Poll: do we need a better review system?

[Saxnot]

With the recent addition of Jim Sterling as reviews editor, i'm sure i'm not the only one who has noticed the reviews coming out much faster and on a wider variety of games.
Before now reviews have always been a bit of a haphazard thing on this site. not that they weren't good, but they mostly covered only the big games or the game a specific reviewer happened to be playing. If the escapist is going to be revieweing more and smaller games, they really need an overhaul of their 'filing system' for reviews.

Right now, you can look up either the last 12 reviews that have come out or look through a list of all reviews in aphabetical order. That just isn't enough for a serious review site
we dont have any division along platform, genre, date of publishing or score. If the Escapist wants to be a place where you check out the latest games, they need to add these categories, so we can easily look up what has recently come out on our platform of choice, and what it's score was.

So that's the question escapists: do we need a new way to look up review?

And in the comments: what shape do you want this system to take?, what ways do you want the categorisations to go?

 

[tippy2k2]

That's...not a bad idea

Our beloved Escapist has always been a small gaming site (in the grand scheme compared to the big players like IGN) and therefore they only really reviewed games that would appeal to this niche group (namely AAA titles and the odd quirky game when Susan "Nerd Queen" Arendt was running the show and therefore the quirky weird factor was high (we love you Susan!!!).

I don't know how difficult that would be to code but I can't imagine that'd be that bad, unless they had to tear everything down in the reviews section to do it. However, if that's the case, it might be worth doing now in case Jim "Alpha and Omega" Sterling brings in a much larger audience.

As to how, a standard "Genre, Platform, Score, Date" system would probably be fine. Maybe a "Escapist Top 50" would be kind of nice too since then you could see past greatness if you were going retro.

 

[Tom_green_day]

I think the thing is that the only way I find reviews is though the reviews tab on the homepage, and that only gives the recent ones. If there was some kind of release timetable from all time (and not just a list) that would make it easier to find which games are reviewed, since some AAA ones don't on this site.

 

[shrekfan246]

I don't know how difficult that would be to code but I can't imagine that'd be that bad, unless they had to tear everything down in the reviews section to do it. However, if that's the case, it might be worth doing now in case Jim "Alpha and Omega" Sterling brings in a much larger audience.

Nothing against Mr. Sterling since I love his work and his reviews are some of the very few I actually read, but I'm pretty sure his own audience has grown exponentially since he came to The Escapist (not specifically as the reviews editor, of course). I wouldn't doubt some Destructoid people who weren't here already might stop by to continue following him, but I don't think he's a much larger name than Yahtzee.

OT: The most recent reviews are generally good enough for me if I want to see reviews of recent games. That said, I don't think it would hurt to make searching for them more user-friendly, but I'm not a site programmer.

Personally, if I were going to look up reviews for 'older' games, I generally just go to the Metacritic page and look at the archived reviews, which typically includes The Escapist's if we had one. So I've never really had much of an issue with the system as it is right now, I suppose.

 

[Marter]

If you guys work out a good system in this thread, I'd recommend suggesting it here so that you can ensure someone on the staff will read it.

Carry on!

 

[WWmelb]

Yeah a categorized system would be damn handy, even if it was just by platform. Can link to the same review from different categories if it's a cross platform release if need be, it wouldn't be hard to do.

This gets me back to thinking about reviews in gaming mags when i was a wee tacker though.

They used an arbitrary score system however it was a lot more detailed than the X/10 or x of 5 stars systems most people employ today.

I remember the gaming mag i read most had a 10 category scoring system, though i cannot remember all the categories. Each category was x / 10 and then the total added to x / 100, or they took the average... i can't remember which, or if it was both and was changed at some point.

For examples

"Ubergame 2.0 review

Blah blah impressions of game description etc etc paragraphs

Score:

Gameplay: 8
Graphics: 10
Sound: 9
Music: 3
Longevity: 5
Aesthetic: 10
Story: 7
Acting: 1
Characters: 10
Stability: 5

Total score

6.8 out of 10 or 68 / 100.

Overall Game excels at some things, is kinda piss poor at others. If the categories that matter to you are high awesome, if you don't give a damn about the categories that are low, awesome! if that is reversed, steer the fuck clear.


Me personally thinks this is a much more detailed way of scoring a game, and it gives the potential player a LOT more info to make a decision with at a glance.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

I would like something that maybe sorts previous reviews by genre and year. Hmmm, maybe a system that allows you to "favorite" reviews and have them in a new tab under your profile would be nice too. I know there are some reviews I would like to go back and read but bookmarking the discussion threads means I have to dive into all of my forum game bookmarks... ._.

 

[tippy2k2]

snip
Score:

Gameplay: 8
Graphics: 10
Sound: 9
Music: 3
Longevity: 5
Aesthetic: 10
Story: 7
Acting: 1
Characters: 10
Stability: 5

snip too!

This is a very good idea. If I'm not mistaken, GamePro used to do this before they went under (though they only had four categories; Game-play, Replay-ability, Controls, and Fun...or at least I believe these were the four but it's been a while).

I suppose you should be able to get that same info if you take the time to read the review itself but if I'm skimming for a cheap game and just want a quick snap-shot of a bunch of potential buys, a list like that would be quite nice.

 

[Strazdas]

as far as ability to view reviews.... just like every other category on this site it seems to be very hard now with new design. we defintelly need ability to categorize search and tag the reviews a decent archive list would be a start. same for news, how the hell do you search for old news on this site? If i want to find news from 1 week ago i pretty much have tos croll the awfully laggy thing on the main page as there is no list of archived news. i end up with more luck googling for the stuff and getting linked back to this site than finding it on the site itself.

 

[omega 616]

As far as reviews go, I think a page or two of written text with a star/number summary of the game is not only ancient but very misleading. I mean when you say it's "43 out of 100", why 43? What would make it a 44? Just seems like throwing a dart at a number smaller than 100.

I think Angry Joe (as silly as he gets sometimes) and Rev3 games do a great job reviewing. They do it in a video format, it lets you see the passion on the face of the person giving the review and it lets you put clips of the game into the video to illustrate there point ('cos sometimes you might think "oh, they are just blowing out of proportion" but when you actually see it, it's different). Plus, it's a lot quicker to listen to a review than slog through a full page essay but it allows you to give a good review, without the reader just clicking on the review to see how many stars it has.

Anyway, it's not like the escapist staff have an issue with being on camera.

 

[Saxnot]

So i guess we can at least agree that we need a system which sorts by platform, score, date, genre?
I don't know how much money and effort this would cost either. could anyone with experience comment?

The idea of a top 50 sounds good, but wouldn't you get that by just sorting the reviews by score and looking at the top 50? or am i not understanding something?

 

[tippy2k2]

So i guess we can at least agree that we need a system which sorts by platform, score, date, genre?
I don't know how much money and effort this would cost either. could anyone with experience comment?

The idea of a top 50 sounds good, but wouldn't you get that by just sorting the reviews by score and looking at the top 50? or am i not understanding something?

Oh you and your "facts"

I suppose you could just do that. I'm just thinking of something like the IMDB Top 250 where it's just one click away and you see The Escapist "greatest hits". I suppose it's not that big of a deal to sort it by review score, just a quick idea.