Tody’s Review System Explained

This is simply an article to explain how each of my review scores will be conducted and created. This is to ensure that everybody understands how I rate games as I no longer use a number score. Please note that this is my own exclusive review system, and all other reviewers on eGamer won’t have the same system that I do.

1. Discussion
Featured here are all the debatable issues and flaws of the game. I will elaborate on them briefly, as they are merely summarised from the full review and this section serves to tell you, at a glance, everything that’s wrong or controversial with a game.

2. Scorecard

The scorecard is the final verdict of my review. As seen above, featured here, is a ‘Recommended for’ and ‘Not recommended for’ description box. This will basically tell the reader who will most likely enjoy the game, and who will not find it appealing.

The next component is the ‘Last Words’ box. This is the entire review compressed into a few sentences and it gives the result of whether or not the game should be approached, worth a purchase, only worth a rental or avoided altogether. I will try my best with every review to ensure that the reader has a clear indication of how to go about the game. The final part of the scorecard is the actual rating. To understand how this works, you will have to look at the colour chart below.

These are my word ratings matched together with a colour. Above, you can observe that it goes progressively up, with Horrible being the worst possible rating, and Perfect being the highest. The point is for readers to immediately recognise the verdict by looking at the word and colour category that goes with it. In a technical sense it’s a rating scale out of 10, with perfect being an award rather than an actual score.

Every colour category represents a different general opinion of the game so the numerical value of the score is irrelevant. The colours are explained as follows:

Red – A game in the red category is highly negative and should be avoided at all costs. Even if you’re dying to play it, know that you will be extremely disappointed and will feel that your money was wasted.

Orange - Orange represents fairly negative. In general, you should avoid these type of games as they are lacking and not worth the full price. You should only approach these games if you’re a serious fan or incredibly interested in the title, in that case I’d recommend this game as a second hand purchase or a rental, but it’s likely that avoidance would be advised.

Yellow - Yellow games generally don’t have a lot highly positive or highly negative about them. Because of this and the prices of games in South Africa, usually these games won’t be worth a full price purchase. If you’re a fan or someone interested, then you’d be likely to enjoy these games, but you’d be better off buying a game in the green category.

Green – These games are fairly positive and as such it’s very likely that you’re going to enjoy them immensely. If you want a game and it receives this rating, chances are you won’t go wrong buying it. It’s possible, although unlikely that you won’t enjoy a game in this category.

Blue – Blue games are highly positive and are the best of the lot. You really can’t go wrong buying a game in the blue category straight off the shelf, as these are well worth your time and money. Games like these are generally about as good as they get and this rating is truly awarded to games of excellence.

Perfect - A perfect score is a very rare award. It’s more of a benchmark than an actual rating. A game with this rating has close to nothing wrong with it and is simply outstanding in everything it does. Most games that get this rating can be considered art, genre defining or truly incredible in every sense of the word.

I hope my review system makes sense and has been optimised to help you decide whether or not to buy a game rather than to rate it critically. My mentality is that you can only choose whether or not to buy a game in the end and my rating system is to help you decide whether or not you’re going to consider the game in question money well spent.