Over recent years, more and more sites and magazines have moved away from the percentage system. In the past it was exceedingly rare for any game to get the full 100% review score, even for the best, most groundbreaking games.

They would still peak at 96 or 98%.

These days when I see 10/10s all over the place, it just seems far easier for games to get these seemingly perfect scores than ever before.

I've always felt that there are many great games, but only a few TRULY great games. And I (and reviewers) could always seperate them critically by the differences in review scores between the 90-100% scale.

But it also skews lower reviewed games. Back when Gamespot moved to 0.5 increments and we had to rate the games we owned on their scales, I found myself having to either round up or round down to an increment.

With whole numbers a game which may have been a 7.5 is given the benefit of the doubt and given a whole number 8/10. Anything over a 9.4 is 10/10-ed routinely.

Now with the existence of metacritic and gamerankings things get even more disparate. Firstly these sites try to convert the varying review score systems into percentages and then try to apply a mathematical equation to get the average score (when the mode is actually a more accurate representation anyway)

How do they convert A's or 4 out of 5 stars?

10/10s automatically get assigned perfect 100% representations.

On the one hand I believe that games truly have gotten better, on the other hand critics are finding it increasingly difficult to explain the quality differences between one 10 game to the next. And 8/10 has become the defacto standard for most reviews.

I also get the impression that there is this competition between sites to 10/10 games to get attention, because given the choice the rabbid gamer will always go read the mega hype review that gives the best impression.

In short, I miss the 100% scale.

EDIT: New example, Gamesradar posted their review of Rabbids Go Home as an 8 but they took the review from NGamer mag (all part of the future network) and just now I learn that the review score in the mag was 86%.

Dvader said:

I am the guy that refuses to write reviews at GS cause I reject the 0.5 system. I love my 100 point scale, it allows nuance and I fear that is gone now. I know everyone says what is the difference between 8.7 and 8.8. Well what is the difference from 8.5 and 8.0. Its just opinion, you out of no where give a game a score, I like having more room to work with. I agree totally on the 10s, it used to be a very rare thing now not so much.

I remember great games and I means ones which just came out of nowhere and were ahead of the curve like RE4 and Ocarina of time and they were at 96% or inching towards 98% and even back then in 1998 reviewers were of the opinion that no game is perfect etc. so nothing would ever get a 100%.

I think with whole numbers or even half point increments you get to a point and you have to make a decision where a game is halfway between something whether to artifically bump it up to something or artificially bump it down to something.

The Rabbids review is a perfect example, completely ignore the game for a minute and look at the 86% it got in the original mag. Then because the website scores on whole numbers someone had to make that decision as to whether to go up or down on the score to the nearest whole number. I think there are a lot of games which are 8.5s getting 8/10 scores and a lot of 94% games getting 10/10s.

When I started scoring games on Gamespots 0.5 increment 8.5 was like the new defacto standard score and if it was whole numbers it would be all 8s.

Fuck review scores up the ass. Reviews should be written without numerical values attached to it. Fuck Metacritic, fuck "is this a 8.0 or a 8.5 game?" fuck scores!

Sorry about that. There's something about the relevance of scores that rubs my nuts the wrong way.

SteelAttack said:

Fuck review scores up the ass. Reviews should be written without numerical values attached to it. Fuck Metacritic, fuck "is this a 8.0 or a 8.5 game?" fuck scores!

Sorry about that. There's something about the relevance of scores that rubs my nuts the wrong way.

 I thought only I rubbed your balls the wrong way!

Nevertheless I agree.

gamingeek said:

SteelAttack said:

Fuck review scores up the ass. Reviews should be written without numerical values attached to it.  

The only problem being that without a graded score you can't get a general indication of a games quality without reading though the actual text of a review. Which in turns limits the impression you can get from the media as a whole.

Right now we can look at the scores from 10+ reviews with minimal hassle, if scores are abolished that would be impossible. We would be left with one or two reviews which might not be indicitive of reviews as a whole.  

 A meaningless indication is not better than a meaningful one.

Then again I don't really think reviews are very useful for deciding what to buy anyway, so...

I say we scrap professional reviews all together.

SteelAttack said:

gamingeek said:

The only problem being that without a graded score you can't get a general indication of a games quality without reading though the actual text of a review. Which in turns limits the impression you can get from the media as a whole.

Right now we can look at the scores from 10+ reviews with minimal hassle, if scores are abolished that would be impossible. We would be left with one or two reviews which might not be indicitive of reviews as a whole.  

But the thing is... I don't think you should get an indication of a game's quality without reading the review. I don't base my purchases off reviews, I usually know beforehand what I am getting and, barring impulse used games purchases, I am seldom disappointed with a game I bought because I know what I like.

Putting too much trust into arbitrary numbers attached to games by people from outlets that usually are at a huge conflict of interests with big publishers (taking advertising money from games while reviewing it) is not a good thing. I think the entire review/scoring system can't be trusted at all when there's so much money involved, and publishers, review outlets and public have their fair share of blame to take because of this flawed system. Would you trust a movie review if you see the reviewer's site and find it cluttered with that particular movie ads?

City Folk has a Metacritic aggregate of 73. Does that number give you a general indication of its quality?

If I was new to the series, yes. But I would check out the spectrum and read a few reviews otherwise.

I dont know how you can blind buy, unless you are only buying sequels or games from developers you trust.

Yodariquo said:

gamingeek said:  

If I was new to the series, yes. But I would check out the spectrum and read a few reviews otherwise.

I dont know how you can blind buy, unless you are only buying sequels or games from developers you trust.

There are several intuitive factors when you see a game that can very quickly establish a relatively accurate assessment.  Let me grab a random game off GG Weekly here...

DJ Hero.  Know virtually nothing about it.  I have no interest, media will likely give around 8.5, for what it is, it'll be good, but extremely niche, most reviewers won't feel comfortable reviewing it in the first place and I'd never buy it.  Let's grab a less weird title.

A Boy and His Blob.  Puzzle platformer (I'm not a fan of that approach to platformers).  Nice to see 2D resurgance, going to be fairly good, but probably more of an 80-82 GameRankings title.  Hobo-price interest.

One more, Darksiders.  I'm not familiar with this one at all.  Let's take a look at a screenshot.  Big mage-looking electrified guy.  On 360, graphics are nice, though a tad Unreal Engine cliche.  Characters look generic.  Probably a low-70s game, maybe 60s and not something I care about.

Not that it's going to be perfect, but you've got to develop a hobo-scanner if you're ever to hope to properly capitalize on those deals

You are gifted in the ways of the hobo.

BTW random note, in Demon's Souls one of the boss fights is actually another human opponent, one time I fought a dude named TheAzureHobo, he beat my ass.