On Review Scores...

I'm not a huge fan of review scores. Actually that's not true. I'm not a huge fan of the importance that the gaming community seems to give review scores. Ultimately, all any review can be is one person's opinion and the best that a review score can be is an extreme distillation of that opinion. You might even say that review scores oversimplify something that should be nuanced and subtle. So much so, that they are counter-productive to the entire activity of writing a review in the first place.

Review scores do provide a starting place for a discussion in regards to comparing one review to another, though. And as someone who has a degree in one of the social sciences I’ll never ignore the value of having numerical data to analyze. I just think that review scores are too often a lightning rod, creating unnecessary strife in the community over differences in score that often amount to only slight differences in actual opinion about a given game.

At any rate I’ve decided to add scores to my reviews going forward. So I should explain what those scores mean.

As a general rule 10s-7s are games I’d recommend. 3s-1s are games I’m warning you about and 6s-4s are games I’d neither recommend nor warn you away from.

Oh, you want more specifics?  

Fine, here:

10 - A game that I think literally everyone should play. A ten is not a perfect game. There is no such thing. A game can be flawless but nothing is perfect. When I give a game a ten is the equivalent of me physically grabbing you and commanding you to buy the game and to make sure you pay full price because the developer deserves every penny.

9 - A game I think everybody will probably enjoy playing. When I give a game a nine I’m saying it has overwhelmingly good qualities but that there are one or two issues with the game that some people might object to.

8 - A game that mostly everybody will probably enjoy playing. If a game is an eight I enjoyed playing it a lot but I also was occasionally annoyed by aspects of it.

7 - A game that is good but just barely. A game that gets a seven is one that I enjoyed in spite of its bad qualities.

6 - A game that’s alright. When I give a game a six I’m saying that it has a fair mix of good and bad qualities and even one or two outstanding aspects but it’s ultimately a game I didn’t particularly enjoy.  

5 - A game that’s decent. When I give a game a five I’m saying that it has some good and some bad qualities but nothing about it really shines through to make it stand out. More dull than fun.

4 - A game that’s unintersting. When I give a game a four I’m saying that it’s well made and accomplishes what it sets out to do but is has more flaws than good qualities. It’s a game that I didn’t enjoy but if someone told me they liked it I wouldn’t try to talk them out if it.

3 - A game that’s more bad than good . When I give a game a three I’m saying that it’s functional and has some nice qualities, but has a lot of bad qualities. So many bad qualities in fact that I warn people not to buy the game

2 - A game that’s bad. When I give a game a two I’m saying that it’s a game that runs but I never want to play it again. Or that it;s a game that’s playable in only the most literal sense.

1 - An unplayable garbage fire. Games that get a one are just broken and no one should ever play them.

So there you have it now you guy's can all understand my reviews. You're welcome!!