What does 5/10 really mean?

[ace_of_something]

I used to review movies on a scale of 3 to 8. Three being the worst and Eight being the best.
Feel free to apply this to games. Reviewing numerically is kind of stupid when you think about it too much. The text is more important than the numbers.

 

[The_Prophet]

Well, here's mine:

1-3=Bad/horrible
4-5=Average
6-7=Decent
8=Good
9=Great
10=Excellent

And that's me.

And for me

 

[Kermi]

Apologies, I thought you were being ironic. No I don't think most essays should be able to get 100% as there always going to be some flaws. However, essays are different in someways because they are marked rather than rated. To get 100% all you need to do is respond to the task and basically complete a checklist of everything they want. If whole list is completed, then they get 100%. Rating it would be different as that is entirely subjective whereas marking something is only partially so.

How exactly do games differ? Sometimes a game that fulfils all its objectives and performs brilliantly at them gets marked down because it didn't tick a few arbitrary boxes written in by the reviewer.

It would be like writing a comprehensive essay on Agatha Christie for a class on crime fiction, then having your professor mark you down because they're a Doyle fan and there were no references to Sherlock Holmes.

 

[Fraught]

Well, here's mine:

1-3=Bad/horrible
4-5=Average
6-7=Decent
8=Good
9=Great
10=Excellent

And that's me.

What? 4-5 average? 4-5 is a game that's guaranteed to spew dogshit out of your console. It's game that tries to compete with the likes of Superman 64, Big Rigs, E.T and Charlie's Angels.

But yeah, 5 is a big doo-doo.

My minimum requirement for a game is over 8, with the exception of Bully: Scholarship Edition, which I absolutely freakin' loved.

So yeah, 5 is uber-bad, 6 is something I'd rather not consider, and 7 I will take, if there are no other better games that month, and if I have been waiting for that game, before the reviews came out.

 

[nekolux]

Actually Game informer uses a 7 point scale meaning that 7 is the passing mark.
the thing is they do that so that it looks better to the people who do not know how GI scores games.

 

[COR 2000]

Well, here's mine:

1-3=Bad/horrible
4-5=Average
6-7=Decent
8=Good
9=Great
10=Excellent

And that's me.

What? 4-5 average? 4-5 is a game that's guaranteed to spew dogshit out of your console. It's game that tries to compete with the likes of Superman 64, Big Rigs, E.T and Charlie's Angels.

But yeah, 5 is a big doo-doo.

My minimum requirement for a game is over 8, with the exception of Bully: Scholarship Edition, which I absolutely freakin' loved.

So yeah, 5 is uber-bad, 6 is something I'd rather not consider, and 7 I will take, if there are no other better games that month, and if I have been waiting for that game, before the reviews came out.

Well, I usually rate a game with a scale of 1-5, so I'll Elaborate. Again:

1=Bad/horrible
2=Average
3=Decent, Okay
4=Good
5=Great

 

[NiceGurl_14]

ok 5/10 basically means maybe check it out but it's not worth buying.

 

[Dumbfish1]

Theres so many games coming out that people wont waste money on anything below a 6...

At least me anyway

 

[Archereus]

Most game magazines have a rating system with a range from 1-10 or 1-100.
According to their guidelines, 1 means something like "epic fail", 5 means "mediocre" and 10 means "legendary".

But from my personal experience, a 5/10 game is usually far less than mediocre.
I mean, would you ever consider buying a 5/10 game?

The real meaning of these numbers IMO is this:
1-6 = not worth my time
7 = mediocre
8 = good
9-10 = great

So I end up having a x/4 rating system,
which makes a lot more sense to me than having ratings of 56 or 72.

But maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm overly critical.

What does 5/10 or 50/100 mean for you?

yeah you make sense, they game still sucks if it is just making a 5 out of 10 or such. It needs to make it over 7 at least. But here some thing else to through at you it all depends on the crititque also. Some palces are more strict on their rating then other critiques so a 5 for one magazine could be different from a 5 on another. Some magazines give high scores just because of graphical amazement. Some dont really care about graphics. So you gotta watch that too. The rating means differently from person to person, all depending on what they categorize as more important

 

[improbable]

Numbers are meaningless without words. 5/10 could be the worst game of the season, or it could be a game that is really astoundingly good if you play it in one particular frame of mind, or it could be a pair of shoes.

 

[Elurindel]

I quite like Yahtzee's way of reviewing things, although obviously it's not quite snippy enough to fit in a box. What about a couple of sentences, or a paragraph about what the reviewer thinks? A number just doesn't say a lot.

 

[dukethepcdr]

If a game doesn't get a score higher than the medium score for whatever their scoring system is in at least three professional reviews and a handful of non-pro reviews that I read, I don't waste my money on it. I might get it later on if I can find it used or at a greatly reduced price if I am really curious about it. Games cost too much these days to spend $50 on a game that got a medium score.

To me medium scores mean the game isn't totally broken yet it's not much fun either.

I also look at who the reviewers are too. If in the review or sometime in the past in their bio that is in the magazine or website, they reveal that they are not fans of the type of game they are reviewing, I take that into consideration too. A reviewer who hates "kart racing" games will probably give a game based on that game mechanic a lower score than someone who does like kart racing, for example.

 

[Cid Silverwing]

Scores fail at measuring public opinions because you can't represent them mathemathically. I go with simple verbal recommendations.

 

[NolaSoundman]

The five star review works almost the same way as the 5/10 score. What exactly does 2 1/2 stars out of 5 really mean? Most of the time the only good points that are brought up about a game receiving this type of review are not anything a gamer willing to buy it would care about or want. In my opinion, a game review should be as simple as Buy It, Rent It, or Ignore It. Seriously, how do games like Fallout 3, Call Of Duty 4, and Metal Gear Solid 4 get 9 or 9.5 or 92/100 reviews? Why not just 10 or 100? You know they're good. Why should the little inconsistencies like: "load times are 10.3 seconds longer than I wanted them to be" or "game camera gets annoying in 1 or 2 parts of this 80 hour+ game" keep you from buying excellent games? Would you honestly NOT buy Fallout 3 because the third person view is not as good as Metal Gear Solid's? Please.

 

[Aid n]

Games magazine has an excellent definition of the "marks out of ten system" which they use. They argue that 5/10 does represent an average game and it is a rarity for a game to score full marks.

A lot of magazines are influenced by game producers and will alter the final score acordingly, a classic example is the notorius gamespot review of kane and lynch.