Talking Point: Do We Still Need Review Scores?

Scores are both cancerous and great. People take them as a fact way to often, but it’s also a great way to warn people or notify people.
We can’t live with them but without neither

Please please please keep scores.

I don’t bother with sites that don’t use them.

I’m all for awards too.

“Essential” etc.... Switch player magazine (which is excellent by the way) uses both and I really like it.

Too many people skip entire reviews just to see what the score of a game is. I think it's a good thing to remove them

Scores end up being too confusing and mostly just become ammo for the worst of comment ready review complainers.

I dig when sites do a simple "Reccommended", "Avoid", " Buy it now!"

Then read the article to see why they came to that conclusion.

Too often i see reviewers give drastically different review scores for games that they spoke on almost exactly the same way

No we dont. Speaking from reading reviews and writing my own, it's just a generalization without the full context of why a number may be.

If I know people just look at the score I give, and not the review I wrote to justify it, my effort is effectively de-valued. I'm sure I am far from the only one at that.

Even after having written one, I would every now and then get a bit of anxiety over the score, wondering if I was too harsh/generous, or I'd compare to a score I give for another game I liked/disliked.

I hate scores. Simple as that.

Keep scores, but categorize them well.

For example, put "Indy Score: 9/10", etc. I think one of the issues with scores is that they really have to be read in the context they are given. So an indie game score is not an apples to apples with a AAA score.

The other way works pretty well, but whatever.

I mean, I skip to the bottom of reviews because I like to know as little as possible when going into games and just want to know if it’s good. But a well written conclusion can probably do that much still.

@Spectra that would be an overview not a review

No score is an adequate substitute for a good, well-written review. However, I still feel scores are useful - I'm not above checking metacritic, particularly when playing older systems with well-established libraries.

I like Nintendolife's scoring method and hope it stays but I also completely understand other outlets and reviewers frustrations when it comes to people simply judging a game, review or reviewers by a single metric.

I like review scores, particularly the ones that use the 10-point scale. Everyone understands what it means and it’s a great point of reference about the quality of a game. Netflix went to a “recommend” or “don’t recommend” system and I don’t like it. Too much gray area.

I'd be fine with something like this:
Not Recommended
Recommended
Essential

Please please PLEASE keep review scores. The whole argument against them is busted; review scores provide a much wider scale than simple words do.

Honestly if there is a game I'm on the fence about or am just partially considering, there is no way I'm going to read a whole review about the game. And a 'recommended' doesn't tell me enough information, but a 8/10 would tell me everything I need to know about whether a game is worth my time and money.

I think the main issue is using an out of 10 system or even worse an out of 100/10.0 system. I think something simple like thumbs down, mixed and thumbs up is a lot clearer maybe with an extra low option for complete catastrophes.

Scores are absolutely necessary. There are thousands of games out there and not everyone has the time to read them all. Having a review score means one can check if the gane is good or not. Then the reader has the choice to read the review if they're interested. Changing numbers to "I like it" or "you should buy it" is absurd because it ends up meaning the same thing: how good the game is.

@Yrreiht i’ll always skip to the score first before fully reading the review. If a game has a review score of 3/10, I can pretty much determine that I don’t need to waste my time reading the review. If it’s something I’m super interested in, i’ll still read the review regardless, but knowing the score right off the bat can be a time saver. I don’t have hours to read websites & game reviews like I did when I was a kid.

You know what? I think the solution is easy and simple from here. Keep the review scores, but please do add in the systems that Eurogamer has been using. Declaring what is Recommended or even Essential along with the numbered scores should be a standard that informs and caters to all audiences.

I have no problem with review score done sensibly. A scale from one to five (with no half points!) is ample for getting the message across, and it avoids the glut of worthless scores that occupy the bottom half of a ten-point scale.

But do we NEED review scores? Obviously not. In fact, their absence might even encourage reviewers to be more thoughtful in how they write their reviews.

Essential/avoid/blank would suffice. I have come around to scoreless reviews, I think.

I don’t hate number scores but the system has flaws. Should a $10 game made by one developer be judged on the same scale as a $60+ game made by fifty people.

@Nehalem I think the content of the review ought to make clear how to understand the score. If not, then it's probably not a well-written review.

I have no problem with scores, and frankly, I think some people take scores way, way too seriously. I encourage people to read multiple reviews too, especially if it's a game you're not sure about. Just read the review, and take the the score as a secondary measure of how the reviewer felt. We have to remember, these are opinions, not a rule of law. If something gets a 7/10, that's considered "good" and doesn't mean you should throw in the towel on the game. Read the review and see if the reasons the reviewer knocked off a few points would bug you or not.

If you ever thought you shouldn't buy or even PLAY something because it said "7" at the end of a webpage, that is reason #1 to get rid of binary reviews.

I’d be more interested in a scores system that reflected value for money.

If we take a AAA, 200+ hour game like Breath of the Wild with an RRP of £50 as our benchmark, each game would be given a ‘value’ score of the price the reviewer would pay for the game.

For example a game like Okami is well worth the £18 you’d pay for it in terms of quality and content as is Lumines as it has replayability.

ARMS might be rated £25, as in wait until you see it on sale before buying it. Terrible games would net a £0 score.

@ReaderRagfish that’s a valid point, games in very niche genres can often be not that fun to people who don’t typically play those games when in reality they are very well done.

It’s sad the poll is leaning towards Yes. What matters is the qualitative assessment, and an understanding that what you’re reading is the reviewer’s OPINION. Then you use your brain and make your own judgement.

I personally think people want scores because they don’t/can’t read the review and just want a score. Gives them something to rant about.

Can someone please explain to me the difference between a game that scores, say 95%, and one which scores 94%? Like seriously, what does that extra 1% mean? I’m very curious to understand.

Of course, this only holds true if the review actually reviews the game. Too many reviews go off on tangents and discuss hippy stuff (cough Eurogamer cough). Cover the game itself, how it plays etc, and the words should be everything you need to make an informed choice.

Not that it matters much. Scores or not, most people buy the same games anyway.

Review scores are pointless at this stage. I'd much rather have a well written review.

@Royalblues All or nothing system... That is the dumbest idea ever. Have you ever stopped to think about what you thought up when you come up with something so ridiculous and absurd?

I say keep scores and pay no mind to those who don't want scores.

I don't like reading a lot of reviews. They often focus on slick wording and their point gets lost. I often don't know what they actually thought about the game until I get to the bottom of the review and see the score.

@Dr_Corndog I hear what your saying, but I still would appreciate the delineation. Context matters and being upfront isn't a bad thing.

@Royalblues Please do. I think your ranting was somewhat annoying and doesn't seem to convince me.

Scores are like a resume of the article.
If I see a specific score that doesnt have to mean the score is for me. A review is an opinion. Where did the idea to abandone scores come from? To me it’s kinda stupid.

Why does the game world keep changing?
I think it is good the way it is.
It is like Apple getting rid of the headphone jack on the Ipad X.
Like forget that this Ipad I got is my last one. Aint gonna support that bs!

Hugely in favor of getting rid of scores. Games are far too subjective for the ones at the high end (where anything "recommended" would be grouped) to be delineated by 8 vs 9 or 9.5 or whatever. If it's good enough to be worth considering, it's good enough to be worth reading what its strengths are and then deciding if I want to spend money on it based on those details.

If it's not good enough to be worth considering, that can be quickly communicated via text without a score.

Metacritic wouldn't work without the scores but I like the recommended and essential idea.

"Why does the world keep changing?"

This isn't new. Book reviews used to very frequently not include "scores", before the only reviews anybody read for books started being Amazon's star rating.

Long pieces of art aren't consumer products. If it's broken, that's something important to report, but if it's good, numbers don't communicate why.

Metacritic has agreed to work with Polygon specifically on this shift, so at least in that specific instance, nothing has been lost.

Unless it’s a game I’ve really been anticipating I will skim the review, read the conclusion and check the score. With the score I will add or subtract 1 point. I don’t believe in 10/10, but I appreciate reviewer assigning a score of some sort.

I've never liked review scores. They've never made sense to me. I say that as a former critic who used scores: The scores were and are meaningless. They're kind of a random number made up to give a numeric qualification to what paragraphs of text spend time and effort delving into and detailing. They make Metacritic happy and Metacritic is a as critical for a review publication as Google is for an app, but they diminish the reality. The text can clearly describe that a game has strengths and flaws, and that a certain gamer with certain interests or pet peeves may be too frustrated by, or will easily be drawn in desipte some faults and identify who may or may not be interested in a game (which is ultimately the point of reading reviews, to find out if you will like a game, not to appraise it's objective, measured value.)

There's a reason Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert were the top film critics for decades with their deliciously simple thumbs up/down across the duo who notoriously had different tastes. if it got two thumbs up, it's fantastic, if it got two thumbs down it has to be terrible, and if it's 50/50 you may or may not like it depending on tastes. So different than declaring a film to be "73%" which paints a very false picture of what it's real merits are.

I don't read reviews very often but I like to guess the review scores so I tend to click almost every review here. I also read the conclusion while I'm at it. I usually know if I want to buy a game or not by the time reviews come out.

@Royalblues Just like your comments have nothing of substance either. We need scores and an all or nothing system is the dumbest idea a person can think up. I mean, if that gets implemented, then people would want the old scoring system back since scores are better than a all or nothing system.

Actually, we need only review scores and nothing else.

What we need to do is remember that 'critics' are just people. Most people do not have a clue what they are talking about so yeah, go think for yourself ya muppet.

Of course! With soooo many games (thanks to the indies) we need to see at a glance how you guys rate a game. If a developer is fumbling about, we should know. We can only spend our money once!

To be honest I don't care for reviews, there aren't many people that right good ones and I can decide if I want a game quite easily. Worst case scenario is that I have to check some gameplay on YouTube before I make a decision.

Destroy all scores. Numerical scores add nothing to a review. They only make people skip to the contextless number at the end.

Reviews on this site are usually unneccessarily long so I only read the overall part and the score most of the time. (And I usually detract two points from it because it's a Nintendo fan site. Even this way, I had some nasty negative surprises with games..)

I think the fair way would be a score PLUS a price category.

People may think a 3 dollar game can be an 8 but let's face it, it can't, compared to AAA games.

So what you should do is categorise games based on their prices and the score should reflect that. (Or just write 'price when reviewed' in the article so people would know.)

AAA titles, normal titles and indie titles are three different categories. And on Switch, we have countless of indie games from 0.99 to 14.99 and those are definitely different categories in terms of quality, too.

Wow. I quite like scores, perhaps because I’m a numberish fellow myself; but frankly a lot of the comments have made me see the value of scoreless reviews. I understand those who’d only read a summary to give themselves minimal spoilers, but those who proudly say they don’t read the review at all? That means that not only do they not appreciate at all what games journalists actually put the effort into (the writing), it also means they don’t understand why that score’s been given. The score is only an opinion, and without knowing why that opinion exists, how can you tell if the points the reviewer likes are the same as those you will? I find that ludicrous.

I also see reviewers getting a lot of flack for the scores they award from people who haven’t read, or don’t care about, why they awarded that score. Not to mention the pressure to compare your score against EVERY SINGLE GAME that’s got a higher or lower score before some muppet chirps up, ‘OMG U gave dis less than ur colleague gave Zelda the Flute of Flatulence ur carp @ riting!!!’ In summary, if I were a reviewer, I’d want my reviews to be scoreless.

I do quite like scores though, so long as by reading the review I can see where they came from. But they’re not necessary.

@Henmii - Unfortunately, reviews have come to mean "how to spend money". But critical analysis should ideally have no bearing on economics. We want to read reviews of a car before we buy one. Do we want to see a review of a painting before we pay to look at it?

If people think that's a false equivalency, it's only because gaming media has skewed what reviews were meant to be in the first place.

If you want games to "be art", we should treat them like art, not like consumer reviews where you add up all the pros and cons and deduce a cumulative score, like they were a device to purchase. Instead, tell us what they meant to you.

I think it would be a good idea for you to re-review certain games over time, since day 1 issues are usually fixed with patches and the whole games as a service trend is starting to become a staple with some franchises. But definitely keep the scores, I like 'em!

I really like the Polygon reviews in the past, but without a score, it’s hard to say how good or bad a game is. I always read the text, but the score helps nail down exactly how good or bad the reviewer felt the game was. This score removal provides less information to the reader. I will still read Polygon’s reviews regardless, but a score would be better.

How about we go back to the old days and have scores out of ten for -

Graphics
Sound
Gameplay
Difficulty
Addictiveness
Overall

Obviously we'd have to add

FPS (Docked)
FPS (Undocked)
Age of port

To keep the comments section happy.

Personally with so many games coming out recently I check genre, then skim the start of the review before checking the score at the bottom.

If I'm still interested (and that could be for a heroically bad score, as well as for a game I'm interested in, be it 7/10 or 10/10) I'll read the whole review.

I do pay attention to review scores

I like the way Kotaku does it. They have a full-fledged well written review with no score; however, halfway through the review there is a short synopsis with a break down of likes and dislikes. This is the equivalent of a score as far as time needed to review it, but has context.

This has been discussed numerous times on various sites and I know and respect that there are different opinions about it but for me there's gotta be a score in a review.

I'd like to see a move away from numbered scores industry-wide. Saying something is a "10/10" doesn't really communicate anything beyond the reviewer really liking a certain game. A pros/cons list and a basic recommendation would accomplish the same thing, but without the concomitant number-fetishizing and social pressure for critics to award the highest marks to large, popular franchises.

what annoys me most is scores in most sites dont reflect on how much the publishers are trying screw you over. should be seprate rating for getting shafted by the devs.

@GravyThief Your assessment isn't far off. Back when I was a critic I had the metrics on the page views of multi-page views. The format of the site was very specific across 3-5 pages. An overview, a page (or more ) describing what the game does well, a page or more describing what it does poorly. Sometimes a page with other deeper assessment, gameplay comments, description, whatever. Finally a conclusion page with a summary and a score. A page could be a brief paragraph, or it could be an essay depending on how much there was to say about a game. It was always on point (nothing hipster, always the game itself or discussion of other related/prior/similar/comparable games.)

What did the metrics tell me? Over 90% of traffic skipped immediately to the conclusion page. They just wanted a number to reinforce their preconceived notion so they can feel better about their decision. Almost nobody cared what the review actually reviewed. It makes one wonder why weeks would be spent playing through, annotating, and meticulously writing reviews when seemingly nobody had an interest in reading them anyway. Countless people told me that it would be better to just write a blog than reviews. More people read that (?)

Meanwhile I received numerous compliments from numerous development studios (we're talking AAA, not indies here, some of them still in business, some of the individuals still on E3 stages....and some of the studios since closed) thanking me for writing such a detailed and high quality review, and that they'd seen few to no other reviews both highlighting things they put a lot of work into, and useful constructive criticism for them.

Sadly, though I suppose satisfyingly, the developers gained a lot more value from the detailed text I spent my time on than the gaming consumer. The consumer just wanted numbers to prioritize their lists with, not an actual description of what the game will actually involve and how well it does or doesn't carry it out.

@Yorumi A standard rubric is fine for school work. There is a right answer and a wrong answer to each question. The student either got it right or no. It's actually not fine for essays, where academia often resorts to grading (grammar marks, and page formatting/sourcing aside) based on using the correct number of words and phrases or topics from the assigned work. And sometimes drawing the "right" conclusions. Like grading essays where the exercise is more the point than being "right", game evaluation is entirely subjective, and must be. If we were to grade games on writing, bugs, graphics, controls, sound, and design, Skyrim would get a 25% at best. Yet we know it's far more than the sum of its parts. How do you rate Hyperlight Drifter next to Dragon Quest XI and RDR2 on a standard rubric? That doesn't really work and the net result would box studios into engineering game design to always meet those standard review criteria, resulting in even more homogeneity in the industry.

I think scores are only valid coming from the same person. With large websites you have multiple writers with different tastes and opinions. The same game could have two wildly different scores depending on the writer so there’s a lack of consistency. If all reviews come from the same person you can at least get an idea of their preferences and how they compare to your own.

From what I've seen readers are too dependent on scores and even reviews in general to make their opinions for them. I've seen too many great games get mediocre scores and the comments saying "Well, I guess I'll have to skip this one" just based on the final number and not at all based on whether or not they actually think they'll like the game.

People have different tastes in games, and are willing to put up with different flaws. For me as an example, I tend to be more patient with games that drag on but less patient with buggy or unpolished games. A reviewer that feels opposite of me may rate a game I like way lower as a result. Then there's places like Metacritic where they have a number that's supposedly supposed to measure the quality of the game with a single number, it's a ridiculous way to look at it in my opinion.

Opinions on games are important if you know who's making those opinions. The idea shouldn't be to tell people whether or not a game is good, it should be to give them an idea as to whether or not the game is for them. The number takes that away in most cases. I suggest watching the Dunkey video on game journalists because I think it does a really good job discussing this kind of thing, and how people are so willing to trust the opinions of people they know nothing about.

Pros/cons are fine but in general I think it's extremely important to know the game profile and tastes of the reviewer. I think a number adds too much bias and pushes people away from games they may otherwise enjoy.

If it makes people read, then I'm all for it. Game devs' incomes shouldn't be tied to an arbitrary Metacritic score that they do not have control over either.

And scores are highly subjective. For instance, I cannot ever imagine giving a game a 10/10, or a perfect score. Because no game is perfect. And I also do not get how recycled games like CoD rate so highly above so many other new and innovative products year after year.

I will leave any site that doesn’t use scores. I just like them.

Scores/reviews are important considering there are a lot of games that cost a lot of money. I personally can't afford all of them and rely on reviews and scores to determine which games I want to dish money out for. I think one thing that would help each gaming website with reviews is having a basic criteria that each reviewer uses instead of posting their own opinions as an absolute. Ultimately most people use more than one source to make their decision anyway, so yes give scores on reviews.

I really hate when journalists give scores based on if it will appeal to you. Seriously, it's common sense that you won't like Mario if you don't like platformers. But if you never played a platformer before, there are few ways to know if you like them or not. That doesn't mean however that you should give scores based on if it will appeal to lots of people or not.

Aside from that, reviews are highly subjective. Not just scores, also the review itself, unless the writer only states the facts like how the combat works, but most reviews state facts and their opinions, so they might as well give a score.

I don't really understand this swell of opinion from people saying we no longer need scores. If you personally don't get anything from a score that's fine but for a lot of people it only adds to a review.

For me, when I came back to console gaming towards the end of the Wii and Ps3 being able to sort a list of reviews by system was a great starting point. Didn't mean I just bought the ones at the top but meant I could then start reading reviews of ones nearer the top and combining with my own preferences.

Reading a review assumes I have an interest in a game to begin with. What about those games I'd never have played if I hadn't started seeing them getting big scores from various websites and then started to read the review?

Things like metacritic also make it easy to find very differing views on a game you are on the fence about.

I also don't see how an essential/recommended/nothing/avoid system is any less of a score. It's just a 4 tier one. Whether a game is essential or recommended is no less arbitrary. If you don't want scores and want people to read the whole review then just go the whole hog and have no indicator of quality outside of the text....

Go for the old video game magazine method.

Not just give me an overall score but give me scores in categories (graphics/visuals, Audio, fun factor/gameplay, replay value).

Mooooore scores!

I'd say, have categories like "Don't play.", "Play only if you're very into the genre.", "Play as long as you like the genre" and "Interests regardless of genre" alongside clearly marked genres and the writeups would be perfect.

They're useful as a gauge of quality, if I see a game I was unsure about getting, but it consistently scores high, I'll probably get it. If a game didn't score as high as I expect, I'll look further into the review to see what's wrong with it, and then make my decision. I almost always skip to the final score before reading the review, it's nice having the TLDR

I hate these reviews without a score. Please do never ever change your system!

If someone only takes a look at the review score and the last few sentences, it's okay! It's completely up to them. Let the reader decide.

We need review scores to compare all these games out there. Someone who has not enough money and needs to decide which game to buy should be able to use the scores (maybe via Metacritic) as a quick guideline.

NintendoLife’s own reviews prove that the answer to this poll is NO.

Often I see NintendoLife reviews that are highly critical of a game, well written too but the review score totally contradicts this.

Also I have seen different games with very similar but fair reviews here get very different scores.

The facts are review scores do not match up with the review content anymore. Add in the fact that a review score is highly subjective. The objective details about a game can not be told in a review score.

NintendoLife, if they had any QA at all surrounding their reviews would have realised this, thus making the poll not needed.

I am not saying the NintendoLife reviews are bad. On the whole they are good. I am saying the NintendoLife review scores are terrible, inconsistent, subjective and not at all reflective of the review they are attached to.

I care more about why someone liked or didn't like a game, not the score

The problem is that you can't review a game from someone else's perspective. To me, the NintendoLife review "Conclusion" snippets are absolutely perfect.

@Mogster
A subjective number does nothing to get anyone off the fence unless you like a subject number that says absolutely nothing about how good the game actually is

Scores will always be important.
But scoring a AAA game on the same “out of 10” scale as an Indie game can be ... daft!!

Maybe have different categories for the scores.. 5 Mario caps for AAA, 5 “something” for 2D, 5 Shovel Knight for Indies...

I voted "no" because scores don't actually mean anything in the grand sceme of thing. I do, however, understand why the majority have voted yes: Most reviews are not well-written, and a lot of people don't actually care about the content of said reviews - they just want an anonymous source to confirm what they already want to believe. Scores tend to fit that criteria.

Did we ever? Short answer is no.

@hatch No review scores existing would stop you from being lazy. Secondly it would force you and us all to only choose the best review sites to read as no one has enough time to read them all.

Scores, as in, numebrs, are meaningless. The only thing they do, is invite comparison to other games that aren't comparable to the one reviewed. "This game gets a 9, so it's definitely better than this other game that got 7". This is completely stupid.

Numbers are a plague, when used as a way to compare things. Like in photography (or TVs), some people think that the number of pixels is a good indicator of image quality. It is not. There's a lot more to it than that, and reducing this to a simple number is only there to make things simple for people who don't bother to actually read an informed opinion.

I personnaly like (sometimes love) games that were rated as "average" by the critics. And some other games that are almost universally loved, I hate. Scores are meaningless. 2001: A Space Odyssey was panned by critics at the time. It went on to become a classic. Scores are meaningless. Reviews are not. Reviewers can detail what they like, what they don't like, and then it's up to YOU to decide if that game is worth your money or not.

Scores are there for people who don't want to do any research before buying something. For people who trust others telling them what they should or shouldn't like/buy.

Scores can be fun (not really usefull, but fun) if being an average from user inputs, as in how much people who played it love this game, but a score tied to a professional review of a game is meaningless. It's relatively arbitrary too. Points can be given or substracted over some aspect of a game, while some other game having the same pros or cons, may not get the same treatment because the reviewer "feel" these aren't as important, and so on...

I like how Kotaku works now. Game is recommended or not, with some basic "You'll like this game if..." and " Not for you if...". Simple, to the point, gives the info that matters.

Scores (numerals) don't matter.

I will say that review score, or not having them, can be a catch 22. On one hand, someone like myself can be a bit obsessive over numbers. I remember checking daily to see if BOTW was still the #1 rated game of all time on metacritic or gamerankings. Yet, there are certainly times where you see games with a less than stellar overall rating ending up with a cult following and eventually make several best of lists.

I fully admit, I don't always have time, and seeing high scores certainly help guide me towards what games are worth checking out. On the other hand, I feel like the industry is very biased. Anything below an 80 on metacritic seems low, whereas anything over an 80 for music can be classifies as a near classic. And then there's the underlying feeling that reviewers are being paid to give good reviews. It happens on Amazon, payolla exists in music, I'm sure it happens here.

So at the end of the day, we consumers need to figure out who has credibility and who's reviews you can trust. I weigh those scores, and the games fun factor much higher than only an aggregate score. Heck, my favorite moments in goldeneye were when you played with cheats and had glitchy animation. Try playing cradle level with slow or fast animation cheats to see what I'm talking about. So funny.

I don't care either way. On one hand, a single paragraph coupled with a gradient score is how any given game has been measured since the gaming magazines of the 80's, it helps separate the wheat from the chaff. On the other hand, I usually purchase games based on gameplay, art style, in-game still images, demos, promo material, etc. In that sense I've never needed a metric because I've played my share of fun "bad" games along with "boring" great games.

There are a ton of awesome points on here (for both sides), so I'll refrain from adding my full opinion. However, I'd like to point out one perspective: the distinctions, "Recommended" and "Essential," are just fancy review scores. A review without either is a "1." "Recommended" is a "2," and "Essential" is a "3." These distinctions don't change how people read reviews because any simplified labeling system will draw the audience's attention first.

I prefer review scores, but i also appreciate a well-written article without a numerical value. My frustration lies with publications who think they have transcended review scores by using "Recommended," thumbs up/down, or jelly beans to convey a game's worth.

Yes, we do, mostly because a number summarizes the opinion, and not everyone will face a wall of text to get curious about a new game. 7/10s are indeed “okay” games, and numbers below that mark doesn’t always refer to quality. I have years of experience with that and I can safely say very few 5-6/10s games offered me a decent experience. Extra emphasis on “very few”.

Back in 1990s it could have worked, because game magazines didn’t really need those numbers, people used to actually READ an article...

I’d put the game’s price tag and estimated duration (if possible to measure) highlighted in every Nintendolife review. I find it difficult to get an idea of how good or how bad some games might be to my wallet, so I always tend to search for this info before a purchase.

Good on y’all for asking. I for one read (most of) the review and then the score, so I like scores.

Generally speaking, no game journalist site needs a score if they're gonna start rating every release from 7 up (out of 10). You don't need a grade system if you're gonna declair every other project a masterpiece more or less.

The readers too are at fault though. Too many people don't understand that reviews represent the opinions of the writer and are meant to help people who are on the fence or uninformed on a release. Reviews are not there to praise the things you like. Games don't start at a perfect score and get points taken out for any issue the reviewer finds with it.... Please stop leaving dozens of comments on a score needing that extra 0.5.

I love scores. There's nothing inherently wrong with them. But if you're gonna use them, use them right. And if you want them to stick around, accept them for what they are.

For what it's worth, I think no fansite of a company (Nintendo or otherwise) has use for scores, consumers gain nothing from it.

@Aven
Good. We don’t need all the paid review scores on one place. Metacritic are part of the problem and you described this very well.

@Stocksy I was going to mention to Switch Player as a publication that uses both systems of review conclusions.

I wouldn't be sad if review scores disappeared as the scales for review scores aren't consistent across the various outlets that use them. 5 should be average but that doesn't seem to be the case at all outlets. In addition a review score number is further subjection to the already subjective review. The review may read like a 7, for example, but the reviewer gives a 5, which could put off people that were taken in by the written review.

If you keep the scores, you should have at least two or three reviewers weighing in. If there isn't enough time or staff to do this for each game, maybe do a panel on games that cost more than $35. One can play it more thoroughly, the other two can rate based on a smaller amount of play time.

Here are my main beefs about a 1-10 or 1-100 scoring system:

1. Without multiple reviewers, a game's score can end up being highly inflated or underrated based upon just one person's opinion.

2. Games under a 7.5 or 75 are widely viewed as being bad. As a result, the vast majority of games fall between a score of 6.0 and 10 (or 60-100).

3. Scores between 1 and 5.5 or 1 and 55 are rarely used, and when they are, the scores in that range come across as fairly interchangeable and arbitrary. Essentially, gamers will generally look at and treat games with a score between 1 - 5 as being - for all intents and purposes - a one.

4. Tying the above points together, I think that because gamers are so conditioned to favor numbers between 7 and 10, it's generally easier for most gamers to grasp the differences between a 7.5 and a 9 than a 3 and a 4.5

If a traditional scoring system has to continue, I feel that a system that employs 5 stars (1 to 5) would make a great deal more sense to me than systems that use 10 or 100 numbers. A five numbers system is at least condensed enough to make each point carry more weight and more obvious to a reader what each number means. But, even still, I feel that a numberical of any kind is going to be somewhat arbitrary, and yet overly specific.

You also have to take into account the amount of bias a site has based upon its desired demographics, and specialization. For instance, I've found that Nintendolife tends to slightly inflate games, especially Nintendo games, or third party games made by companies with a close relationship with Nintendo.

I mean, I love NL, but after almost a decade of using this site for reviews, I've come to realize that the typical game's score is probably 1 or 2 points lower than the given score.

That's not exactly an endorsement of the current system. Not even a tepid one.

TL;DR - The number system is broken. I would honestly prefer it if Nintendolife (and other sites) would simply write a long review followed by a brief summary of the long review, list notable pros and cons in list form. And, if possible, add a second or third opinion from another reviewer who spent at least a small amount of time with it he game in question (these opinions would be short, maybe 1 or 2 paragraphs).

@ArcanaXVI Books and performances do still get reviews, but not scored ones (unless you mean user reviews on Amazon). Hamilton didn't get a star rating out of 5 from the NYT, it got thoughtful praise and critique. People knew it was "essential" vs "very good" because the piece said "this is essential, go see it."

Scores are a simplification measure, not an additive measure. They boil down whatever was said in words. If a site doesn't want to allow that type of simplification in their discourse, I'm all for that enforced complexity of writing and response.

Will I find a game fun to play?

This is all most people care about in a review. A subjective number will not tell you that. However an opinion piece (all reviews are opinions) will help you see how fun a game can be.

If the reviewer can impart how fun they found the game well, that sells the game better than any number.

To anyone who reads the reviews that is.

Keep the scores! Metacritic needs to exist.

Personally I'd much prefer if review scores remained...

Please don't get rid of them! Your reviews have saved a lot of money!

I mean me a lot of money

In my opinion, the obsession with scores comes not from tradition of media in general (many media reviews have chosen not to use scores, since forever) but from (1) the history of game magazines reviewing games as consumer products with a ranking for Graphics, Control, Fun Factor, etc, and (2) the ubiquity of "User Reviews" on every shop and community site in existence.

(1) is just not useful anymore. Games are complex, massive pieces of art, not a toaster. If it's broken, yes, warn people it is broken, and if it performs exceptionally tell them that, but otherwise don't treat it like a toaster. And as for (2), it makes sense to ask users to contribute their opinion via a simplification (a star rating or whatever) because not every user has the skill to write a good review or the interest in doing so, and nobody has the time to consume everybody else's long review.

But if somebody's being paid to actually review a game, a number at the end serves only to encourage people to skip what they said for a meaningless, context-free shortcut that is better served with words. Provide a summary of the words for people in a hurry if desired, but the number is never adding value.

"Metacritic needs to exist."

...god, why?

I don't personally care about the score as my own personal preferences skews a bit off anyway. I've often loved titles that score 5s and 6s with big reviewers, but am often lukewarm to perfect 10s. As long as there are warnings for major game-breaking glitches, I'm good.

Taking the aggregate score of critics is damn near worthless. It's either a unanimous "best game to ever grace our presence" or a unanimous "big stinkin load." User scores however are a bit more helpful, more real and honest.

Any review score that doesn't take into consideration value for money (or "bang for the buck") is essentially worthless. Review scores for "Minit" have been overwhelmingly positive, and it's a cool game with some cool ideas, but unfortunately at nearly $10 for a little over an hour of gameplay, I can't in good conscience recommend it to anyone. Now if it had been a browser-based game you could play for free, yes, that would make it "essential". For free, it would be a 10/10. For what you actually get for $10, it's more like a 3/10.

So yeah, overwhelmingly positive review scores can be very misleading.

@pizzanuggs To be honest? Same.

I think that's the thing; "Recommended"/"Must buy" etc are really all we need. Case in point : players instinctively assuming 7/10 is "meh" when it still means "good" and 5/10 being the actual score for "average".

Simply replacing the arbitrary number by a *clear * "Avoid"/"Reccomend"/"Must have" would be that much more direct and... you know? Serve the exact same goal but with much more clarity.

I know I've already written a lot, but I'm actually pretty passionate about this particular issue.

I just wanted to add that I think scores can sometimes unfairly make or break a game. Again, there's just too much weight given to such a simplistic score. A game between a 5 and 6.9 are supposed to be mediocre to average in quality - but how can a 6 be average when the majority of games score above a 7?

Anything less than a 7 will definitely impact sales.

There are also game reviews sites which abuse the system so as to make a "controversial" score to a game that has otherwise been acclaimed (all publicity is good publicity). A strongly negative outlier can bring down a metacritic score - and sadly, this has sometimes been done as a "partisan" reviewer's way of slamming a company or fan base that he personally dislikes.

Corruption has always been a problem with number scores. And don't get me started on how big publishers always seem to get automatic 8s 9s or 10s while at the same time, that reviewer's website is often plastered with that publisher's advertisements and banners. Doesn't anyone else see a conflict of interest here?

Like, I think it would be pretty naive to assume that ad revenue never influences the score that a game gets. It certainly can. In fact, I'd say that sort of thing is a lot more common than people assume.

@andywitmyer I agree 100%. A short list of pros and cons for the game as a summary is so very useful. Even the lazy tldr people read that.

As you correctly pointed out NintendoLife does bias Nintendo made games with higher scores. A pros and cons summary would remove some of this bias and would really help those short on time to still get a good summary of the review.

@Yorumi But that's back to the same irrelevant subjectivity once you start applying "how well the aesthetic fits."

One difference is, for a book, there's really just one way to interact with it, and those writing techniques apply in a certain way for moving a reader from cover to cover. For games, there's so many ways to interact with it and so many expectations you go in with. Not all games are intended to be replayable classics, some are meant to be interactive stories, some are meant to be puzzles that once you spoil the solutions won't be as fun. Some aim to immerse, others aim to give toys to play with. The rubric can't apply to shooters the same way they apply to adventures or RPGs. You could have separate rubrics by genre, but then often genres blend over, which do you use?

The obsession of the mathematically inclined to distill everything into measurable criteria and "action items" to turn everything into an engineered output works wonderfully in their own minds. The problem is each engineers it for the way their own mind processes things without allowance for the reality that every other mind is not going to process it the same. No doubt my version of your system would be one that would not work for you. And your version would not work for me. Which brings us back to: Numerically quantified standardized outputs are not particularly suitable to the task.

@ErraticGamer the sad part about the Hamilton play was the play was all about equality and fighting racism, however off the stage, many of the cast members did publicly act in a racist manner. Quite hypocritical you think?

The New York Times is mainstream media trash. However they were not wrong about the play being good.

My take on scores has been, for a long time, that they are a just a bonus addition to a well-written review. While I completely understand that they're not entirely necessary, I don't see the harm in including them, as long as they are accompanied well, and not presented as the only takeaway about a given game.

I think doing a "Skip" "Check it out" "Must have" "Masterpiece" system with no associated point indicator would be a useful standard - that was at a glance you can tell what's shovelware/trash, what's niche, and what's a system seller, but then delve into the article if you wish to see why the reviewer thinks that.

A review score should only help to solidify your interest/disinterest. It's a good metric to understanding public perception of the game. While this shouldn't dictate people's purchases, they can influence them. Even a low score in a genre that a person likes, shouldn't necessarily turn off a fan of said genre.

Just use colors. Don't say the colors have any significance, either.

I think the amount of comments already above this one (I've only read a few so far) are a testament to how polarizing this topic can be. The arguments both for and against scores are not without merit.

Personally, I'd like for scores to stay with the descriptive text for each score (Ex. Excellent, Average) still sticking around. I look at reviews here like this: 1. If it's a game or genre that I have little/no interest in, I'll look at the score and occasionally the conclusion. 2. If it's a game that has somewhat caught my interest, I'll look at the end score and conclusion first, then read the review if they tick the right boxes. 3. If it's a game/genre/franchise that I'm interested in and/or have complete confidence in, I'll read the full review, score and all, in chronological order. I know that my process isn't always fair to the reviewer who spent a lot of time on their write-up, but unfortunately these days I just don't have the time to read every single review that comes under my nose.

Reviews aren't the only part of my "Should I buy this?" formula (Well, normally anyway; some of this depends on the game). I also rely on demos, gameplay footage, and the informal (yet constructive) feedback of others.

I do tentatively agree that maybe there should be a separate scale for indie games since, in some ways, comparing them to AAA efforts by scores of people vs. a small team isn't always fair.

@andywitmyer well said. Corruption and conflicts of interest are rife throughout game review websites.

How does someone know if a score is paid or honest? It’s not hard to work out but most people who only read a review for 2 seconds to get the score will never take the time to work that out.

Also another conflict of interest is media release copies of games. Usually developers only give early copies of games to journalists who will positively review their games. To keep the early release games rolling in, the reviews have to stay positive regardless of actual game quality.

This is how the journalists and the developers work together to ensure artificially higher game review scores. Totally corrupt conduct from both sides.

I think a simple thumbs-up/thumbs-down is sufficient and let the review itself explain reasoning.

Keep them. They’re a useful gauge when juxtaposed against the written review. Especially, when the words don’t line up with the score.

It can help with a purchase, no point in getting a game that everyone says is awful and broken etc and it's £40, I don't want to waste money lol ...

I do like the scores because it’s usually the first thing I look for when deciding on a new game then look at some video reviews however I really don’t like it when it’s on the box art because it hides the artwork and looks messy

For me, scores are a lifesaver when I don’t have time to read the full review. In fact, they’re usually what determine whether I do or do not read it at all. If a game gets a high score, I want to find out why. A low score, same thing.

I suppose it doesn’t have to be a legitimate number, tho. I’d be just as happy with a rating of some sort. “Must buy”, “great for those who like rpgs”, etc. When time is limited, something that helps me know if the read is worth coming back to.

Yes scores are needed, BUT, a score up to 5. This will force reviewers to be more decisive. Either a game is a top game and gets a 5 or a 4 for above average but not a top game, 3 is average.

A lot of Reviewers use 8 as a safe score for themselves. A score out of 5 would force reviewers to give what would have been 8, a more thoughtful score of 4 or 3.

I said no based on the fact that half the time they make absolutely no sense. Like IGN scoring Spiderman 8.7, what the hell is an 8.7 just make it an 8 or a 9 none of this decimal stuff?

Reviews need a score and the words behind it to justify said score. They should work with one another to offer a full review. In one decision I stopped used Polygon when deciding on a game.

Most of the time I don't have the time to read full reviews, so I skip to the conclusion and review.

Also if it's a game I'm interested about I try to know as little about it as possible. Just tell me if it's good or bad.

@Darasin There were plenty of other reasons to stop using Polygon years ago Still, that's an interesting outlook, you view a review as the score, but the words back it up? That's an interesting if unusual angle. Usually the review is the words, the score merely summarizes them (badly.)

Keep in mind film and literary critics rarely ever used scores for ages. It's a new thing for the internet age some have started to, partly just to be represented in Rotten Tomatoes (which the industry also loathes.)

@zool Trouble is perception of those scores. Consumers will see 5 as "great" 4 as "pretty good, not the best but good" and therefore everything else is inferior, with little meaningful difference from 1-3 as "not worth buying" (Then you have an indie game versus an AAA....if AC: Odyssey is a 4 and Dead Cells is a 3 is that really an objective comparison? The public tends to use reviews to separate the top picks. But any number other than a binary or maybe trinary system really marks most games as "less than the top" which is instantly recognized by buyers as "not worthwhile" when that might not be true. Even 5 digits is too many. Giving it a 3 means it's not in the top 20% of games. With so many games in the top 20%, why would anyone buy the bottom 80%? But you may hate my 4, and you may think my 2 is one of your favorite games ever. A written opinion is far more useful than a number that tries to objectify what is wholly subjective unless something really deteriorates at that score.

A summary of my opinions on the subject.

My answer to this is NO. I will explain why I think this and give my opinions.

1. A number is very subjective and often has no correlation to the article it is attached too. Something like a summary of the pros and cons would work so much better for those who have little time to read full reviews.

2. Review scores often are affected by conflicts of interest. Would a game review site review games from certain developers higher if these developers paid your site a lot of advertising revenue?
Some sites do not but many do.

3. Corrupt conduct.
Game developers give early media releases of games to game sites in the hope of favourable review scores. The journalists respond by providing these favourable scores even when the games do not deserve them to keep the early nexus release copies of games coming in.
Basically scratching each other back.
If governments did similar it would be called corrupt conduct. That’s why I am calling this practice corrupt.

4. Metacritic
Do some journalists post up review scores only to affect the metacritic average? Some people think this is happening.
The average user score on the other hand is hugely affected by this. Many great games get a large number of zero scores just to bring down the average. 10’s are also often used to raise a game’s average used score. There is little to no commentary in these user reviews.

5. The removal of scores would actually force the game journalists to up the quality of their reviews.
It would also stop journalists scoring games based on other games scores.
Each review should be based on that reviewer’s time with the game and nothing else.
A good review shows this. A number at the end does not.

@GravyThief After reading more commentary here, and concluding with @Fight_Teza_Fight 's post above, I'm starting to wonder, why do reviews even still exist at all? Maybe Amazon and Steam user reviews are all that the public really wants. Most people just want to be told if it's one of the best things or not. Sites could save a lot of money. Fire the review guys, and just have a list of red/green for the past 6 months of releases. Few want the actual critical analysis, and the few that do each want it to be a different thing!

Every game gets a 9/10 here.
Except robbotto

We need scores but you got to be far more strict. 9.1 on a 3ds remake (MHGU) is too much and it makes me not trust your review scores.

They good for an average. In the end I look more in the text of the review for stuff that usually annoy me in a game. FPS, resolution, Time Limits, lack of Save Points... and so on.

But my Favorite is ACG. They put "Price" in the Mix.

1.Buy,
2.Sale,
3.Rent,
4. Never touch.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCK9_x1DImhU-eolIay5rb2Q

Zelda BOTW rated 10 / 10 or 97 / 100, Almost Perfect scores by mostly Game Critiques.
But..... for me, it was like 6 / 10.
BOTW was still too hard for me, i think i still don't have any hype yet about BOTW, so i still keep the game in my Switch cartridge case for very long time, Almost Never being played, Portal Knights Switch version has been played for more than 195 hours instead, because Portal Knights was like 9 / 10 for me due to easier gameplay, cute character design, lovely 3D cartoonish environments & freedom to build the universe like Minecraft + Animal Crossing style.

Nintendo life should make it a mission to give every game ever released a score

I like to score it score it

Scores are kind of worthless when you guys rate games like Ys VIII as a 9, sure its a nice game but nowhere near the quality of Zelda, etc. I bought it and like it but it’s like playing a game from 15 years ago

Yes, as long as reviews are objective (meaning no fanboyism for a particular platform, or influence...such as kickbacks...from developers/publishers, etc.) and a reviewer takes the time to spell out specifically what he/she likes or doesn't (with as few spoilers as possible).

Electronic Gaming Monthly was notorious back in the day for having literally almost NO games achieve a perfect "10" score on their rating system (although many did receive "9"s). During the latter part of their print run they relaxed the scale a bit, but the point is that an 8 or 9 review from them really had to be EARNED. It also helped that they had FOUR reviewers, often with varying tastes in genres, give a score and brief synopsis for why they gave it for a given game, which further helped to ensure a balanced perspective.

By comparison I believe that reviewers have gotten a bit lazy in the internet age. A "5" on EGM back in the day meant "Average", which honestly translated into "If you even finish this game you probably won't bother to come back to it later". Now that "Average" score seems to have been bumped upward to around 7 or 7.5, and I'd say it's played at least a small part in why people's backlogs of unplayed games have jumped tremendously.

Games are an expensive investment, and at the end of the day, they need to earn a positive review so that consumers don't end up making yet another purchase that joins that endless backlog of games they delude themselves into thinking they'll eventually get around to. Truly great games "click" in a way that guarantees they won't suffer that fate, and they'll earn reviews that reflect that.

Once companies started withholding bonuses to developers based on metacritic scores (looking at your Bethesda), regardless of how well the game sold, I think we had hit the point where they should be done away with. But I think a score doesn't do as well of a job explaining if a game is good to someone than the content of the actual review. I've been reading a lot of positive reviews of Spiderman for PS4, and people keep positively comparing it to Arkham Knight, a game I thought was very bland. But I guess I'm pro literacy; anything that'll get folks reading reviews more and limiting comments like "THE HELL? YOU ONLY GAVE THIS AN 8?!?!?!"

Absolutely. But I guess reviewers don't like them since the reviews are nog as throughly read when there is a score at the end. But I don't have time or energy enough to read reviews of all games, so I want to skim through some reviews and read some reviews more.

Ultimately, you and only you guys make the call. But even the fanzine I once took part in dropped the scoring very soon. And as a reader, I don't see the point (no pun intended) either. Formulaic scoring can be confusing, procrusteanly limited and yet still too vague even in education, let alone in Fiction. You need perfect synergy between the particular scoring system and your own system of tastes and perceptions to so much as benefit from this stuff in any meaningful way as an audience, let alone practice it in the study and analysis.

And let's admit it, anyone making choices via "sort by user/review scores" is chasing wild geese and banking on phantoms. Aggregated scores lump together dozens and hundreds and sometimes thousands of personal opinions and tastes where it involves a lot of luck to strike sufficient compatibility with at least one - trusting this whole numerically summarized pile to resonate with one's own personal tastes and whims is a gamble few lootbox mechanics hold a candle to.

1–10 seems too high of a scale. Nothing generally falls below a 6.

A smaller/tighter scale would be more useful for me...
1: Terrible
2: Okay
3: Very Good
4: Excellent...highly recommend...editors choice

Yes. We do need scores in 2018 and the scale needs to be higher. In fact we need more scores (example follows):

Xenoblade 2

Gameplay: 100% (explanation)
Design: 100% (explanation)
Graphics: 100% (explanation)
Story: 100% (explanation)
Music: 100% (explanation)
Voice overs: 100% (explanation)
Cinematics: 100% (explanation)
Content: 100% (explanation)
Controls: 100% (explanation)
Multiplayer: 100% (explanation)
Online: 100% (explanation)
DLC: 100% (explanation)
Repeatability: 100% (explanation)
Value for money: 100% (explanation)

TOTAL SCORE: 100% (EXCELLENT)

Review scores are still needed but the scale needs to be lowered.

What @Rygar is spot on. That scale even fits nicely too.

@the8thark Excellent list, and you brought up points that I hadn't:

I've noticed more and more lately that the long review of the game doesn't seem to match the score one way or the other. Sometimes it seems like a game will get heaps of praise in the written part of the review, yet only receive a 6 or 7. On the other hand, I've seen just as many games that appear to contain some very real flaws (some seemingly quite major) get an 8 or more.

You also mentioned review quality. This has become a major problem. Just look at how many commenters here admit to only really looking at the score and little else. What incentive is there to write detailed reviews?

Look at Nintendolife - recently, I've noticed an increase of game reviews that are written more like a generic overview than an actual review. These sort of "reviews" tend to gloss over what you actually do in the game, what control schemes it uses, does the game use motion control or HD rumble and if so, how well does it work...basically, skipping over all of the nuances of what the gameplay entails, and even its most fundamental mechanics. How well does the game hold up after the first 1/3rd of the game? Music is usually given one or two lines, if that. Why?

Instead of really fleshing out these details, the reviewer will often just fluff up and pad the overview with details about the game's 'development history', info about the developer or publisher (its supposed track record), what games that that appear to have been that game's inspiration, and broad summations about its visuals and frame rate with very little else about how the game plays, or what you do in it.

It also really feels like there are reviews here (and other sites) where the reviewer has clearly only played the game for about a few hours tops. These reviews are pretty easy to spot: the game is either scored too high or too low, and the reviewer neglects to mention parts of the game that would have almost assuredly (for good or bad, game breaking or brilliant) been noted. For instance, huge and noticeable mid to late game flaws are and/or early flaws that eventually improve and turn into something objectively brilliant later in the game are noticeably absent. So then you jave to look at the comments section to complete the missing pieces of the puzzle. You know what I'm talking about.

Like you said, I think removing number scores would almost instantly resolve many of these issues.

It's natural for us to scale the worth of a thing in such a way. It doesn't matter what our preference is - human's are going to keep scoring things. It's a brave topic - but ultimately will amount to zilch.

I feel like people will complain either way just as they have since time immemorial. As long as there is a set scale then reviews with scores are fine. Any whining about it comes mostly from people feeling like their title got shifted and people like that will read the review and still whine.

Personally, I don't always read every review, sometimes I look at a list and see what the outliers are and then read those. I would really miss being able to reliably do that.

Also why even award them anything then? Why not just make them read the review if that's your purpose. Essential or recommended are less descriptive than a review score anyway.

Some people on here won’t even look at games below 7 as being decent so I can understand dropping scores from that perspective. It’s unfortunate because a game rated a 5 could be pretty decent and it also relies on personal taste in games too. I’ve played a few games that were scored an 8 and I am flabbergasted. I’ve also played a game that was a 5 and thought it wAs actually very good.

thrvptoblem with no scores or something similar is that there are too many games now. If 30 new indies come out this week I don’t have time to wade though 30 reviews so I don’t get any.... bit on the other side - we live in this wonderful age of communication and good games often get known through word of mouth and sharing

@andywitmyer You really said it right in a lot of ways. Though as I commented above, if so much of the potential reader base doesn't actually care about review text and only cares about scores...what incentive is there to actually write them? If it's commercially not lucrative, and it's artistically unfulfilling without an audience, then what real motivation exists to spend inordinate amounts of time on a well planned, detailed review? Perhaps the modern crisis isn't about scores but rather: Is there a large enough audience for video game reviews at all? For that matter, would ratings justify keeping Siskel & Ebert's "At the Movies" on the air were they still alive today?

As for games not being completed by reviewers into late game however, there's some merit to that. Back 20 years ago games were pretty compact things. Today to really explore these large games from beginning to end and most content, many of them take weeks of full-time play. That's not really financially doable by most outlets, and it's not necessarily good for the review, either, to binge so hard on a game as a workload you're racing through it as a speedrun and getting frustrating with needing to advance. The full scope of an RPG, Souls, etc game really doesn't fit well into a review program. It also means racing through the main campaign and not really poking and exploring at the systems of the game in smaller details that could take hundreds of hours. Imagine if film critics had to sit through multiple 200 hour movies in a month.

@nhSnork Indeed. Worse, the aggregate scoring of hundreds or thousands into a number both encourages and rewards the "throw in something for everyone" into games resulting in boring, bland games that never offend and always please at least something for most people so that it will always get average-at-worst feedback, artificially inflating the score to look like "most people think it's good" when in reality most people think it's bland but didn't find enough truly wrong with it and found enough good in it to review it decently (particularly user reviews.)

@dimi "We need scores but you got to be far more strict. 9.1 on a 3ds remake (MHGU) is too much and it makes me not trust your review scores."

You've just made the best argument here to do away with numbers. Why is 9.1 too high? Because it's a 3DS game? What about other 3DS games. Animal Crossing New Leaf? Because it's a port of an older game? Does Devil May Cry deserve a worse score because Devil May Cry 2, 3, and 4 replaced it or does the original score for the original game still count? Why can't a game that was a 9 on 3DS remain a 9 on Switch unless the game became worse in the last 2 years or failed to port well to the hardware? Or should older games not deserve higher scores when re-released on new platforms? Does The Last of Us Remastered need to be seen as a worse game than the PS3 original? L.A. Noire?

There's no right answer. Your expectation and the writers expectation of what that number should mean differ. Which is a good reason that numbers aren't useful. You may agree with the writer's text writeup of what the game is like, but are getting hung up on a number.

I honestly still use review scores. If I'm just glancing at a game that I know nothing about, I tend to check the score and THEN read the review.

Back in the day they meant something, but only where game journalists used the full breadth of the numbers (Amiga Power was king of this). With that magazine 0%-40% was bad, 41%-60% was actual average and still worth getting if you were a fan of the genre/publisher, 61%-75% was above average and probably worth picking up. 76%-82% was a great score and anything over that was totally worth buying regardless, at least that's how I read it. This site in particular does not use all available numbers and makes them pretty moot, I'm not saying the reviews are bad, I personally don't read the scores as some form of truth. I do read the reviews and make my own mid up.

Perhaps a new way of approaching this system is ask yourself a few questions...

1. Could I stand by a recommendation of this game to a friend and defend that recommendation?
2. Could I recommend this game to a fan of the genre even though I can spot flaws in it?

And from that formulate some form of stamp or seal of approval, eg. We Recommend this game. We do not recommend this game. We only recommend this game to fans of the genre.

I guess you'd have to figure out the wording so as not to cause offence to publishers/developers if that could cause an issue. However, hard lines need to be drawn. I'd probably go on a rampage if Rise of the Robots got a re-issue and a score above 1.

I like scores, it gives me general idea of what I'm going to find in a review that I'm going to read anyway.

But what I like the most is reading it thoroughly in order to know what are the strong and the weak points of a game.

For instance, a 9 in a game too oriented to multiplayer is a no buy for me.

The advent of games-as-a-service makes reviews in general for many games irrelevant.

Games like Rainbow Six Seige, Fortnite, and Splatoon 2 are very different now than they were over a year ago.

Only have the score and skip the text of the review. Nobody reads it anyway

@darkswabber this is why I think it's good to have a compromise and have a word based score such as avoid/maybe/recommend. It's far less ambiguous that way and avoids the issue of people's preconceptions of what sores mean.

Gamers have proven time and time again we aren't mature enough to handle review scores. "Hurph durph, how dare you give this game that I haven't played a 9?! It clearly deserves a 10! I hope you die in a fire and rot in hell next to your whore of a mother!". <- every comment section of every review for every AAA game release ever. We're horrible excuses for human beings, when you get right to down it. Get rid of the scores, make people actually read the review instead of acting like children over a number.

God yes! Therese score is vert important!

@NEStalgia I understand your comments but do not agree.
Most reviewers would rather remain non committal and the wider the scoring range is, the eaiser it is to pick a non committal score.

I remember the days of Nintendo magazines, and for example Zelda would get a score of 99 because there was a Mario game out that year and the 100 was kept back for that.

A reviewer should be able to tell me if a game, say an RPG is worth the asking price. Most of the reviews I read did a good job with Octopath Traveller, so it gets a 5 or 4 rather than an indecisive 9 or 8.

Good point you made about Mario Odyssey and Hollow Knight. If you include value for money a 10 for both is not a problem, but if, like a lot of Indi games it had been over priced at say £20($26) then 8 would be a more realistic score. A game that is poor value for money should never get a top score.

Steam world dig 2 is £29.00 on Amazon and the game play is about 9 hours according to two reviews, that has to be a score of 3 (average).

It would be better if AAA and physical games were not lumped together with Indi games, and indi games had separate a scoring list. Also a six year old game like Skyrim, I would argue, should not get a top score, so in my world it would get a respectable 4 or if you like a silver award.

We definitely need scores. They’ve helped me a lot when it comes to deciding if I should buy a game or not. If they were removed from this site, I would still read the reviews, but they would be much less helpful to me.

I don't mind scores as a general indication of a game's quality, but I respectfully take no notice, read the review, subjectively consider whether I think a game's for me and find more reviews if I'm not sure.

I like to decide for myself and I'm quite rebellious in that regard. I'd really not like anything too prescriptive like "recommend, avoid" etc. Such a scoring scheme would most likely not tally with my subjective experience enough for me to trust it.

@daveh30. I'd give your comments a generous 8.

Oh yes we need reviews from Nintendolife crew. I like all of you guys. I trust your reviews .

No you don't need them, and Polygon is a rag.

@Balladeer To be fair, The Legend of Zelda: Flute of Flatulence is GotY and should be the metric by which all other games are compared.

@zool "Steam world dig 2 is £29.00 on Amazon and the game play is about 9 hours according to two reviews, that has to be a score of 3 (average).

It would be better if AAA and physical games were not lumped together with Indi games, and indi games had separate a scoring list. Also a six year old game like Skyrim, I would argue, should not get a top score, so in my world it would get a respectable 4 or if you like a silver award."

Then again, the "full" experience of Spiderman is $80. And the "full" experience of Assassin's Creed: Odyssey is $100. The $60 base package is incomplete. An AC games has a lot of value, but it's also a play once kind of deal where something like Dig 2 is meant to be replayed multiple times for the sheer fun of it, like Ratchet & Clank (2017.) Establishing value also becomes subjective.

I do agree with you about reviewing indies separately...but then there's the growing chorus of people insisting we shouldn't separate indies, games are just games. Which doesn't mesh with reviewing them separately. And then you have the true indies like Celeste versus Steamworld, Yooka, etc that are really corporate studios with an independent publishing bid. Do you rate them against the latest Sony blockbuster, or do you rate them against Celeste? Either way it's not fair to someone.

In film, they offer official awards separately for independents (Cannes vs. Academy Awards), yet critics tend to review them together rather than separate categories. But then film critics usually don't provide numeric results.

@HobbitGamer True, and the Wario DLC costume was a lovely touch.

Albeit, y'know, one I'd never actually want to touch.

Yes, scores out of 10 and the brief review summary are essential for me. There are so many games out there and not nearly enough time to process every single review in full. That score really helps set a rough expectation, its then up to the reader how they want to set benchmarks for what they will bother reading about the game or not. Personally, 7 and above = full read for me.

I think something along the lines of "Essential" "Recommended" "Not Recommended" etc. would be more efficient.

@Andyv01 @AlternateButtons But then why have reviews at all if you're really only interesting in a ranking list more than an actual review? I'm just finding an interesting theme here that a large number of people that insist that scores are important include the detail that they don't actually intend to read most reviews. So why does the score matter if you're so little interested in the game you're didn't intend to read the review anyway. Most of the people that love the numeric score seem to simultaneously be saying they simply aren't interested in reviews. What people seem to want is a ranking list. Which has little to do with actual reviews, with or without a score. Perhaps that should be a sepearate category entirely. Reviews (without scores) to discuss the good and bad. And a ranking list for the TL;DR people who can't be bothered and want to see "what's hot" at a glance.

You guys are right, there's too many games today and nobody can read through all the reviews. But if the merit of most reviews becomes glancing at the numbers to filter things out...why bother having the review? The numbers don't necessarily line up with the results of the review if they're to serve as a ranking or approval list. Which kind of comes back to that Polygon system of "recommended Y/N".

@G-Boy The question then is, what is it about the review text, if you do read them, that doesn't answer your questions that a number does? That would imply the review text is incomplete and uninformative, more than that the number is essential.

@andywitmyer I agree with your comments. A lot of NL Indi reviews leave me no better off knowing what the game is about or how it plays, than before I read the review. And, I'm not sure all games are played through to the end before reviewing, allegedly of course.

In the days of Nintendo magazines, I read reviews of a game in two separate magazines written by the same person, and each review had a different score.

IGN is having issues with their reviews, so it's hard to know who to trust.

My thought, especially if I were the writer of a review, would be that if folks are just going to zip straight to the score to make a decision instead of reading a review, why on earth did I bother to write a damn review in the first place.

I get that a number/letter/thing attached to a review helps the more exciteable/vocal folk "discuss" WOT GAEM IS BETTER and may help bring clicks to a site, but it'd be great if scores were dropped errywhere so folk would need to read about the damn game and make a decision based on words.

BUT. Would that mean reviews would have to change style. Become more about the game and less about the reviewer's style/likes/mood on the day of review.

Who knows xD

I'm fine with the scores. The issue, in my opinion, is that people take them way too objectively. People will say "this game is rated too high/low" or "how is this game rated higher than 'x' game". I look review scores as a point of reference to whether the game is worth it or not. Obviously, we should read most of the review, but in a pinch, it's not a bad way to see if the game is good or a bust. And as always, never base a game off just one review.

GameXplain had the right idea long ago when they ditched scores for simple one-word descriptions like "loved)", "liked-a-lot", "meh", "didn't like", and "mindblowing". They make no effort to hide bias in their preferences in their reviews and even wear it on their sleeve. A score is arbitrary, but a description of "I liked it" goes a long way.

I often get a better feel about if a game is overall enjoyable from someone's subjective score than then hundreds of words talking about specifics so I like them.

Meh, I could take or leave review scores. I give them a 5/10.

@Ludovsky yeah!

I mean...whats the difference between a 4.5 and 6?

Is one really better? Maybe if I like the genre more the 4.5 will be better...

Scored reviews in most readers minds seems to break down like this:
0-6.0 Not reccommend
7.0 Bad game
8.0 Dissappointing but Fine
9.0 Really good Game
10.0 Greatest game of all time or another damn GTA

I wouldn't mind the scores being dropped as long as there's a clear indication of a rating such as "Miss, Average, Good, Great, Zelda Worthy(because all Zeldas are Masterpieces allegedly) ".
I do think people have different views on the 1-10 scoring, myself included.

@NEStalgia your example about films is a good one.

I go to my local cinema and I'll pay the same ticket price regardless of the film showing. It could be a low budget comedy or a multi million dollar blockbuster. The profit depends on how big an audience the film attracts.

Video games especially indi, seem unable to justify their cost. Hollow Knight and Dead Cells have been compared and both have high scores, yet one is selling at £10 while the other is £22.00. To the consumer this is not logical.

I don't follow your Steam World Dug 2 comment that because it can be replayed its value is justified.

I have a few takes on review scoring.

Take 1: The 10 point scale — Is a 3/10 game going to grab you that little tic more than a 2/10 game? We'd have to poll it, but I'd wager that most gamers are going to bypass most things 5 and below, with likelihood increasing with 6 and up. So many worthless numbers. I feel like you should know what a game is on a 5 point scale. I'd propose it to be like:

1 - Bad (No effort at all; Sloppy, lazy, unbearable to play, waste of your money and time),
2 - Below Average (Playable, but poorly executed final product; Lacks any polish)
3 - Average (Paints by numbers, however checks off all the expected boxes; Definitely not bad, but doesn't move the genre, or games in general, forward in any meaningful way; A been then done that possibly, or a "safe" game)
4 - Above Average (Game done well, recommended, not the best, but flaws are few and far between; Regrets of playing are minimal if any)
5 - Excellent (Best in class, possibly genre defining or re-defining; One for the ages that will be remembered; A game not to be missed if at all possible)

Take 2: No points — If the review thoroughly breaks down a game, then your answer should be laid bare. It doesn't have to be a dissertation, nor should it be 7 words or less, but the reviewer should have good understanding of how a genre should work, which would allow them to expound on what exactly is good, average, or bad about it in a reasonable amount of words. This somewhat leads me to a combination of my first two Takes.

Take 3: Scoring breakdown of a game's individual categories, rated 1 to 5, with either no final score, or an average of the category scores — By breaking the game down into categories, a user can be better informed about what exactly works and doesn't work with a game, so the gamer can know if what they want in the game will be there or not. Example categories I'd propose would be:

-Graphics
-Sound
-Playability
-Replayability

So with no final score, the game will be scored for it's specific merits so you quickly identify that a game could be butt ugly graphically but plays like a dream, or has epic music with dull gameplay. With an average score (or even a accumulated score out of, in this case, 20 possible points), the final score isn't just "there", but is there directly from the sum (or average) of it's parts.

Phew. Long story short, there's lots of room for improvement for review scores. But one thing will never change, and that is that you the gamer have to read the review, and the reviewers must try to cite as much facts in their review BEFORE asserting their opinion (which is also welcome, but still, educate me on some truths before entertaining me with your humor, wit, or sarcasm).

@NEStalgia Review scores (along with the Scoring Policy and conclusions) are easier to read for me than the review texts. Like another user pointed out, the review texts often use a lot of ”slick” wording, which doesn’t really get the writers’ points across for me. It also doesn’t help that English isn’t my native language.

I don't really care about scores but I'll admit I don't really like Nintendo Life's reviews because I find them hard to scan. I prefer reviews where I can easily find which part of the review is talking about which part of the game I'm interested in hearing about. Like, usually how well the controls work is most important to me. Or sometimes I really care about the story in a particular game, etc. I like having headings or something to make it easier for me to go to the part of the review I care most about . I usually do not like having to read through an entire wall of text to find one small point.

@zool In terms of replay or total content, games build their value in different ways. A game like Assassin's Creed: Origins, or Octopath Traveller are excellent games, packed with content, but arranged in a way that you'll really play through it once. A game like Dig 2, or fighters, some shooters, etc, are games that are only a few hours content in a single pass, but they sink their hooks into you in a way designed to keep you enthralled interacting with the same content repeatedly in different ways. Does one have more "value" or not is kind of subjective. For some a long epic game has more content and thus more value. For others, that's empty and boring and a focused experience to keep retrying and perfecting is far more engaging for far more hours. It's hard to put a numeric value behind that value because it depends so much on what expectations and desires you're specifically coming in with. If you love grinding RPGs an RPG is tons of value. If you can't stand grinding RPGs it's mindless wasted padding without real engagement.

@AlternateButtons Well, arguably a summary is there for people that want a summary A score is there for people that want an approval indicator.

This is 2018, reviews need scores. However, people also don't read anymore, so just get rid of all that pointless writing.

@GravyThief 95% is the exact middle of the 90s. A game deserves its 9/10 score but in percentages, it’s neither a low 90s or a high 90s. A 94% game still deserves a 9/10 score but in percentages, it’s just a little bit below average for what is expected for a 9/10 game.

There’s nothing mathematical about it, it’s all down to the review’s feelings.

@Joeynator3000 LOL

Fire Emblem: Three Houses (REVIEW):
Score: 3238.239
{Affiliate link: Amazon.com}
$59.98

Let us know what you think in the comments below!

That is BRILLIANT!

@NEStalgia Perfect. lol

Review scores are helpful when it comes to analytics and data while also being accessible but I think the problem here is that there can be too much prioritization or emphasis on scores, a bit of an abstract form of judgement, which encourages people to thoughtlessly generalize and to not make some of their own judgement making from the review's details.

Interesting that its so heavily in favour of scores.

I don't really see the point anymore.

But then i'm not really a fan of a 10 point system anyway, I think a 5 point system works better and in theory you could just then replace the numbers with statements

(9-10)5 - Essential
(8)4 - Strongly Recomended
(6-7)3 - Cautiously Recomended
(4-5)2 - Not Reccomended
(1-3)1 - Awful

I think reviews in general for all types of media are pointless for the most part. If you like something, then try it, don't let someone else's opinion pre dispose you into whether something is or isn't worth your time, or how you should feel about it. They are also usually spoiler heavy.

The exception in videogames though, is that many times we need to know before hand whether performance or other QA issues can affect the experience, and in many cases there is no way to "test" the game so to speak.

I love seeing scores. But I also think that the actual review is necessary— the score tells me a rough idea, and the review gives it precision. I find that I often read reviews for the games earning 7-9 the most. To know why it’s just better than a about 50-60%, or to know why it’s not a 10 is important in choosing games to play, especially while I’m in school and can’t play them all.

@NEStalgia Chess is an obvious game with unlimited replay value.

But games like Steamworld dig can, like most games be replayed but I don't think for this game a high price can be justified for the short game play time. At least for me who ould not want to

Numercial scores are being used the same way temperatures (you can measure) or income (cash you can count) are used - as metric variables, allowing for the calculation of averages (say on metacritic) and then to sort the games according to the results of that high-level arithmetic operation.

Point is that game score is NOT a measurement or counting. It's an individual judgement call. Hence, no, you cannot use scores in that way and the only thing numerical scores are achieve (or scores transformed to a numerical data sata by way of re-enconding like 'A' == '100' and so and so forth) is faking information. It's deeply dishonest, that's what it is.

I mean, we don't do this with other things right? When your mom asks you who liked the roastbeef, you don't tell her, that is what 92,74% perfect, because she would be confused at best and feel ridiculed at worst - rightfully though, because how in hell would you know that this roastbeef feell precisely 7,26% short of perfection? That's why you say it was "good" or "great" or "better than last sunday" or "worse than last week" or whatever. It's an imprecise statement by the nature of your data being imprecise.

This has consequences beyond my feelings as a statistician. The implied precision means that a great deal of emphasis is placed on scores. They are after all a borderline scientific form of measuring a game's quality, right? RIGHT!?

If you then go on to aggregate hundreds of these scores, you must by virtue of the law of large numbers arrive at a very precise empirical finding, right? RIGHT!?

No, the data from which all this conjecture started was flawed to being with, so any conclusion you derived from codifying and aggregating that data is equally flawed.

It's like when you see a poll that suggests that 50% of people like XYZ over ZYX. The truth is, it's probably more like this: There is 9 out of 10 chance that 48% to 52% of people like XYZ over ZYX. If you put that 50% in words this way, it would be a lot more honest but it would also feel alot less scientific and as such it would be, well, a lot less valueable.

So yeah, I think this mostly about honesty and partially about fairness. Until God decides to spend his time reviewing videogames, there is no way to assert a game's quality down to decimal and it's incredibly unfair to subjugate widely different products to one universally flawed approach of judgement.

Also: People need to read more. That is just a commonplace statement, I know, but it is still most definitely true. Alot more care would go into reviews, if reviewers were not painfully aware (I do in fact think so yes) that the by and large most important part of their review is their score, which will be mixed with a hundred other scores to make up a Metascore, which in many ways will seal a games commercial fate.

I put this a different way: a good game review has no use of a score. A good concise conclusion will take barely any more time to absorb than a score and it will be a hundred times more precise and helpful than any score ever could be.

Bottomline: Numerical scores are a no-no, scores that just obfuscate a numerical score (like say grades A-F, which we all know metacritic will just transform and re-encond) are a no-no as well, even though at least they are a tad bit more honest, so ultimately, stick to words and if those words translate into, say, badges like "Recommended", I say fair enough as long as - and only as long as - these badges correlate strongly with the actual body of text of the review itself. Your conclusion needs to back your score precisely 100%

This site is a prime example of why number scores aren’t effective. How many 5s (average) has this site actually given out? Very few. So few that if I see a 5 on this site I assume the game is garbage. The actual average is 7-8. That’s what most games score. I’d much rather see a letter system. Everyone knows that a C is average. But when I see a game score a 7 on any site, is that actually average, or above average?

@JasonLee99 So what though? What does Metacritic do with a "C"? It's own scale goes 1-100, so it has to transform that information and re-encode it, which is jsut what it does, only that ... well, only that we do not know according to which rule. What precisely becomes of that "C"? I dunno, I doubt it translates to a "50". I presume they are using several weights and that it probably translate more to around a "75" for various reason, chief among them is that this is still the score the site, as you said, would have given out using a similar scale like metacritic, and metacritic 'knows' this because it has the data of hundreds of other, similar outlets which indeed use that kind of numerical score.

It's complete logical circle-j**k of course, but then again, all of this is about suggesting a level of percision that is not there, that cannot be there ... ever, so what is a little bit more "magic" thrown into the mix really? Nothing, it's nothing.

I usually skim through the review straight to the score. Depending on the score, be it very high or unusually low, it'll peak my interest enough to actually read the review. In some cases, certain games have me researching them enough to read through the entire review regardless of what the score is and that's because I genuinely want to know alot more about the game. With all that Said, scores are very important. Wish I would've known the score of fox n forests through NL before my day 1 purchase. I would've saved the 20$ I spent on it. Big regret without seeing the score first.

I'd say "no" we don't if we had more demos. Which I know is a pain in the ass for developers but if I'm on the fence about a game, I'll check the score and if it's 6 or lower I won't invest. If I had a demo it might turn out to be my kinda game and I may personally enjoy it and then I would buy it.

I do check multiple reviews as sites like IGN I often have conflic with what "they like" and what I like

I tend to ignore Nintendolife's scores because they usually score too high.

MORE SCORES
I miss the old 90's game magazine with multiscores, like

graphics 9.2
music/fx 8.1
difficulty 7.4
playability 8.3
originality 2.0

They cause many problems honestly, as most "journalists" aren't able to convey their thoughts into what fits into a scoring set of rules. You see it all the time where a review "reads like a 9" but they give it a 7.
I'm ok with essential/recommended, but it would also be nice to have some background on the reviewer in terms of what kind of games they prefer. All too often someone reviews a game in a genre or playstyle that they really don't like, and it sets odd tones for reviews overall.

Keep the review scores.

In my experience, reviews these days go into so much detail they leave very little to be discovered when playing the game. Plus not everyone has the time to read several long winded in depth articles. I really don't see the harm in a quick summary and a score at the bottom of a review. If you don't like it, ignore it or don't read that website. No one is forcing you.

Also, if review scores are taken away you end up with another site like Kotaku. No one wants that.

NO to scores. They're incredibly subjective. Especially here, where many of the reviews are quite short with high scores. Most reviews aren't even reviews, they are mild spoilers for beginning to mid-game content. The end-game spoilers are left out because most reviewers don't play through the entire game.

The problem with scores is sites feeling the pressure to score high to ensure they continue to receive their free copies. Or, who knows what. Publisher pressure exactly WHY to destroy scoring systems. If your crummy game scores poorly, make better games! It's the same way you teach a child - you don't give them a gold star for spelling 'cat' 'kat'. You provide encouragement for the effort, but teach them the right way to spell it. If a publisher thinks their game is a 9, and a reviewer says 7, that's exactly why there shouldn't be scores - because they are completely subjective and irrelevant. The only thing the publisher will change is your access to receive games in advance of their release in exchange for a good score to bump their sales.

I don't want scores, or yes/no, or recommend/not recommend. I want to read a review - what the person thought about it, and why. I don't need a summation - that's for me to decide after reading it. Either it agrees or disagrees with my bias/opinions/interest, or it piques my interest, or it keeps me away.

Much prefer a percentage to out of 10 or even .5s. The reviews here tend to be pretty good so no issue with the writing but a score is handy. I think substantial dlc should be reviewed separately and reference made to how it improves the base game.

I like scores and would probably find another site to read my Switch reviews on if they were ditched. That said, I usually bother to read the content as well as look at the score, however I always read the conclusion!

On the idea that review scores should be demonised because they simply end up as fuel for the metacritic algorithm which seals a products financial fate...
Yes, yes they do and i've always appreciated this fact when making purchase decisions using MC. I understand that one wayward negative review can unfairly topple an entire score however I choose to believe that if someone has interest in a product then they will have a flexible acceptable score bracket in their mind and read a further selection of the available reviews if its hits that criteria.

"Oh, Bravely Second only scored 81%" how disappointing, IGNORE"
or
"Oh, 81%... but enough individual reviewers scored it highly, think i'll actually take the time to read a selection of the reviews"

Scores are needed for the number crunching behemoth... ALL HAIL METACRITIC!

100% . Users will decide which review scores to pay attention to. I do think that most of the games out there need to be re reviewed. First one for the initial version, and a second one when the game is finalized, with updates and patches.

Yes, but not from Nintendo Life, your reviews are so biased it hurts! You routinely and systematically fail to explain how you score and over-rate average games and games/series simply because they are popular or have popular characters in them.

I also agree that 90's magazines had it right by setting out the graphics, difficulty, originality, music/sound, and playability etc and awarding a percentage as a result. This allows visually pretty and good sounding games to receive the right amount of credit even if the gameplay is poor. Heck some magazines even ranked re-playability in the equation.

Plus this way, the composers and artists dont have their hard work rubbished because of sloppy game mechanic design or game breaking bugs, and vice-versa where graphics sometimes fall flat but gameplay is good. This sort of ranking actually supports the industry better and is also fan-forward by giving better, more objective, advice.

Meta aggregating reviews are a popularity contest and while its ok to disagree, you cant ignore when the overwhelming popularity of a game influences reviewers to give higher scores. Take Skyrim for instance, I just don't get it. It did nothing for the genre that Gothic 2 and WoW and even Morrowind and Dragon Age didn't do, the graphics are a hjarry buggy mess half the time and barely animated at others. I cant play more than an hour of it without being completely bored and giving up. Yet its a generational thing for young teens who didnt grow up with the genre already, so its insanely popular with those who weren't already saturated with similar games. Does it deserve the high scores, well yeah of course it does, its a popularity contest despite its lack of any originality - Which I might value more as a mature gamer with an extensive gaming history in the genre.

PS Metacritic needs an "Ignore Outliers" data option, to remove plainly obvious troll posts like 1/10 reviews posted by angry kids for an otherwise good scoring game. This is done in all areas of academic research because its a relevant and appropriate statistical tool when used to analyse a large enough sample size and in most cases metacritic would have this, particularly for popular games where these troll reviews are generally posted to say, prevent a certain popular game from justly receiving the highest meta score ever (and this from a guy who would actually rate Zelda BoTW a 7/10, as an open world explorer it is vastly empty and there is a distinct lack of graphical variety in say the grass for instance. The questing system is simply better in other games of the genre).

With so many comments, everything has already been said. But I will throw my opinion in anyway. Scores are still good because you can quickly scan over a list of scored from several sources to compare and contrast. You can't really do that without a score.

Also, replacing a score with something abstract like "recommended" is far too vague.

I'm going to say no, because recommended and essential is a lot more streamlined and easier. However, without review scores it would be very hard to create an average of various reviews from different places for sites such as metacritic... so... maybe yes actually... I don't know!

Scores are a very important part for me. I have stopped going to sites that don't have them. Think of the targeted 20-30 titles coming out each week and considering reading a full review for each, no one has time for that.

I really like giant bombs quick looks as an alternative to reviews. I've bought more games based on their videos than reviews in the last years.

YES

Unless you can come up with a GENUINELY better alternative. . . .

My problem with scores is how unacurate they can be when comparing them to other games like exemple people could give an 8/10 to Hollow Knight and Metroid 2,but Hollow Knight is clearly the better game.

The other problem is how people view scores,like IGN gave the Mania DLC 7/10,which is above average,but for some reason people got angry at them even though 7/10 is a really good score.

Either way I stopped caring about major sites reviews ages ago,I always go on youtube for reviews and never care about any scores

i like the review scores.

I will have to firmly side with "No" on this one. My reasoning is simple, review scores have largely become little more than bragging points for fanboys and people who buy into the whole console wars thing. It also makes people place more value in a number than the content of the actual review.

The answer is yes.

@Spectra it's usually advertising and inflating a score anyway. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/4k7b4q/review_score_inflation_and_why_it_exists/#ampf=undefined

I'm fine with a yes/no like steam or play/rent/pass. Sales help too. Owlboy was a steal at half price that 1 day on steam.

If I encounter a review that does not give a numerical score, not only do I ignore the review text, but I immediately look for a review with a numerical score. A big part of the reason I use this website is that there is a concise summary paragraph with a score at the bottom. During my work week I don’t have time to read a whole article.

All review scores should be taken with a grain of salt, but I read the reviews here because I trust the reviewers.

My favorite games, which I personally rank as perfect (or very close) usually have... not the highest scores. So I try not to let review scores guide me too much, even so I still find them helpful just to know the public opinion.

Kotaku does it best. Tells how long they played for and what system. None of that paid for a good review stuff. I just want to know if it's fun to play. I don't need to know what features the reviewer wanted in the game.

I do not care if you continue with the scores or not, but if you continue, then please, that the scores are based on being more objective, trying to be more positive, and also, to be less with fanaticism, the click baits and the resentments, please.

If reviews were concise and to the point, then there might not be a need for scores. But as long as reviews are written like they are dissertations, being overly wordy and rambling on and on when they don't need to, then the scores need to stay. I don't always have time or feel like reading an excessively long review to find out if the reviewer liked the game. I know how to use the scores based on the game and genre it's being awarded to. A Street Fighter-type game getting 9/10 is meaningless to me because I don't like those games. So whether it gets 2/10 or 9/10, it won't change how much I like the game, nor will I compare it to a platformer with a similar score and decide which one is better because they are two completely different games.

If you're keeping scores (and I assume you are), then I'd rather have two reviews' opinions (so you can have a different viewpoint), and I'd like a NL readers' score to give a better balance.

In terms of different approaches, I like what arstechnica do, which is have a Good, Bad, and Ugly summary with a recommendation of whom the game might appeal to

Reviews need scores.

@construx I couldn't disagree with you more, I think. What does expensive have to do with good? Nothing. Effort put into it with fun? Nothing. Hours of potential gaming have to do with quality? Nothing.

The fact that you deduct two points from Nintendo sites tells you part of the story. You don't like the same types of games as people on the site so you alter the number to fit it in. You may think people just bloat it "because Nintendo", but if that's the case, you are disregarding the simple idea that everyone values different aspects of games.

A more useful scoring system might be based on what types of gamers will be satisfied by it.

Could use something like Jason VandenBerghe's Five Domains of Play, rating it on:
Novelty
Challenge
Stimulation
Novelty
Threat
Then throw in quality, polish, and estimated hours of play or at least the type of longevity it offers: one and done, frequent returns to play, say goodbye to the real world, etc.

I'd find that a much more useful summary than 7.8 Good

Review scores are the only way you can aggregate a large number of reviews to see the average opinion.
For that reason, they're very helpful.

dezzy +1

I love reviews, but since 2005 i rather look at user ratings and overall scores from websites(combined) also recomendations from people in forums.
just making a decision from one point of view is not trustworthy anymore, since most of them are sponsored.

imo, putting a rating system in two verdicts like essential or recomendation, is too basic.

I have essentially the same opinion on review scores as I do on achievements/trophies:

On some level I can see the value of them, but I wouldn't miss them if they were gone and honestly think we'd probably be better off without them. That said, I respect the fact that enough people like them and want them around that they aren't going away any time soon.

Anyway, the problem isn't review scores but sites like Metacritic and the laziness of both fans and people in the industry who think a number tells them everything they need to know about a game.

the only ratingsytem a developer should look at, is a usersrating system. and they should make more demo's for the consumer to fix things, before publising, just listen to the consumer.

good example is the square-enix's octopath traveller team.
these guys are setting new standards, by sharing the development with consumers.

Scores are pointless and inconsistent on Nintendo Life reviews so yes, you can remove them.

Reviews are meant to be as objective as possible while the consumers opinions on a game are entirely subjective with a wide variety of caveats. A good review is meant to educate the consumer so that they can take their own personal tastes and preferences into account. Yooka Laylee is a perfect example of a game that could be very enjoyable given certain tastes and yet a much more mediocre experience without such tastes. A lot of people saw the metacritic score, dismissed it as a "Bad" game and left it at that. But reading several reviews of 6 or even 5, you can still tell that there is a lot to be enjoyed for fans of Banjo-Kazooie.

@Dezzy You convinced me once again with your argument but on Nintendo Life scores are not consistent. There is a fundamental dichotomy here.

They misspelled 0/10 a lot in that header picture.

reviews are still important.
it gives you more joy in your hobby.
play games and the love of reading articles and posting comments, is what makes gaming fun, and made the industry big.

I'm pro-scores. It provides a good thing to check out at a glance if you're squeezed for time and just want a quick "y/n" rather than sitting down to read an entire page or two. Looking at the bottom of the page and seeing "6/10, solid level design hindered by sloppy controls and awkward camera" provides a quick and easily digestible summary when that's all you can go for at the moment. It also helps avoid spoilers when you're not entirely sure about a game but want to go in with as little knowledge about it as possible.

That's the main reason I use scores and summaries - not because I can't be bothered reading the entire review, but because that's all I have time for at the given moment. By cutting scores, you wouldn't be getting me to read the entire thing - you'd be turning me away from the review all together, and I'm sure I'm not the only one (this is a hypothetical "you" of course, I know the article said NL isn't doing this any time soon).

Scores would be good if there was an industry standard. Maybe use something like Net Promoter Score to aggregate and determine if reviews actually recommend the game or not. Averages hide too many things and that’s why am not a fan of Metacritic.

@aaronsullivan
Generally I'm not into indie games. I think there would be so much potential in normal and AAA third party games on Switch from Assassin's Creeds to CODs, GTAs and hundreds of others that are very popular on other consoles but we were never able to play them on the go before.

The Switch could (and hopefully can) revolutionize the way we play video games. It has such high potential.

I bought the machine because of FIFA 18. I played the series before on other consoles but never wanted to go back to those after playing it on the Switch. I have more than 1500 hours in it now.

I think it's a good thing that there are a lot of options to buy on the console. But that also means a lot of garbage games. And just like on Steam, it will be impossible to keep them separated after a while.

A couple of days ago, I bought a puzzle game for the Switch. You have to move different colored balls in it.
And that's it. That's the whole game.
It has a score of 7 on this site.
It just doesn't make sense to me. I got bored with it after two minutes.

Maybe I'm used to third party quality games with a lot of content, like the aforementioned ones.
Maybe I don't care about games I could play for free in my browser.
Maybe I just think of the Switch higher than I should.

For me, a 7 is, like, one of the worse episodes in the Far Cry series.

Therefore, I would much appreciate a warning in reviews about the price category so I can know that those high scores are on another scale.
At least, for me.

‘...as human beings, we love to see things neatly scored and rated...’

Did you just assume my species?

when or why should you buy a game? and when not?
it depends on the users standards.

some people just need to hear, go out and buy it, others want to know why you should buy that specific game, and are not influenced by one oppinion.

also i think its based on what your gaming budget is. Some gamers have alot of money and willing to take risks, others can only buy a few games a year so reviews are important for them.

for myself, i just dont want crap in my collection, i work hard for my money so i appreciate the users rating system, also because i have to buy games for my 6 year old son.

No - it encourages lazy reading. Nice Moby reference, by the way

Scores are fine, the problem is the people who only pay attention to just that.

Movies out grew the need for review scores decades ago showing how the motion picture was the premier artistic medium of the 20th century. Video games need to follow suit if they want to be taken as seriously as movies.

@construx
well to be honest, i'm gaming since 1983.
at this point i can realy enjoy and respect indie games.
alot of new ideas and concepts are born.
also most of them are amateurs and giving them a opportunity to share new thought.

the big companies are cleuless at this moment, its about sequels and prequels thesedays. what do we have? only updated graphics not realy new ips or ideas, copycat eachother and playing it safe.

you have to support it, because only this way new ideas can be born and new companies raised.

if you look at the GTA concept, it was kinda born too from indie perspective.
the first game was born from a small team of young people, brought out in a time 3d gaming was hot, and the game itself looked crap, but people liked the concept so they managed to became big this way.

Yeah, I think we still need them. No, I don't need them personally, but I believe there will always be people that base their decision to purchase solely on the abstract number a game is given.

I'd like to make a score that's basically "we think it's worth £XX", and write how much you'd pay for it. Some games are not worth full-price, but are brilliant if found cheaper. Currently, however, all reviews have to score games' worth at RRP, so some games will get permanently labelled as "bad", even if it's just because they're not worth full price. With a cost/worth scoring system, all games are given worth, if purchased at what the reviewer feels is a good price.

Granted, this may not translate well to multiple currencies, with exchange rates, etc, but I would like to see a scoring system like this.

I guess not if you're going to give glowing scores to garbage games such as Morphies Law.

Yes, yes, of course, yes, we need scores. I remember reading a very similar article back in 1993 when I was in college. Same premise - without the scores, maybe people will actually READ the reviews. But I don't have time to read 30 full page reviews a month. But if I see a "4 out of 10", I know it's not worth my time.

Don't get me wrong, I like sitting down and reading a well-written review. But in my experience, the writers who cry, "nobody's reading my articles!" aren't as clever at writing as they think they are.

I've been saying for years to get rid of review scores. God forbid people, Americans especially, have to spend 3 or so minutes reading a full review to get an idea if a certain game is something that would be of interest to them or not.

And on a sidenote, not just games either. We also don't need scoring systems for movies, tv shows or music.

I love that Polygon dropped scores. I can read the review and know if it is going to be for me. There are plenty of games that get 9's and such that I don't like. There are games that get 5's that I love. A simple written or video review gives me the real info I need to inform my purchase decision.

I still need review with score! Because for me, it gives me more comprehensive view of the games. Especially during this deluge time of Switch new games!

@BenAV but see, there are games that critics give 5's that I love.

I saw a few games on sale today on the eShop and thought, “let me check Nintendo Life first.” I did and saw some pretty low scores so I passed. I don’t have much free time so need to focus my time as best I can. Scores not only tell me which games not to waste time and money on but also which reviews I don’t even need to bother reading. Don’t stop reviewing and scoring.

The scoring system is helpful for me when I wanna see the recommendation level without spoiling a good story too much. If it weren’t for that, I’d say shove ‘em off. That said, otherwise I’m pretty happy with Nintendo Life reviews. I may not always agree with them but i appreciate NL sharing their experiences to help me find my own. Carry on!

Short answer YES
Long answer yes we still need and always will need scores
The real question will be do we have good reviews that are professional and not full of bias and what not

I grew up with a score system factoring in several important parts like Gameplay, Content, Replayability, Multiplayer, Sound, and Graphics.
Games are made out of too many factors to rank them with just one number.

Look review scores are not the problem, the problem is reviewers do not share clear criteria on what/how they score. Honestly each person doing reviews should have a profile on their genre preferences and a scoring rubric.

I don't think review scores should be kept, if only because there is no universal metric that sites use. Not only do the standards differ between publications, but they're different between individuals, too; if I give a 9 to an RPG, that could mean something very different from the same score being given by a different writer from a different publication. And even apart from that, the score simply doesn't matter, what matters is whether or not you should buy it.

For games I don't have much interest in, I'll usually just scan the score, and maybe read the summary. Sometimes if it's a surprisingly high or low score I'll read the accompanying review. Now for games that I am interested in, I'll absolutely read through the whole review.

When I see reviews for games I'm not as interested in, most of the time I will scroll down and only read the conclusion and see the score. I think it's helpful to keep things the way they are.

@SwitchVogel Completely disagree, in your example if you give 9 to that game it means that it's an amazing game on that genre and while some people might disagree if you are doing your job right and know about how to review a game then that people are gonna be on the minority but still understand why you give it a 9.
I think the real problem is bad reviewers and bad score system because they are afraid of people criticizing the reviews, I also think people tend to forget that it suppose to be a professional review without any bias and not just personal feelings if that was the case then anyone can be a reviewer and I would give Zelda BoTW a 0 because I don't like it because it's my personal opinion (just an example)

I feel as though high scores are given out like candy from a white van on this site though.

They are definitely a tough thing to regulate and be consistent with.

@sonicmeerkat Completely agree with you the real problems are bad reviewers playing a game that they don't even like and not judging the game like they should and only putting their personal feelings

If they should be kept, I think it should be changed to a 1-5 scoring system.
As it is now, everything below 6 is crap and means nothing to me.

I could personally do without the number as I feel the actual review, or at the very least, the final summary paragraph is way more important. I do understand the purpose though so I'm not totally against them. I do prefer an " out of 5" scale though, or even something like what GameXplain does.

I just wish some people weren't so weird with the number. If the game is a 9 or 10, it's too high, an 8 is average and a 7 or below is hot garabage. Like wut? People also need to realize that a reviewer may not be bias, but rather just really like a certain game. Furthermore, I find it silly to compare the score between two completely different games. I always see people complain that so and so RPG got the same score as so and so fighting game. Like, what does that to with anything.

@Pandaman,

I see what you mean. But museums are things you visit maybe once a year, at a decent price? While games are much more expensive and there are soooo many. Movies and comics are also plenty. We only have a certain amount of money and time, not everyone wants to read a whole review. When you are really interested in a game, you might read the whole review (but the score first, of course). If the review and score are positive, you get the game (and you might even get it at a low score if the game looks really interesting). But when you see a fantastic score under a game you had no interest in, you might read the review and decide to buy it.

I think its important. Also in case of a company giving a bleep. Just give them a zero. Harsh but fair. Reviews are often just opinions, but some games are just awful to anyone because of many game-breaking glitches, awful sound and controls, etc. Those games deserve a Zero.

@andywitmyer

I agree with you 100%. I think this is in part due to the rush to be the first review out. Their deadline is the second adter the review embargo ends. Then every review site is in a rush to get their reviews out.

Often this results in everything you've said. Reviews that are not up to scratch are quickly finalised and rushed out of the door.
Many games, Xenoblade Chrinicles 2 and Breath of the Wild, two examples I will use, but you could pick one of thousandfs of others to make this point. These games can not be properly reviewed after a quick 3 to 4 hour play session. Many of these games only get interesting 20 hours or more in.

In the rush to get the reviews out the door, the finer details about things liek gameplay, music, sound, visuals, aesthetics and many other things are not covered at all. You said exactly this above and I agree with you.

At times it feels the main aim of the reviews is to rush them out the door after the embargo has ended to secure future early media release copies of games from the developer. We both know that this not why you should write reviews. The reviews should come from the heart and sout and show ther eviewers true opinions about the game and impart how much fun they had with the game.

We can't only blame the reviewers here. I do think the whole industry is to blame for this. Every player plays their part to lead to the situation we have now, as I said in my previous post here.

Another point I just thought of. I think many developers will be against the removal of review scores. Why? The developers like to brag about how many 9/10's and 10/10's their game has gotten. Many developers do it. I know Nintendo also did it with Breath of the Wild.

There is a culture here between the whole game journalist and developer that needs to be broken. We don't need to reinvent the wheel here though. All we need to so is find a way for the journalists to give "word bites" that the developers can use. The developers cherry pick out phrases from favourable reviews that they can advertise. The developers do this now and I have no issue with it.

Something like ""absolute masterpiece" is much better to advertise than 9/10. I believe this because qualitative descriptors are always better than quantitative ones. Game reviewing is not a science. There is no fact here, no right or wrong. it's all the reviewer's opinion. So lets heaqr exactly how they felt about the game in their own words, not some arbitary and meaningless numbers.

Digital Foundry are an exception as they only deal in the numbers. However they do not review games, they only share the technical specs of the games. Very nice information to know, I really enjoy listennig to it, but it no way says how fun the game will be. That's not Digital Foundry's aim though. So that's all ok.

I tend not to read reviews of games I am interested in as I think many of the reviewers tend to do spoilers in it. But I like a summary and review score in the end to see if the game came through as expected.
Also a recommended, must buy, avoided is nothing else than a grade system and therefore has no difference to a numerical one.

Too many opinions. 0/10.

@BenAV I get what you are saying, but there are probably instances out there for you where you might like a game that gets panned.

For me one such game was Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom.
People that liked Kingdom Under Fire hated it because it was a different kind of game than the other's in the series. To me it was like a 3d, 3rd person diablo style game and I absolutely loved it back then.
Don't know if it aged well for me or not.
This game got a 55 metacritic.
If I had just relied on that, I would never have played it. And I honestly loved it. Put many hours into it.

I am not saying you should go out and buy it or just start buying all games with low scores. Just that, if you have a genre you really love, maybe cut that genre a little more slack and do just a bit more looking into the game before you decide just based on score.

I'll try to keep it short, but if you see a wall of text under this, just refer to this TL;DR: I need my bloody scores.

Without them I just have no credible basis for determining how great the reviewer thought the game was, and no matter how glowing or spiteful the review is, I need a score that lets me know exactly where they think it lies overall, instead of trying to interpret their praise and criticism into an accurate measurement for what the game did right or wrong.

Of course, I also read the text itself, and it is rare that I agree wholly with a reviewer, which is why I have my own personal scoring system that I apply after NL rates a game.

A good example would be Blade Strangers, where the reviewer listed the lack of a fleshed out story and additional offline features as negatives, whereas a fighting game is 100% a purchase one makes in order to fight other players online, and everything else? A bonus.

Reviewer rated it 7/10, game included amazing online with great netcode, so I factored the reviewer score by 1.2 (my personal system added 20% to the review score to alleviate negatives I thought were positives), landing it at 8.4 which I rounded up to 8.5.

So while I didn't agree with the reviewer in that particular review, the score was still incredibly important to me, because all that the text gave away was what I personally considered wrong prioritisation on "most wanted" features. The rest of the review was sound except a few tidbits like skill ceiling and so on, and in the end I arrived at the decision to purchase it because it hit my personal threshold of 8.0/10 or higher.

And I can safely say that I did not regret the purchase.

I'll add to this that using this system I've never made a purchase that I've regretted. Most Switch/3DS purchases have been based on the game going through NL's rating system and then through my own post-rating system.

The ones that haven't were day one purchases pre-ordered months or years in advance because most of the time I know what I want, but when I'm in doubt, NL typically helps me arrive at a decision, whether voluntarily or involuntarily

And if anyone cares, yes, 8.0/10 is a pretty high threshold, but I've had games sit at 8.0 or higher that had been rated 6 (possibly lower) by NL or other websites depending on platform. There just isn't time for mediocre games in today's world, but I'm not blindly following a reviewer score, because there is no guarantee that the reviewer is necessarily experienced or comfortable with the genre that he/she is reviewing, as is sometimes evident, which is why readers are always encouraged to read the text and not just the score. All in all I appreciate the work being done here at NL, and if scores are here to stay, then so am I.

I'd hate to look for a new reviewer website and have to adjust to their scores, so familiarity helps as well, I guess.

I'm glad people are sensible here and don't rush to pour the baby with the bath water. Scores are more useful than ever! Dozens of games come out every day. It is literally impossible to read all the reviews in their entirety and play games and live and do all the human things.

The problem with no score reviews is that they become useless for anyone other than someone willing to invest the time to read it from beginning to end. Eurogamer is a good example of this. When they had their scores I would regularly read reviews of games I was interested in and the score wasn't something low like a 5/10. Nowadays I don't even open a review there if it hasn't got the Recommended label, which basically means I read like 10% of their reviews. Polygon? Similar story - I don't even go there anymore, cause their reviews are useless.

See, review scores are a bit like laws - just because most of the people behave themselves without even looking at laws that enforce good behavior, doesn't mean we should get rid of said laws.

Scores would be good if there was an industry standard. Maybe use something like . That would better determine what the big picture is like. Averages hide too many things and that’s why

@PALversusNTSC

I bought around 45 boxed games for 3DS and approx. 70 digital.
I have ~20 games (boxed+digital) on Switch already. (I didn't count free-to-play in those numbers.)
I think I'm supporting developers just fine.

New ideas are good but if the realization is on a subpar quality level, why should I care? I'll rather wait for a developer to make it in good quality instead. There are too many games already to have time for half-baked ones.

It's like you want people to see independent art movies because Hollywood can only repeat itself.
Regardless if that's true or not, Hollywood movies are still the most popular ones for a reason.

In this manner, I just want the most popular games to come out for Switch and those are (mostly) not the indie ones.
For those who want to play indies, there is no better place than on a Switch anyway.

As for the reviews, scores or not, since they put and end to user scores for eShop games, it's impossible for me to distinguish games I've never heard of. Even a thumbs up/down system would be a big help.
With 20+ new releases per week, it's now almost impossible to find games on Switch for yourself...

To me a score doesn't mean much. I've seen a lot games that did deserve (IMO) higher score and yet it got a low score. Just like Atelier game. That game is so fun and a great RPG and yet it got a 6 here....

I do think we should be able to have a fan score here. If a game gets a score here put a poll as well so we gamers can give a score as well. So there will be 2 scores here on each game

@NEStalgia - the number has to anchor it, in case the reviewer gets off track. How many times has a reviewer hated one thing BAD, but the overall score was decent?

I read a Hallow Knight review where the score set the stage - but the reviewer went on a two page hate fest on ONE item. If there was no score to set the stage, I would have skipped on buying it.

@Darasin While I see what you're saying I also think it can be better said that "a number that's in line with the average of other numbers can help hid the fact that the quality of a given review is terrible."

Did that number anchor it, or was it just a number generated by looking at the average and making sure the number didn't deviate far from it, regardless of the actual text? Do you have any way to know? Maybe that score indicated that the reviewer thought it was a 7 but poorly wrote the review so it looked like he mostly disliked it. Or maybe the reviewer thinks the game is a 4 at best, but didn't want the review to stick out too far as inaccurate and saw if everyone else gave it between 6-8 so he didn't want it to appear like he was missing something about the game everyone else saw and seem out of touch, so he gave it the "going rate" so to speak. There's no way to know. Meaning the number is still fairly irrelevant....the text fives a fairer shake.

Kotaku goesn't do scores. But if they were to give scores you can bet from the review text that the entire Xenoblade series would get no more than a 50%. But it would get this from the point of view that the reviewers admit up front they just hate the series. Is that number useful when scanning across scores, or does it only help you select confirmation-bias based reviews?

I can see both sides of the argument. While I do confess that I tend to skip to the bottom check the score and read the conclusion before I decide wether reading the full review is worth my time. It is nice to have a simple way to score and compare games. That said the score is not the end all be all.

Personally I do like some of the alternative review scores give my The Completionist (Complete it, Finish it, Play it, Look at it, or Burn it) or GameXplain (Love, Like, meh, dislike, or hate). These tend to summarize the reviewers opinion of the game more clearly than a number would.

Without reviews whether Official or User I would have trouble figuring out what game is good or bad.

Yes, as a guide. The problem with scores is when the become so precise, like a % out of 100 or things like 8.7. Unless there's a formula comprising such precise scores then they are nonsense. They also lead to overall higher scores and distorts the value of lower scores, as only 9.5 or 95% is perceived as a great game, while anything below 8.0 or 80% is bad.

Personally, out of 5 is enough, with 1=bad, 2=average, 3=good, 4=excellent and 5=outstanding. No cheating with half stars as you may as well score out of 10. The main negative with the 5 star system is you can't reward truly stellar games. Although, you can by adding sixth star or even golden star. Then you almost echo the 10 point system as that is 5=average, 6=good, 7=very good, 8=excellent, 9=outstanding and 10=phenomenal.

@construx That's the thing, though. People play games for entirely different reasons and enjoy different aspects of games. You couldn't pay me to play FIFA. It's just little people bouncing a ball around. For me personally, it's a 3, maybe. I'm sure I could play for an hour before passing out. That said, I can acknowledge that it's a quality game for those that want that type of thing, and even get some notion of why people might love it. Not for me.

Though I like a large array of games, I do like a good puzzle game, because of strategy and figuring out efficiencies where the concrete aspects of symbols and colors don't matter as much as the cerebral experience. I can play them for hours.

Still, I wouldn't call for a website to rate FIFA a 3. Nor would I expect them to rate puzzle games only 8 and up just because I enjoy that type of game.

It's one of the reasons I find single number ratings almost useless and scores out of 100 completely ludicrous unless they are averages of many reviews or something.

There might be some smart ways to rate games that are helpful and I do understand that some sort of many-gamers-might-like-it idea of a number can be useful if you want to just generalize for talking about taste of "the masses"... maybe.

In short, I think what you are experiencing is just the complete limitation of a number that can never suit all people's tastes.