By on 23 Nov, 2012 at 11:00 AM
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Gaming Like A Sir: Score-Based Reviews Are Like Crack To Us

Gaming Like A Sir: Score-Based Reviews Are Like Crack To Us

I don’t mean fun, have-a-good-time crack. I mean hardcore Requiem For A Dream crack.

Seriously, watch that movie. But do it with the lights on, during the day, cuddling a favourite teddy-bear.

I have been away for some time. I am back. Stronger and more awesomer than ever. Like divorced parents will always tell their children, this has nothing to do with you. I love you, it’s just that your mom and I are having trouble. In this case, your mom is the mad, passionate, borderline psychotic….end of the year mad rush of exams and work culminating in my being in America for two months. So ya. Hectic.

Now that the damage is done and I’m walking through the unrecognisable wreckage that was the last few months, I’ve noticed something. Reviews of all my most anticipated games have varied so wildly and been so inconsistent that were I not a more sensitive man I would make a PMS joke. I didn’t make one and I’m not going to. I ProMiSe.

This left me to wonder…what the broody herr happened? Where is the voice of certainty, the consensus? How am I supposed to know what to think? Then I realised I was going to have to put in effort before dismissing games based on superficial things. So I had a panic attack. It was so bad I had to go and lie down in an iStore, close my eyes and just let other people with no discernible qualifications tell me what to think and feel. It was glorious. I just gave them my bank account details and asked when the super compact iPad Mini is coming out. He said it already is out and sold me an iPhone.

I’m being facetious. But only a little. Also I don’t mean eGamer’s reviews, in fact a clever person might realise this entire column is pretty much going to outline in painful detail why eGamer’s reviews are doing things right. Even then, there are some excellent writers and journalists out there who do their damnedest to write informative discussions on games. They are forced to slap a number on at the end because the raging mass of COD-tards out there, like past-Jake, put a whole lot of weight on that number. It is poppycock to believe a complex and multifaceted piece of interactive art and all of its intrinsic value can be summarised by a number.

Welcome to an analysis of score based reviews and why they’re shite.

I genuinely used to love review scores. I would get bummed when a site I trusted gave a game anything less than an eight or higher. My world got shattered when Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, a game I apparently can’t stop referencing at every available half-opportunity, turned out to be excellent despite getting scores of middle sixes. That’s when I had the little epiphany that made me the extremely humble, all-knowing, bastion of enlightenment I am today.

No matter what numeric system we use, we will end up only paying attention to games that score in the top 30% or so. So why is the number necessary? Why not just say, in as many words, whether the game is worth looking at or not. That’s all the review score tells us anyway. Less than 7 – GTFO. 9 or 10 – buy almost without thinking.

Enter the great eGamer way. Let’s look at Hitman: Absolution. This is a game that got a throbbing 9 from IGN and a piddling 6.9 from GameTrailers. If that confuses you… good.

It neatly summarises why scores are ridiculous. You probably won’t concentrate while watching the GT review, if you bother to watch at all, and we both know neither of us will read the IGN one unless we’re really interested. And yet, I walk around thinking I know what those reviewers thought of the game because I know the number they assigned it.

Look now at the eGamer way – the Quick Rating. In almost as many seconds as it takes to read a review score, I can get a much better understanding of whether the game is worthwhile or not.

Do you see how much better this is? Whether I read the rest of the review or not (and I should) at least I have something of Azhar’s opinion starting to form in my head.

As usual with my discussions, I’m asking that we change our expectations. Accept that regardless of the game, we are going to have to actually read a little to begin forming our own thoughts.

What would a score do here except cloud the thoughtful opinion Azhar wants to convey. Nothing. It would help not at all and would only make you forget what Azhar actually thinks.

I only remember that people hated Mass Effect 3′s ending, I don’t remember what they said and I remember this only because of the numbers. I know Far Cry 3 is looking like a bad-ass and I know this because of the numbers instead of what the game actually is. Even though numbers are nice and easy, I want an elevation of our basic level of discourse.

Discuss the game and its content, not the random culmination of one reviewers rudimentary grasp of numeric scoring.

Now go read the rest of eGamer’s reviews. I have.

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Name: Jake Woolf
Location: Cape Town
Position: Columnist

Jake has published 34 posts. Read all of Jake's posts.
  • AG_Sonday

    So much love for this column but mostly because it makes us look so good :P
    Another great read and I feel the problem with numbers is that you are confining a complex piece of media with many facets, many elements and which will be received differently by different people to just two digits. Imagine being asked upon your death bed to rate your life on a scale of one to ten.

    Also, everybody will feel differently about the game and looks for different things in a game so summing a game up as 9/10 assumes that everyone will find it brilliant. Give people a list of what’s to like and what isn’t and tell them whether it’s wroth their money. Far more effective and informative.

  • wolftrap01

    what an awesome article! this is so true Jake. the reason why I sit on eGamer the entire day. the most reliable and honest review system out there :P

    • AG_Sonday

      Thanks, that means a lot man. That’s why we use this review system because it gives you a complete picture of the game.

  • Michael Matusowsky

    I usually find I would rather see a global rating rather than a reviewers rating when it comes to games. Usually. There was something different though about Azhar’s AC2 review a few years back which struck me and it did help that globally people were raving about the game. But generally I do not trust the opinion of most reviewers. I’d rather see what the hive mind as a collective (aka the gamers themselves, not the journos) thinks of the game and nine times out of then, the hive mind is correct. All the games I have ever played have had a minimum average rating of 8 amongst the gaming population. Quite simply, I have never wasted my time with a 7/10. Unless it’s a female in which case the minimum is 7/10. Reviewers should be spending more time reviewing the gameplay and less time on the storyline. History has shown that if the gameplay of a game is orgasmically awesome, then very few people will even care about the story unless the story is the central theme to the entire game (cue Mass Effect 3 ending outrage) which is usually the case in exclusively single player games.

    In the end games are like movies. The reviewers are the so-called experts and we, the gamers, are the masses who listen and are completely outraged when a reviewer pans a game in the bin. Kinda like what reviewers did with Avatar, yet it made James Cameron an instant billionaire, after tax and costs because it is what the PEOPLE loved.

  • http://egamer.co.za/ Azhar Amien

    Aww I feel flattered :P Awesome stuff Jake. 

    You touched on an issue I tried to get across in previous columns. Numbers don’t tell you what you need to know, and I really hate the system.

    Actually, I don’t like ratings anymore, period. I was a bit reluctant at first to remove them (the word ratings) entirely from our site because I thought we could do better, but removing them was the best thing we could have done in the end. Quick rating is my preferred choice.  

    My Max Payne 3 review feedback is one of the biggest reasons I hate a rating system. Because I gave the game “mediocre” (which I still think it is), most people just reacted to the rating and ignored the review content. If you just focus on that, and not see ALL the reasons why it’s there, you’re not taking anything away from the review. You can’t then judge based on what the reviewer said whether you want the game or not. You can’t be prepared for what you’re in for. 

    Sure, even if the rating was gone I would have still gotten hate and plenty of people disagreeing with me, but they’d be forced to disagree on the basis of what I said, and not with the meaningless score. 

    On top of that, number ratings act as a shield, or shortcut I should say, for reviewers. Their review content doesn’t even have to be good or justify the numbers, because the numbers “say it all”. One of the things I like about our system is that we have to strongly justify our verdicts, because there is no rating to let do all the talking.

  • http://www.facebook.com/brendon.bosch Brendon Bosch

    I finally read this and now i have to go to work.

    (South Park They took our jobs voice)

    GOOD JOB JAKE. GOOD JOB