What's wrong with number scores in reviews?

[Woundingisfun]

Reviews are the problem, not numbers.

A badly written review without a number is ten times worse than a badly written review with a number.

Is that so?
If a review is badly written that implies incompetence on the reveiwer's part and adding a number at the end of the review doesn't make it a better review. If a review isn't well written or talks about important parts of the game, I wouldn't take it's advide, and I certainly wouldn't think that a number made any difference. After all, any anonymous guy with a working internet can put give a game a score, but it takes more intelligence and knowledge to actually write a review and give good arguments for your standpoints.

At least a badly written review with a number gives you some kind of insight into the player's mind. Not everyone can articulate their thoughts & feelings into pretty paragraphs. There might be people out there who have played 1000s of games but who can barely string a sentence together. Their opinions matter just as much as someone who can write effusively but who has very little knowledge of games, arguably more so. Numbers are only inherrently bad when they are either (A) higher than 10 (or use more than ten denominations), or (B) used to score individual parts of a game.

If they want to express themselves but can't manage to write a decent review, then they should just pick a number out of a hat and just go with it. I could not care any more about it anyway.

I care more for video reviews because you can, in most of them, see how it is to play the game while the reviewer explains what he or her likes or dislikes while showing it to you through the video.

 

[Sennz0r]

I see things being rated "Excellent!", and then get an 8.7 numerical rating. Now, when I get an 8.7 for a test I usually think I did awesome (usually because I never study for tests seriously) but when I see that little word "excellent" on my screen images of beuatifully performed ballet sequences or epic kung-fu fight scenes pop into my head, not an 8.7.

 

[DeusFps]

The system is pointless. No game these days gets any less than a 7 regardless of how bad it is.

 

[meece]

I have my own ranking system for....well anything.

it goes from 1-3 exclamation mark marks and it has to be *decent* before it even gets one

for example a mediocre/crappy game gets nothing.
game worth playing: !
most ridiculus game EVER: ! ! !

I find that works the best - since it's easy for something to be distinguishable decent before it's even worth grading. Oh and it uses a scale where it gets progressivly harder to get higher scores. To get a score more than a ! a book/film/game has to be noticable and definitely above par and very good (in my opinion anyway) so it's easy to scale things (when you consider than "! ! !" is next to impossible to get)

But unless you have a system like mine then yes, numerical reviews aren't really worth much.
And even mine does have it's flaws.

 

[mike1921]

A number score is normally the first thing you remember but it's better not to.

It's much better to actually remember points about the game, even if it's just so you could dis-credit some of them and give some of them a little more weight. Obviously calling a game obnoxiously difficult if it's in a certain genre might be a positive for you. I'm an average platformer and get frustrated easily at them so a harder platformer than super mario bros. isn't good for me. However, I like difficulty in an rts (although I'm not good), or a turn based strategy game (sometimes) as long as it has enough depth.

 

[RapaciousBunny]

If reviews have scores on the end, (some) readers might tend to focus more on the number than the actual review. That is a problem because the review contains comments that are much more useful to the reader, like what aspects of the game are good and what are bad and then you as a reader and gamer can see if you have a similar game taste as the reviewer and then decide. A review is after all a subjective piece of writing, it contains personal opinions and responses to a game. Giving a game an absolute score implies an objective standpoint which just isn't the case with a review. In my opinion a review is a piece of advice on whether or not to buy a game, and a score seems more like a judgement.

So leaving out a score forces the reader to read all of the review and contemplate the pros and cons of the game in stead of just looking at the score and the immediately turning it down if it gets a lower score than 6.

I agree with you completely, for gamers. The number still serves a purpose for those mothers/fathers/friends who want to buy a game for someone without understanding the basics, however.

If I was to buy a hockey club for someone as a christmas present and it just said "This club has great mymentricity and phiolontopy, without the hassle of other gomontical clubs," then I'd just sit there staring at the screen. Granted those are made up words (I think), but the point still stands.

 

[Mr0llivand3r]

As anybody who has been around the Escapist for any appreciable amount of time knows, number scores in reviews are roundly reviled. May I ask, what, exactly, is wrong with them? I think a score from 1 to 10 works pretty well - I will usually not play a game at all if it recieves an average score lower than 6. It is pretty bad if there's no actual review and just a number, but a number appended to a review? I see no problem with it.

because as Yahtzee says, "i don't believe a complex opinion can be represented numerically"

 

[Dajmin]

I like reviews with numbers. The only problem really comes when you use one score to judge it AGAINST another game. And if that other game is completely different then it's not fair to say it's better or worse.

However, if I'm looking at a couple basketball games, for example, I know that each one is going to have the same basic idea. Pass the ball, put the ball through the net. Any features outside of that are purely optional and that's when you need to actually look at a box or read a review. But I can tell from a score right away that one game is better at the core parts than the other.
Same goes for a lot of racing games and fighting games, and - let's be honest here - half of the FPS games on the market.

The score on it's own isn't enough to completely sell it, but if something has a 16/100 rating from half a dozen different sources, do you really need to even bother reading the review? That is an instant "yes, buy this" or "no, don't buy this" moment. The numbers should be to make you read (or not) the review, not to say whether you'd like the game or not.

 

[Anton P. Nym]

I just find that numbers don't really say anything about the game other than how much the reviewer either liked the game or was paid by the publisher. Numbers are useless at their primary function, which is to let readers know whether or not they'll like the game... they don't account for subjectivity in tastes in genre (maybe the reviewer was wowed by Barbie's Horse Adventures enough to give it an A++, but that doesn't mean I'd like it) or play style. Numerical scores are also fodder for fanboi-warz, as they squabble over decimal points for their favourites and/or use them as peen-meters.

Maybe, maybe, a site like Metacritic (which averages scores over a huge sample space) might be able to make scores actually meaningful... but in the end numbers really don't add much to a review. I prefer reviews that give me a text description of the game; that way I can decide for myself.

-- Steve

 

[Railu]

I don't hate the concept of numbered reviews, I just hate the flawed principle on which most operate. Especially ones like Gamespot that use a 6-9 rating whose final rating has nothing to do with the actual scores it rates the individual criteria. If you give controls a 6 and graphics an 8, why is it rated 9.5 overall? That's ridiculous.

I also don't trust reviews whose websites receive generous sponsorships from publishers. I like Kotaku's system for reviewing which outlines both what they loved and hated. If that is too much, then forget reading reviews and just look it up on gamerankings.com and leave it at that.

 

[Jerakal]

Numbers are kind of insulting in a way, they summarize that particular reviewers opinion without really giving you anything, people who merely glance at the numbers won't have any idea why it's numbered in that way, they just know that the low numbers are bad.

Some people go off of the numbers alone, which is a terrible way to find games they might have liked, but overlooked because it only had 6.8 and this other game got a 7.5. It's a pretty terrible way to compare games, especially games which, even in the same genre, can be very dissimilar.

I think that numbers are unnecessary and detract from the review itself, they sort of set up the feel of the review before you ever even read it, if a game has a high number you go into the review with high expectations and vice-versa.

I think the reviewing process would be better if people would just take the content of the review for what it was and not give so much significance to the number itself.

 

[Cpt_Oblivious]

Numbered scores for games have, like all thing, their ups and downs. Their ups being that they, unlike the review itself, cannot be taken out of context as so many things are these days. Their downs, however, being that they reduce all the time and effort of the designers into a score that reflects only one person, or a small group of peoples' view on it.
It also seems that it's helping to dumb down our culture along with abbreviations such as the dreaded lol and horrific stereotypes shunted into the media.

Overall though, it's a matter of opinion and that's mine.

 

[PAGEToap44]

Reviews should leave you to make up your own mind.

 

[y8c616]

Reveiws are based around an opinion of the reviewer, which is a Qualitative form of data. Numbers are a Quantitative form of data; its is very difficult to Qualitative data in a Quantitative way

 

[implodingMan]

I do believe that you can have a numerical representation of a game's overall quality, but a 1-10 scale is just too many choices, and dividing each into ten more increments is just asking for trouble.

A 1-5 scale is more effective I think, with 1 being terrible, 2 being poor, 3 being decent, 4 being great, and 5 being a rare "buy this damn game" score.

Also, 1-10 reviewers tend to review in terms of 7-10, with everything below that being TERRIBLE.

 

[darthzew]

It depends on the reviewer. Some reviewers, like Yahtzee, are pretty clear if they like or didn't like a game and that's that. Other reviewers are more about the actual quality of a game. I for one would a combination of Giantbomb and Yahtzee; something in the middle. I think the five star system works amazingly well:

5 = Excellent, amazing game. Not perfect, mind you, but definitely awesome. (MGS4, GTA4, Gears 2)
4 = Great but not for everyone; not flawless. (Fallout 3, Far Cry 2, Viva Pinata: TIP)
3 = Good but flawed Still worth playing if you're interested. (Star Wars: TFU, Mirror's Edge).
2 = Bad, with a little charm. This is probably what a reviewer might call "mediocre" (Fracture).
1 = Awful.(Rock Revolution)

I like it because it doesn't get as nitty-gritty as a lot of systems do. You know, like IGN's system that makes you believe there is a real difference between 9.8 and 9.9. I guess some people like that, but you should really read a review to justify a score and the star system is best at that. E.g, "why Mortal Kombat vs. DC get five stars?"

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

To me, the problem with giving a game a score gives a false impression of a definite, scientifically calculated answer when the very notion that fun and enjoyment is something that can be systematically calculated out using a cookie cutter set of equations and metrics would strike most as asinine.

The end result of any game review ought to be one of two things: either the reviewer throws any hope of objectivity out the window and says they did or did not enjoy, or they quite simply give you a list of uninteresting facts about the game.

As an example, Mercenaries 2 was one of the most enjoyable and yet profoundly disappointing gaming experiences of the last year for me. The 6 - 7 scores it was given by sites like gamespy seem to be, by my accounting at any rate, incredibly generous. The game was absolutely chock full of bugs - a problem made all the worse because I had truly enjoyed the first installment. After I nearly threw the disk aside in disgust, a friend and I gave the game a go cooperatively. Though the problems were still present and often more noticable in multiplayer, I found that I actually had quite a bit of fun playing the game. The only difference was that a single character that existed in my little game world was suddenly controlled by a friend; that was all it took to make me overlook the giant festering pile of garbage that the game consisted of.

How can I measure such a factor objectively? The game itself was barely worth playing from a single player standpoint. The story was predictable, uninspired and unneeded. The graphics themselves were far from groundbreaking, and in fact seemed little improved over the prequel. Neither the AI nor the difficulty were improved in the slightest, and most enemies would be charitably described as "suicidal" making the game incredibly easy most of the time unless you happened to be particularly unlucky (in fact, Yahtzee's review of the single player game mirrors my own opinions so just watch that instead). By itself, I would never recommend the game meaning that if I were to assign the game a score it would probably sit well under 5 on a 1 - 10 scale. With a good friend added, it easily becomes a solid 8 or 9.

Did a bad game suddenly become good? No - it's still objectively speaking a bad game. Only by bringing in additional factors that one can hardly credit to the developers is it suddenly worth playing. Giving the game a score makes a complex issue seem much more two dimensional. I'd rather get a review where someone tells me where the game succeeds and fails in their minds because what I'm really looking for is something to base a future purchase or rental on. I can give it an imaginary score later if I'm really that interested.

 

[Zetona]

If the number represents a very simple summary of a reviewer's opinion, then that's fine. But the system has to be defined. You can't just say a game deserves an 8.8 out of 10 without defining that 8-range games are generally great games, and a higher 8 is quite excellent.