@Zeldafan79 Honestly, NintendoLife's Joys/Cons system is probably the best rating system I've seen. Full review for when I want the in depth, and a bite sized summary with both what works and what doesn't for when I'm too busy or uninterested to read the full review. I don't even feel the need to look at their numerical scores.
@cryptologous Technically flawless that isn't fun to play still isn't flawless. 10/10 would indicate perfection in every way.
Yes, the Joy/Con section is exactly what you say - a reason to not read the review. Reviews are full of subjective opinion and (no offense to any reviewers) don't mean much to me and I rarely read them anymore beyond a skim for details I want to know. There's a lot of well-reviewed games that I just didn't enjoy and vice-versa. So, the list is the first thing I go to. It's concise information about what's good and bad that usually doesn't have subjective bias. That's all I want.
If the list says something sort of vague, like the current DQ review says "Modern features that make the game more palatable", I'll skim the review to see what those "modern features" actually are.
@NotTelevision "Reviews have always needed to be cranked out for publication, but I don’t find a scoring system irrelevant overall. It’s just critics need to decide in haste what number to put on a game."
I'm not sure if I'm misreading this but these seem like contradictory ideas. What need is there to put a number on a game aside from getting Metacritic traffic? You could write a 4,000 word breakdown of your thoughts on a game, and by simply slapping a number at the end, your audience will now subconsciously reframe the entire review in their head to try and match the score. Any inconsistencies between your detailed analysis and the lone digit at the end can and will cause friction because your perception of an 8 doesn't match Weedkill720's. I can understand wanting to write a review in haste to keep up with game releases, but I don't see why you need to throw a number on it too.
That all said, your ideas about what constitutes a 10 make sense and are closer to ideal than most I've seen around the place. And yes, I'd be willing to go as far as to say BOTW has some of the worst dips in quality I've seen in a triple A title in a good while but the peaks are just that good that I have no qualms considering it a classic title.
@Zeldafan79 Gaming review hiveminds seem to inflate scores more often than they probably should. You check the highest rated albums of all time on a website like Rate Your Music and none of them even breach around the 8.5/10 mark. It's weird.
I like the idea of your fun ranking, but at the end of the day if someone doesn't agree with those definitions, people will just see it as a 5 star system. Even NL uses definitions with their 10 point system and hardly anyone ever acknowledges them.
@cryptologous Hey man. I get your confusion with the above two sentences. My point is I’m not against a rating or a scoring system, since I think it makes it easier to catalogue a particular game’s appeal as compared to other ones. Sure what one person says is an 8.5 may not align with another person’s conception of what that score constitutes, but assuming they have a body of reviews, you would at least be able to weigh their feelings on a particular piece of media as compared to the others they have previously rated.
For me the great limitation is that scores and overall feelings of a piece of media, need time to “ferment” since initial impressions will change. If anything the score attached to games when first released, is just the score based on the 15-20 hours they had with the game. Hardly enough time to reflect on the way the interlocking systems gelled, and how the game world (assets, NPCs, Story) will hold up in the long run. Critics are also evaluating games for general consumption, so that “recommended” or “not recommended” way of evaluating art is flawed in itself. If the general public doesn’t like obtuse challenges and sometimes tedium, then the game will usually be acknowledged as flawed because of that. I happen to like those kinds of games (hence my Rainworld slugcat avatar), because I enjoy working through problems and strife.
So it’s quite complex the whole issue really. I’d say keep the scoring system for now, or at least until another more ideal way of ranking games comes along. I don’t think aggregators like you mentioned are the most ideal way to go about it, but in a sense a number (though blunt) at least allows me to weigh the how the game stacks up as compared to other releases. The rest I leave up to my own judgement and knowledge of what appeals to me.
Added: I actually can’t stand comments that argue and complain to the reviewer about a particular score assigned to a game. If one doesn’t agree with a particular point the reviewer made then that’s fair, but constantly arguing over the number at the bottom of the page is meaningless. I take it for what it’s worth and move on, but some people have the tendency to look to the number as holy. I’m not going to fight with a critic over their assigned score since it is, like I mentioned earlier, merely the subjective scale given to them to evaluate a game. It just becomes really pedantic in the comment section sometimes.
@Zeldafan79 I like your rating system and have long thought of similar non-numerical systems. I was thinking of a four-category system along the lines of: avoid, okay/worth trying, good, and excellent. But the specifics don't matter. I think getting rid of the numbers is what matters. Numbers mess with people's minds and get some people comparing games between genres, generations, and even different reviewers, and it doesn't work. A 10 rating is meaningless without the context of the review itself. I've certainly played highly-rated games that I didn't like. But I am definitely more in favor of a system like you suggested.
@NotTelevision Cheers for the clarification. That's essentially why I'd noted in a previous comment I'm not against ratings for personal archival use. I think I'm making a bad assumption that readers won't (and in fairness, they often don't) pay attention to who is reviewing what on a website populated with numerous authors. Hence my emphasis on personal archival use. I'm essentially advocating for no scores because they often push gaming discourse towards semantics and throwing shade at an establishment (NL, IGN, Gamespot, etc) for the decisions of the individual writer. Your points make complete sense and I'm likely just arguing ideals at this point.
I do wish review culture for gaming was the same as it was for music and film, that being you can't review it until you've finished it, but I guess that's a huge logistics problem given the variance of film length starts around an hour and finishes at three whereas a videogame can start at 15 minutes and finish at 150 hours. Kudos for bringing this point up because it really elevates your line about evaluating games for general consumption. I'm once again arguing ideals but ideals and market demands are quite different things.
Fair points all round. I think it would be cool if the writers were better incentivised to keep their game collections in check on the website then, as right now it can be difficult to tell a writer's thoughts on stuff if they haven't explicitly written about it elsewhere. Websites like Sputnik Music are sort of built around personal music collections, even at the staff level, so the whole "at least allows me to weigh the how the game stacks up as compared to other releases" idea is a lot easier to clarify on a widespread level among specific staff and users you have come to trust.
@cryptologous Yeah I agree with your point about the discourse it creates. I’ve added some remarks on that in the above comment, but you sound like a list and catalogue guy like me. With many albums, games, and movies strewn around the place it’s hard to know what is worth your attention. So yeah that’s the value in numbers and ratings for me.
What does 10/10 mean to me: well, in the first instance, as it is said there, nothing is Perfect, so a 10/10 is simply the idea of any of us cataloging something we like and we see it as "Perfect for us".
Although, when the criticism classifies something 10/10 as Perfect, what I believe is that (leaving aside conspiracy theories, XD) they fulfill "scoring points" for them, that is, if they are qualifying a game, For example, if I were critical, my scoring points would be: Gameplay, Replay Value, Multiplayer (offline-Online, Graphics, Presentation, Sound and Music. If a game meets those points perfectly, that game deserves 10; and therefore, the criics are demonstrating that if that game is perfect for them, it is perfect for everyone.
However, as I mentioned at the beginning, "perfection" is an idea of each one, that is, it is subjective, therefore, if for me a game has that 10/10, another person, that same game does not meet any of those points and therefore 9/10 or less; This is why, as in this Nintendo Life site, there is a section on scoring policies that mentions: "the qualifications are subjective"; so therefore, a 10/10 will always be subjective; If I see a 10/10 on a website, it's that for them, the game is perfect, and if I give a 10/10, it's perfect for me.
Personally I almost never let a reviews numerical score determine the game purchases i make or don't make. I'm a try it myself before making the final decision kinda guy. I decide if a game is good or not. The reviewers job is too give me information on the game and tell me things about it that i may or may not like. Then i choose based on the pros and cons.
I also can't stand when a game gets criticised for being too out of touch with modern gaming trends or too archaic in it's style when that was exactly the intent. Those retro on purpose games that reviwers love to dog for being outdated.
Oh and can we please stop acting like a remastered game that was great 10 years ago is suddenly trash or at the very least a 6/10 now? I've seen so many times something that was highly rated just last gen gets docked two or even three points just because it's on modern consoles now. Like it's suddenly bad because our standards are higher. If it was great just last gen on PS3 ain't no reason it's worse now. It's the same freakin game. Not a full blown remake. I hate that!
I don't believe 10/10 games exist. No game is perfect, every game has flaws or could be improved upon in various aspects. Personally, I'm annoyed when I see any particular game being advertised with a perfect score, from any number of game journalists. It feels like an outright lie.
In an odd way, I place more value on 9/10 scores than I do 10/10 scores.
Switch Physical Collection - 1,247 games (as of April 15th, 2024)
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I'm going to use the F-Zero series to explain my thoughts on this a bit.
I think F-Zero X is a perfect 10 game. Contols and gameplay are tight as can be, runs flawlessly, every mode is fantastic, and the simple graphics running at a smooth 60fps looks good to me. Great execution of everything it attempted to do.
F-Zero GX is better than X, in fact it is my favorite game of all time. X was basically flawless, but GX somehow mannages to improve on even that. But GX has some issues that bring it down to i guess a 9.5 or so if I had to give it a score. Half the missions in story mode aren't fun, and F-Zero TV just shouldn't exist. They don't wreck the game, and if you cut them out entirely, you would still have more game left than there was in all of X. But they are a flaw in what is otherwise the best game ever.
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1. Pokemon Crystal. How do you beat a game that took the entire world by storm? You fix the bugs, flesh out the combat system, double the world size, and add an ambitious real-world clock system so that players literally integrate the game into their lives. It astounds me how Game Freak produced one of the greatest sequels of all time, and then never reached such heights ever again.
2. Tales of Symphonia. A lot of people talk about how you can't have both linearity and a traditionally told JRPG story. This game is proof that that's wrong. The developers ingeniously found the parts of the story that they can easily rearrange, and allows the player to approach them in multiple orders, with only slightly changed dialogue. Story is cliche, yes, but very well executed with one of the best tragic villains in video games. Cast is likable. Combat is terrific. Customization functions were vast and interesting.
3. Super Mario Galaxy. This is the only Mario game I can think of where virtually every level is memorable. The music is amazing. And it perfectly towed the line between the 3D collectathon and the 3D obstacle course Mario games. And the story and atmosphere! Galaxy 2, at least IMO, drops the atmosphere, and doesn't revisit levels enough for them to make a good impact. I frankly don't remember many Galaxy 2 levels at all. Odyssey has really cool places, but the linear levels are really short.
4. Breath of the Wild. I don't have to say why. Just look at what everyone else says about it.
I don't believe 10/10 games exist. No game is perfect, every game has flaws or could be improved upon in various aspects. Personally, I'm annoyed when I see any particular game being advertised with a perfect score, from any number of game journalists. It feels like an outright lie.
In an odd way, I place more value on 9/10 scores than I do 10/10 scores.
10/10 doesn't mean literally flawless. It means functionally flawless, meaning that, for what the game aims to do, it does it perfectly. For example, I consider Spider-man 2 to be a 10/10 movie. That doesn't mean it doesn't have flaws, it certainly does. Spidey's costume kind of sucks. A lot of the movie is pretty unrealistic. And yet, I don't really care about those things. My overall experience watching the movie is still perfect.
On the flip side something super trivial can fundamentally mar a game's experience. The inability to skip blade opening cutscenes in XC2 when it first came out almost had me putting down the game because it was so irritating. From an objective standpoint, it is pretty trivial coding, and a pretty small part of the game. But it completely ruins the fun of activating core crystals.
10/10 Games Club for me:
Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening
Final Fantasy VI
Persona 3
Street Fighter III 3rd Strike
Marvel vs. Capcom 2
Final Fantasy X-1
Devil May Cry 5
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
the Castlevania Sorrow duology
Order of Ecclesia
Xenoblade Chronicles 1
Tales of Vesperia, Beseria, Zestria and Symphonia
EDIT: Forgot Mega Man 2, Halo 1-3, Mario Galaxy 1 and Sonic 3 & Knuckles
This whole “10/10 doesn’t exist because nothing is perfect” attitude is a bit silly and unhelpful. There are plenty of 5 star systems in the world, and they seem get by just fine by using the entirety of their scale. In that case, if you refuse to give anything anything the full five stars, you effectively lose 20% of your given scale all to make some pseudo-philosophical statement about how “〜perfection doesn’t exist〜”. The most you could give anything would amount to 80%, which is severely limiting.
Viewing things from the other end, we can presumably all agree that when magazines typically used a percentage system, that scores of 96 and 97 weren’t contravening any fundamental laws of existence. Ocarina of Time getting a score of 97 doesn’t seem too controversial in hindsight. And yet, what does 97% round to on the less fine-grained, 10 point scale? The supposedly nonexistent 10/10!
In short, if you’re fine with games being awarded above 95 points on a percentage based scale, you are mathematically also in agreement with the same game getting 10/10 on a chunkier ten point system.
As others have said the "perfection doesn't exist" mentality is an immature way to look at giving something a score. It's the smug 8 year old who really needs to slam his very punchable face into the pavement response to review scales.
In reality a review score is nothing more than a test. A subjective test but a test. Is it possible to get 100% in a test that someone has set? Of course it is. All this means is that the thing that's being tested exceeds the highest benchmarks the maker of the test has set. At this point that new game will create new benchmarks that you are comparing all other games to.
It's also why reviews from different periods of time and platforms can't easily be compared. Of course the reviewer is going to be setting different standards. A 10/10 on the N64 ported as it was on the N64 would almost surely not be a 10/10 on the Switch. Especially in this ever changing media numerous new benchmarks have been set over the last 20+ years.
It should also be remembered that, at the end of the day, a review is a discussion between reviewer and reader about whether or not a thing is worth buying. In this context the review scale would be more like:
<5 - Degrees of "Avoid, don't buy this", on this scale I'd say 0/10 would be literally a scam
6 - it's not great but if you're really into this series/genre we're not going to stop you
7 - if you're interested in this style of game it's worth your time
8 - it's worth your time, put it on your shortlist of games to get
9 - if you have this platform you should play this
10 - Generation defining, buy into this platform specifically for this game
I do not rate games out of review and stuff
10/10 for me are the following things:
1. The Whole Castlevania Series (with few exceptions).
2. God of War for PS4.
3. Spider-Man for PS4.
5. Legend of Zelda BotW.
6. Bioshock Trilogy.
7. Batman Arkham games (All of them).
8. Elder Scrolls Series.
9. Fallout Series.
10. Warcraft 3.
11. Diablo 1,2,3.
12. StarCraft 1,2.
In terms of 10/10, i do believe they exist, just that ive never experienced one honestly. Im pretty controversial on some games that many really love, so thats probably why. The game i could see me thinking is a ten in the future though is pokemon mystery dungeon explorers of sky. That game is pretty amazing, just haven't played recently enough to for sure know.
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Topic: What is a 10/10 to you?
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