Imagine if a friend just walked up to you and said they played a good game. You ask them... how good? They give it a 7. What's that supposed to mean? How is that supposed to really tell you the whole experience they had, and their recommendation? A 7 out of nearly infinite numbers or other ratings they could have choosen? Well it makes no difference... whether its 70%, 7%, 7 out of 10, 3 stars out of 5, or C-, you can't really get anything out of that. Or...maybe you can? Most will put the score next to a "good" "average" or "poor" maybe even a deeper description that would go as far as "flawed fun". However that all loops back to that original question before the number... how good is that "good" beside the score? They are curious and pushing the information to begin with because they want to be truly informed, not given vague cryptic codes to puzzle over. Yet its strange because so many people have accepted that as their way of viewing games through someone else's opinion, myself included. People seem to be addicted to looking through and holding onto scores and grades of some sort to justify a game's value or venom. An entire $60 seems to be in part balanced not by entertainment, length, or cleverness, but instead by a scale ranging from 1 to 100 or 1 to 5.
You can't summarize a whole essay, speech, or professional judgement on anything with just a number. Neither can you summarize all the content, fun, or problems of a game with it, and I might even say developers should feel insulted that their work and effort is put on such abstract scales. I probably can't make the answer any simpler or plainer than that, and I can't go but so deeper apart from what I mentioned above with how abstract the system is. It has no meaning or value except what the popular assumption seems to be, and even then it doesn't really stand a chance. That's why you hear people being thrilled over an 8 out of 10 game, while die hard fans and haters poke at it saying that it wasn't high enough. I've heard a handful of people glance in disappointment at 7 out of 10's acknowledging that it is a good game but saying that isn't a high enough rating for their next gaming investment. Now I respect their right to spend their money as they please and use whatever methods of quality control they do, but I also have to question how ignorant they must be think a game wont be worth it to them due to a number. Truth is many 7 out of 10s have a niche or interesting value of some sort worth looking up, and they are the ones often cited as game of the year among a community of people won over by its fun values or a great novelty within the details. That is something a "7" in itself wont tell you. Likewise I've seen 7's given out because of generic elements, or ones with incredible achievements failing under a tragic flaw, but you wouldn't know that if you only knew the game by a freakin' number.
This is also an increasingly bad time for numbers as games do some weird stuff. How do you put a number on such a massively amazing but short experience like what you would get out of Into the Nexus or Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes and how does that compare to a short experience based game like Gone Home? How can you just give a number to an online aspect that uniquely intersects within a campaign, like Journey, a special MMO tweak, or what Dark Souls does? You can't give that a number, and you certainly can't put it well under a separate mode function like I used to do with my reviews (which barely knew what to do with bot support grading). Games have advanced to do some weird and freaky stuff that surprises us, and our formal systems and regulations aren't equipped for it.
Speaking of Dark Souls... quick, think about the grade its story deserves! Can't so easily can you? That's because its cryptic and vague with clever subtly, hints, and traces that tie together to an incredible back ground that existed in the past of the game's events within a unique fantasy world full of contrasting themes and tragedy. However to appreciate it all or even understand it, you need to be actively observing and making your own steps to build the true plot, and then you'll probably need help from the guys that likely do it better than you within the community, or at the very least share some theories with other people. Countless hours of Youtube videos went into describing these world, explaining the characters, the setting, and great tragedies that took place. In addition to that the youtube story tellers often leave their own questions or feel that they can only strike up more theories that force the consumer to use their own head again. Its a 3 part cycle of the game, the player interpretation, and the community, and that doesn't even cover the actual relevance of your character within the main plot that makes up the very beginning and ending of your Journey. So how the hell would you rate that? It may look like a barebones bad plot about almost nothing to the unobserving player passing through, but others have proven it to be a complex thread of tales that form a deeper mythology than some real life cultures ever accomplished. You can't give it a straight 10, and you can't accuse the game of being lazy just because you have to use your head to make sense of it, and nothing else compares to it enough to give it a score in the middle and call it "average" or leave it at "decent". Nothing like that describes it. However.... you can give the value of it by telling people how immersive the world was, or how much you enjoyed putting it together like a puzzle. You could also talk about some of the amazing theories you worked up, or how your friend came to a conclusion that blew your mind and made you see the game in a whole new light (I just had this happen to me with DS2 and I still don't even know the ending). Or... you could just point out an amazing youtuber that has done all the work and referencing they can to pull together an epic tale. This is how you would be able to depict and give the impression of the game's story telling, and this is what a curious person would want to go by as they can tell if they would love this, hate it, or would just ignore this aspect. The story is something you can't do by yourself, and it isn't something the game is going to do for you, but it isn't something that is absent either. Instead you experience it, share the experience, and listen to the experience, and honestly... that entire cycle is how I feel games are better summarized and something a regulated system can never, ever, help you with.
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| Too complex for your scoring system to handle! |
Now before I sound like I'm igniting some crusade against review scores, I'm actually have to surprise you and say the opposite. I actually still like them a bit, and even though I pretty much just proved how stupid the whole thing is I can still see why we fell into using it. Simply put... it can be fun. No seriously, back when I was doing reviews in my old style it was kind of fun to challenge myself to throw a level on a scale towards gaming. It was like a puzzle to figure out what to level my complaints and fun at, and then to try and measure it appropriately towards something else, and it felt good to break it down into its elements so that I could really explain a game in great detail as I'm clearly passionate about. I imagine plenty of reviewers felt a bit like this enjoying their first few reviews trying to measure their passion in a professional way while knowing they were educating other gamers. Plus its just fun to challenge your perspective of something you love, which is where we get all the technical and objective aspects from. Even though the game's true value is mostly down to opinion, the majority of reviews actually have turned to a more calculated way of seeing things, and its interesting to look at it from both sides. You take your favorite games and try to put them under some sort of number based trial... its quite fun really. Actually I'd honestly even say scores got me into game reviews, I wanted to feel what it was like to be on that site of judging games and I liked to talk and go in depth with my favorite hobby.
As people and consumers we also tend to have a habit of loving both convenience and easy labels, both covered well by a scoring system for our gaming hobby. Lets be honest here, we've all had those days where we just want to observe a game curiously and then when reviews are everywhere we want a fast and simple way to see its status in the gaming world. We can't do that with honest walls of text explaining the many good or bad experiences that may await after hours within the game, so we want some made up scaling system to give us some vague idea of its judgement. We do this with far more than games as well, just about anything with a culture big enough worth giving reviews and opinions on probably has grading thrown into it of some form. Its kind of fun to read them and take them into account as much as it is to grade it.
However as I was rating stuff and doing this myself, I just began to notice things were stumbling a little too often. I would review a game with a good story, like R&C into the nexus and then one that did it a lot more stripped down and less to tell like a Killzone or Modern Warfare game. However while those were simple it got more tricky to judge a game like Fat Princess where the story was never meant to be its strong point, and it felt so bad to review that aspect that I would often give a game like that a pass or void it towards counting, however that felt terrible when I hold most games up to the same standard of the format. So my format was pretty much breaking from the beginning, but I pushed on. It then became more challenging as a game like Uncharted 3 came out, where the production values, effort, and heart were all truly there to make an incredible story but it flopped pretty hard on the end leaving it hurting more than a usual poor story. How would I really rate something like that when it wasn't really poor, or outstanding, but not exactly a middle of the line work either? I had to make it clear that it was a terrible story by the series standards rather than game standards, and that just felt awkward in itself. Then I began to also feel bad for a game like Section 8 where all of its technical aspects were but it relied heavily on online and offline gameplay with mechanical depth to prevail, and it was an addictive and fun FPS for me at the time. I hated tearing it apart for doing exactly what I wanted to see, a middle tier fun shooter. But it really was mediocre in Graphics, sound, ok for core value, and terrible as a campaign or story driven experience. I loved challenging my gaming world from another perspective, but not when it meant removing my smile and doing some predetermined checklist full of things that never mattered to me, it began really feeling more out of character and honestly a bit deceitful to my audiences since I felt like an invisible contract was making me say everything sucked when I was having a blast with it. Likewise I've always hated the thought that my favorite games have people out there who rather than playing them are stopping to stare at NPCs and the grass to rate the textures.... kind of silly. The games are meant to be played and enjoyed, yet when you're stopping to question virtual plants and go on to blog about how it detracted from the experience, you've lost your way in the hobby you were supposed to be a part of.
As done with Soldier of Fortune (link here) I've adopted a new format that I feel fixes all of this, and still even has a nice little convenient summary piece. It also frees my space up a bit so that I spend less time talking about average sound effects, and fancy particles, and more time about the experience that truly gripped me or what stumbled on the main game. All of that meat and depth that goes into the game gets revealed, and if anything extra is worth mentioning it'll still be there, and it will be talked about just as any normal player would notice. For example in the case of SoF it wasn't so much about the graphics themselves as much as it was about what they depicted in raw gore and bloody over the top violence. I didn't care that the characters were blocky, textures were muddy, or fog effects littered the screen. I went in knowing those would be there because it was old, and like any modern gamer it wouldn't stand out and surprise you. What would become a part of the experience is the detail of how much pain you delivered to the villains in one of the most gruesome shooters I've ever played. Likewise the story didn't matter because it was an over the top crazy shooter with just enough of a story to show its silly action movie and spy influences. There was nothing to talk about, so I barely did, and it wouldn't be a game that should be judged or played for that aspect so scroing it would have been completely missing the point. However if I kept my same old format I would feel forced to give you the run down on how dated it looked, compare to some title of its time, and I would have to give the story below average quality or go too easy on it and say it was cheesy enough to keep up with the gameplay. Either way those two aspects would have hurt the score though, or altered it in some strange warped way, yet neither of them was my concern in the gaming experience nor is it how I would really describe the game if you got my honest opinion as a gamer to another gamer. My new format makes me drop the scripted and calculated boring crap that nobody cares about, and to let out my honest experience while writing it in a deep and pseudo-professional manner. The funny thing to is that it was actually more convenient this was as well, even without a score. Its all because I spent less time writing about crap that didn't matter and you could read my review in shorter time while pulling away with the good and the bad sides of it more efficiently. I talk about the boring crap long enough to tell you its not a game about that, and then I go into what really matters like the inexcusable performance problems or the careless run and gun fun it highlights in gameplay. You can tell more out of the game based on that rather than some number or about how poor 10 year older graphics look.
Oh but what about the summary? Its still proper to leave a solid conclusion, right? Well its not a must but I agree that something should be done for a conclusion piece, but there's better solutions than grading scales. When it comes to summarizing, I made a model that stamps a general recommendation on it rather than some abstract scoring puzzle you have to solve, and I box it along with the shortest and most obvious joys and drawbacks leading to a challenge for myself to really grab the biggest traits of the game, and paste them into a form that I hope to warn away or welcome the right people to the game in question. Meanwhile I can still glamorize the summary like some do with the score screen, which was kind of fun for me to dabble into paint.net a bit and I managed to make it more personal with little decorated pictures or a colored theme that suits the status. I choose a dull faded color for ok because its a dull thing because games that get that score wont last long or warrant any special needs to go after. I think it also had a parrot because sometimes those games are only ok because they mock what they know, and I found the animal of a parrot suiting for that. I went with blue for awesome because its blue is a pleasant to look at color, and followed it up with a fox because... well as you can probably tell I think they match the term of Awesome. legendary was given its form because its bright and stands out, along side dragon motifs that symbolize something strange that wont fade from our culture or memories, even though its not quite real either.... much like an extraordinary game. Meanwhile the worst has a dark black on red color scheme that is supposed to let your know this is a bad kind of game to take up, and it goes in decorated with W40K heresy icon and skulls because... well its fucking heresy, simply put. I'm thinking of also adding in an additional rating that sort of hits in between awesome and ok because sometimes there is a game that doesn't deserve either, and instead hits a weird sort of "good but could have easily been better" that may make or break the deal for some people. For this I might add in a flawed fun category. Overall these do the service of providing information better, and I plan to follow each score card up with a commentary and summary of why it was chosen apart from the pros and cons marked within them.
Speaking of conclusions, that about wraps it up. I don't hate review scores, but I can't really stand behind them like I used to. I can see where they came from, and why people are a bit obsessed with reading into them, and I sometimes still enjoy reading some scores in addition to the page of text strung to them. If you're walking out of this article unconvinced that they're bad, then I can't blame you and I hope you continue to enjoy your score seeking. I am also sorry I probably wont be providing them anymore myself. However I think the long term benefits of a well written review truly giving a good insight into the game outweigh the short benefits of dismissing the game under some abstract label or grading scale. No you can't have both either as you might be thinking, as the thought of leading it up to a number taints the whole value of what you're going to be writing towards. I believe the effort and true focus of the written work that goes into a review stands on its own without the need of some strange score system. I've started to feel a strange respect towards Youtube reviewers that do this sort of thing without a score but instead just explain it, because they never feel like they had to summarize it with a floaty score that misses the point of everything they just worked towards. It is good to hear more out of the experience rather than some judge pannel, and I'm trying to turn my future reviews to reflect this more. In doing so it also deregulates things to a point where more open and loose or experimental games have just as much of an easy analysis as traditional gaming formats do, and there's no clutter or break in my system to accommodate it anymore. With all that being said I also hope to prove this with my future plans of a Ground Zeroes and Dark Souls 2 review, two perfect examples of games that would hurt to grade the standard old way... and I'm looking forward to telling you all about where they succeed and fail through better writing instead of pondering about what number to throw at it.
As people and consumers we also tend to have a habit of loving both convenience and easy labels, both covered well by a scoring system for our gaming hobby. Lets be honest here, we've all had those days where we just want to observe a game curiously and then when reviews are everywhere we want a fast and simple way to see its status in the gaming world. We can't do that with honest walls of text explaining the many good or bad experiences that may await after hours within the game, so we want some made up scaling system to give us some vague idea of its judgement. We do this with far more than games as well, just about anything with a culture big enough worth giving reviews and opinions on probably has grading thrown into it of some form. Its kind of fun to read them and take them into account as much as it is to grade it.
However as I was rating stuff and doing this myself, I just began to notice things were stumbling a little too often. I would review a game with a good story, like R&C into the nexus and then one that did it a lot more stripped down and less to tell like a Killzone or Modern Warfare game. However while those were simple it got more tricky to judge a game like Fat Princess where the story was never meant to be its strong point, and it felt so bad to review that aspect that I would often give a game like that a pass or void it towards counting, however that felt terrible when I hold most games up to the same standard of the format. So my format was pretty much breaking from the beginning, but I pushed on. It then became more challenging as a game like Uncharted 3 came out, where the production values, effort, and heart were all truly there to make an incredible story but it flopped pretty hard on the end leaving it hurting more than a usual poor story. How would I really rate something like that when it wasn't really poor, or outstanding, but not exactly a middle of the line work either? I had to make it clear that it was a terrible story by the series standards rather than game standards, and that just felt awkward in itself. Then I began to also feel bad for a game like Section 8 where all of its technical aspects were but it relied heavily on online and offline gameplay with mechanical depth to prevail, and it was an addictive and fun FPS for me at the time. I hated tearing it apart for doing exactly what I wanted to see, a middle tier fun shooter. But it really was mediocre in Graphics, sound, ok for core value, and terrible as a campaign or story driven experience. I loved challenging my gaming world from another perspective, but not when it meant removing my smile and doing some predetermined checklist full of things that never mattered to me, it began really feeling more out of character and honestly a bit deceitful to my audiences since I felt like an invisible contract was making me say everything sucked when I was having a blast with it. Likewise I've always hated the thought that my favorite games have people out there who rather than playing them are stopping to stare at NPCs and the grass to rate the textures.... kind of silly. The games are meant to be played and enjoyed, yet when you're stopping to question virtual plants and go on to blog about how it detracted from the experience, you've lost your way in the hobby you were supposed to be a part of.
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| I'm deducting points off this amazingly fun strategically chaotic MP shooter for this ugly chalk board |
Oh but what about the summary? Its still proper to leave a solid conclusion, right? Well its not a must but I agree that something should be done for a conclusion piece, but there's better solutions than grading scales. When it comes to summarizing, I made a model that stamps a general recommendation on it rather than some abstract scoring puzzle you have to solve, and I box it along with the shortest and most obvious joys and drawbacks leading to a challenge for myself to really grab the biggest traits of the game, and paste them into a form that I hope to warn away or welcome the right people to the game in question. Meanwhile I can still glamorize the summary like some do with the score screen, which was kind of fun for me to dabble into paint.net a bit and I managed to make it more personal with little decorated pictures or a colored theme that suits the status. I choose a dull faded color for ok because its a dull thing because games that get that score wont last long or warrant any special needs to go after. I think it also had a parrot because sometimes those games are only ok because they mock what they know, and I found the animal of a parrot suiting for that. I went with blue for awesome because its blue is a pleasant to look at color, and followed it up with a fox because... well as you can probably tell I think they match the term of Awesome. legendary was given its form because its bright and stands out, along side dragon motifs that symbolize something strange that wont fade from our culture or memories, even though its not quite real either.... much like an extraordinary game. Meanwhile the worst has a dark black on red color scheme that is supposed to let your know this is a bad kind of game to take up, and it goes in decorated with W40K heresy icon and skulls because... well its fucking heresy, simply put. I'm thinking of also adding in an additional rating that sort of hits in between awesome and ok because sometimes there is a game that doesn't deserve either, and instead hits a weird sort of "good but could have easily been better" that may make or break the deal for some people. For this I might add in a flawed fun category. Overall these do the service of providing information better, and I plan to follow each score card up with a commentary and summary of why it was chosen apart from the pros and cons marked within them.
Speaking of conclusions, that about wraps it up. I don't hate review scores, but I can't really stand behind them like I used to. I can see where they came from, and why people are a bit obsessed with reading into them, and I sometimes still enjoy reading some scores in addition to the page of text strung to them. If you're walking out of this article unconvinced that they're bad, then I can't blame you and I hope you continue to enjoy your score seeking. I am also sorry I probably wont be providing them anymore myself. However I think the long term benefits of a well written review truly giving a good insight into the game outweigh the short benefits of dismissing the game under some abstract label or grading scale. No you can't have both either as you might be thinking, as the thought of leading it up to a number taints the whole value of what you're going to be writing towards. I believe the effort and true focus of the written work that goes into a review stands on its own without the need of some strange score system. I've started to feel a strange respect towards Youtube reviewers that do this sort of thing without a score but instead just explain it, because they never feel like they had to summarize it with a floaty score that misses the point of everything they just worked towards. It is good to hear more out of the experience rather than some judge pannel, and I'm trying to turn my future reviews to reflect this more. In doing so it also deregulates things to a point where more open and loose or experimental games have just as much of an easy analysis as traditional gaming formats do, and there's no clutter or break in my system to accommodate it anymore. With all that being said I also hope to prove this with my future plans of a Ground Zeroes and Dark Souls 2 review, two perfect examples of games that would hurt to grade the standard old way... and I'm looking forward to telling you all about where they succeed and fail through better writing instead of pondering about what number to throw at it.
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