Video Game Reviews Are Broken

I know that the average System Wars viewer is probably quite young, spoiled, inexperienced, etc., but I do ask of you all to take a look at these interesting articles right here:

Article1

Article2

What I shall now do is ask you all what you think of these articles. What do you think of them?

360 haters always say this, just because 360 is doing well you have to attack te reviews for voicing their opinion (which btw is strongly in favour of 360 across the board), Freud would be flipping in his grave if he saw your blatent defence mechanism of DENIAL.

plus your sig sucks no offense but i've never read a bigger puddle of dribble, and thats saying a lot being a SW vet.

Yeah I somewhat agree with him. The review scale is grossly underused in the below 4 and over 9.5 section. And personally I think that if you go by such precise scores, you should at least explain why the game received the score it did, like IGN does and GS used to do.

So either use a scale of 1-5 and give the scores out based on your feeling. Or use a precise 1-100% scale and explain in detail where the game lost points and where it gained them. GS is atm going by the worst possible solution, a combo of these two which is both unprecise and precise at the same time.

Can anyone give a viable reason why gamespot use a .5 system

surely it's just not as accurate as having 9.2 9.3 etc.

hehe i see cows are still upset over....um....4.5 lair...yea the reviewes are opinions! but with no opinions there would be no reviews! hmmm I guess u would like that...adriancostin83

If reviews were out of 5 all of a sudden 4.5 Lair would be awesome!

still mad over that 7.5 huh..MikeB_74

you cant expect much from young, spoiled andinexperienced people ;)

Can anyone give a viable reason why gamespot use a .5 system

surely it's just not as accurate as having 9.2 9.3 etc.

reno7728

Exactly, they don't want you to just think about the numbers and focus more on the elements of the less specific attributes of a game that make it good: story, inovation etc.

How many people here go "AAA OMFG the game must own all others, 'GameX'FTW!!!!!" When missing out on Super Smash Brothers, Zelda, Mario, Metroid, Virtua Fighter, Dead Rising, Mario Kart and about a million other fantastic non-AAA games that ratings simply wouldn't do justice.

still mad over that 7.5 huh..MikeB_74

360 haters always say this, just because 360 is doing well you have to attack te reviews for voicing their opinion (which btw is strongly in favour of 360 across the board), Freud would be flipping in his grave if he saw your blatent defence mechanism of DENIAL.

plus your sig sucks no offense but i've never read a bigger puddle of dribble, and thats saying a lot being a SW vet.

hongkingkong

Relax. What are you getting so worked up for? Bad day at school? Anyway, I didn't address the 360 anywhere, did I? It's funny how you address my non-existent defence mechanism concerning this topic while you yourself immediately take offence and start whining. Shouldn't you be taking a closer look at your own defence mechanism?

In addition, which part of my sig do you think sucks? It's funny how you say it sucks but do not give a single reason as to why it sucks. Major whining there once again. Please grow up. You seem to be the one who's in denial here since you blatantly attacked my post which had nothing to do with the 360 and then go on to saying that my sig sucks because it addresses some inconvenient truths. Wtf?

[QUOTE="MikeB_74"]still mad over that 7.5 huh..Hexagon_777

360 haters always say this, just because 360 is doing well you have to attack te reviews for voicing their opinion (which btw is strongly in favour of 360 across the board), Freud would be flipping in his grave if he saw your blatent defence mechanism of DENIAL.

plus your sig sucks no offense but i've never read a bigger puddle of dribble, and thats saying a lot being a SW vet.

hongkingkong

Relax. What are you getting so worked up for? Bad day at school? Anyway, I didn't address the 360 anywhere, did I? It's funny how you address my non-existent defence mechanism concerning this topic while you yourself immediately take offence and start whining. Shouldn't you be taking a closer look at your own defence mechanism?

In addition, which part of my sig do you think sucks? It's funny how you say it sucks but do not give a single reason as to why it sucks. Major whining there once again. Please grow up. You seem to be the one who's in denial here since you blatantly attacked my post which had nothing to do with the 360 and then go on to saying that my sig sucks because it addresses some inconvenient truths. Wtf?

yeah ownage right there. he doesnt know what hes talking about and the bottom link in ur sig is 100% true and lems who dont agree with that article are borderline retarded

I think scores need to be done away with altogether. This forces the reader to look at reasoning behind the good and bad points of a game. Of course, game critics need to start writing better, too, since I think readers would be more willing to read a review if it was written well.TheEndBoss

still mad over that 7.5 huh..MikeB_74

They're not mad at the review, just that lemmings think that they can run the Gamespot fiat argument and act like it's a bad game and they own system wars.

still mad over that 7.5 huh..MikeB_74

haha

Well apparently you're old, unspoiled, and very experienced, so what are you doing complaining about video game reviews on the internet?

I dont understand a lot of what the guy in the first article is saying.

First off, movie reviewers do criticize movies based on their length. If the movie wraps up too quickly or stretches out an idea into more film than it should then reviewers mention it.

second, I believe the perfect score system is useful in the industry, especially under gs's new system. Games are no longer perfect, but "prime". For a game to get a 10 they have to be one of those truly special games, that much better than the greatest games of our time

the number system is a great way of getting a quick understanding of the game and if it's worth playing. And that's the point of a review: it is supposed to do the legwork for you in choosing what games to get because choosing yourself is very difficult because you can't devote all your time to understanding everything in the video game industry. If you are a hardcore gamer you maybe dont need the numbers but might put more importance on the written review, but a lot of people would rather just have the number. The number also makes it really clear to the reader how the reviewer feels about the game. Previews are notorious for over-complimenting games, but if the game gets a low score in a review it's like reality just hit it over the head with a shovel

Yeah I somewhat agree with him. The review scale is grossly underused in the below 4 and over 9.5 section. And personally I think that if you go by such precise scores, you should at least explain why the game received the score it did, like IGN does and GS used to do.

So either use a scale of 1-5 and give the scores out based on your feeling. Or use a precise 1-100% scale and explain in detail where the game lost points and where it gained them. GS is atm going by the worst possible solution, a combo of these two which is both unprecise and precise at the same time.

EntwineX

When you have a bunch of reviewers who cover many different genres and platforms, the reviews will never be consistant, unless you addign one person to do just FPS, TPS, RPGs etc. Reviewers have different opinions on different genres which is why they are broken. Unless one person reviews all games, or one person stays to one genre, it makes comparing game reviews less accurate.

Some randomness that might make sense.