eat their mouse - subtract a couple.

I suppose we can all make posts with our interpretation of the 1-10 marking system 'til the cows come home, but everyone will interpret the mark differently and so it's maybe better if writers write a bit in the conclusion about how the mark will be affected by personal preferences.

[Grimmie]

I suppose we can all make posts with our interpretation of the 1-10 marking system 'til the cows come home, but everyone will interpret the mark differently and so it's maybe better if writers write a bit in the conclusion about how the mark will be affected by personal preferences.

This. Unless we have a house-standard way of marking games, then we're all going to have our own little score systems. Personally I think that 8 and above should only be given to extrodinary games, but obviously not everyone agrees. So.. I agree. More in the conclusion!

[Lateralus]

I agree with Grimmie and Dog Pants here. No matter how good a game is from an unbiased point of view, whether or not someone likes that particular genre or theme will always bump the score up or down a couple. An indepth review is never going to be complete without some kind of indepth conclusion which weighs up the good and the bad bits and puts them in the context of the reviewer's viewpoint.

Also, on a scale of, say, 0 - 10, an average game would surely come in the middle at five rather than at 7. 8 and above should be for games that really are fantastic in their own right as opposed to simply being a good example of their genre.

[Woo Elephant Yeah]

I've amended the scores for all of the games with a visual star smiley system.

Same as before with all scores being out of 10, just using the new star smiley's instead.

[pixie pie]

Don't bother if you think I'm being penickity (Spelt wrong surely?) but it'd be nice to have the number out of 10 aswell, sometimes my eyes tend to glaze over when having to counts, like sometimes more than 6 things I kinda go "ohhh..". Its up to what others think too though really.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

Don't bother if you think I'm being penickity (Spelt wrong surely?) but it'd be nice to have the number out of 10 aswell, sometimes my eyes tend to glaze over when having to counts, like sometimes more than 6 things I kinda go "ohhh..". Its up to what others think too though really.

That, numbers are a must.

[spoodie]

I was going to say this but was worried people might think I'm stupid or lazy, more than they already do. A good idea though Woo and I'll have to update the guide with links to the stars or whatever

[Dr. kitteny berk]

i think it's pretty important to have the numbers, my eyes are pretty shit at stuff like that, so it's nice to be able to have an easy to see thingy.

[Woo Elephant Yeah]

Yeah, feel free to add numbers as well if you've been having too many tommy tanks, and the eyesight isn't what it used to be.