[General Discussion] Video game review reform idea.

I was thinking about this for a few days, and I came to the conclusion that video games are a little too conservatively reviewed. Here's what I was thinking: for any successive game in a series (ex: Madden, or GTA), if it isn't a significant improvement from the predecessor (graphically or gameplay-wise, like GTA3 was to GTA2) then there should be a half-point deduction for each successive game (so, by the time San Andreas came out it should have had a full point deduction levied against it). This way, video game reviewers could be more responsible for recommending games.

(Note: I realize how useless most video game reviews are. Most gamers are smart enough to get their reviews from multiple sources. Still, I don't think game companies should be able to get away with sequels that are virtually the same every year. Would people have gotten the next Mario or Zelda or Metroid games if they stayed virtually the same each year? How about Sonic, or Crash Bandicoot? Or Jak and Daxter? Or, dare I say it, Halo? Those 5 series are just an example of series that more or less stayed the same each iteration. Maybe I'm alone on this, I don't know.)

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Really, you can't expect that kind of sensibility on the part of gaming journalists...Ethical debates like that take away from their gametime.

What I don't like is when a higher profile game is reviewed with a thorough emphasis on its' high points (or half the review is talking about how much they enjoyed playing it) and a lesser profile game is reviewed and the review spends most of the time talking about 1 or 2 nit-picking flaws or just throwing fluff against the wall. Really, if you see Growlanser Generations get a small 100-150 word review and more than half of that is discussing the premium package and very little of the actual content in both games, you have to wonder how much the reviewers played the thing (sup, Game Informer) and it doesn't aid your buying decisions at all. Likewise, you can see Halo 2 get 2 full-2-page reviews for BOTH the 1P game AND multi-player, then wonder how they complain they "didn't have enough space" for other games. Yeah, fuck you EGM.

As for games that stay the same...I don't think you can really regulate it. I just think it happens naturally when a genre becomes less popular (or in some cases, more popular, as the case with Xtreme Sports games). I think it'd be impossible for a Megaman game to score significantly high marks nowadays, since they don't really mess with the formulas of the games. I think the concentration is more on who the maker of the games are and how much weight they hold...Realistically, you're not going to see large franchises from EA or Square get the same kind of treatment a lesser franchise/publisher would. Too much money involved to notice the encounter rate or jaggies you would in lesser-profile games.

Game reviews have always been a joke, but the lines are much more clear-cut nowadays that they're not even worth reading for the entertainment value.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Maybe I'm an idealist. Part of me thinks someday video game reviewers will be played up like film critics.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Oh okay, so where do we draw the line between what is considered a "significant" improvement in either area?

For example, we have Half Life and Half Life 2. Now that was a pretty significant graphical jump, but there was like six years between the two games. Or, also, Doom 2 to Doom 3 - that's an even more drastic jump.

But then you have games which release a sequel every year, if they need one or not. Honestly, I don't know how anyone can expect serious graphical improvements every year. That's completely unrealistic thinking.

On the gameplay side, it's even fuzzier. I'll again use Half Life as an example - Half Life took what other FPS games had done and took it a step above in a sense, at the very least in terms of immersion. Now, why mess too much with a good thing? Half Life 2's gameplay was largely unchanged from the first, aside from a few physics based puzzles. Why should they be penalized for not fixing what wasn't broken?

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I'm in agreement with Galen. What might be a significant improvement to fans of the series or genre might just be a minor upgrade to anyone else. Significant is hard to quantify.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I find that game reviewers have so many things to write up and play etc., that is can be difficult to find the time to write an elaborate review that sees everything from the positives to the negatives. I mean, a movie takes 2.5 hours or so on average to watch, while a game can be for 5-6-10+ hours... I mean if you want to have a great review, then playing as deep as possible has to happen. Leaves little time to be breaking down every game to the smallest of pieces. JMO.

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I'm pretty sure that this already plays into a games "value" for reviewers that have a score for that. If it's the exact same game as last year's product, it's probably going to get a low value because for the same price, you can pick up the same basic game for much cheaper.

But as mentioned, how to you decide what qualifies as a big improvement? For example, take the Splinter Cell series. The basic gameplay is the same between all of them: if you've played one game in the series, you can play any other one and you'll be able to grasp the same gameplay right away. But Pandora Tommorrow introduce competative multiplayer and larger environments to the series. Then Chaos Theory added coop and more equipment options, as well as a totally new engine. Then Double Agent introduced new elements into the stealth gameplay and mixed up the gameplay mechanics a bit as well as extending the competative multiplayer.

So...where do you draw the line? Are all of these original enough to count? None of them? Some of them? Something can look like a world of difference to one person and no different to another. To fans of the original Deus Ex, Invisible War was a huge change. But to the somewhat more casual player, someone might go "biomods, gun upgrades, dialog options and multiple objectives/optional objectives...seems like the same game to me".

Frankly, I'd rather developers do what they're good at than feel like they NEED to try something new for the sake of review scores. I mean sure, Oblivion was pretty much the same type of game as Morrowind...but I think that was a much better sequel than games that try to introduce "new" concepts into a series like Star Fox Assault did.

How ya doing, buddy?

A half point reduction? What? There are two fundamental problems with game reviews and both have to do with the whole point system. The decimal system and inflated scores.
Let's take a look at a small sample of games pc.ign reviewed last month.
F.E.A.R. Extraction Point - 7.6
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 - 7.5
The Sims 2 Pets - 7.4
The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy - 7.2
World Series of Poker: Tournament of Champions Card - 7.2
Championship Manager 2007 - 7.1

Let's see, 2 expansion packs, 4 full games. 6 entirely different genres yet IGN is trying to tell us on an objective basis that Tiger Woods is 0.4 better than Championship Manager. That's bullshit. Do movies go through this shit? "Oh well such and suches acting was a bit wooden in that scene so this movie is 0.3 worse than this documentary" No. And we all know that this shit get's even more ridiculous at the top end of the spectrum.

The Godfather and Spirited Away are both masterpiece movies. Whethor you prefer one over the other comes down to personal taste. Five stars apiece.

Metal Gear Solid and Soul Caliber are both masterpiece games. Whethor you prefer one over the other comes down to personal taste. Nup sorry, IGN says Soul Caliber is 10.0 and Metal Gear Solid 9.8. You can't argue with 0.2.

The other probelm is that games that arn't any fun and fail at most things get a score like 6.5. Again, that's fucking bullshit. If the game FAILS at being fun then it deserves a FAIL mark, ie. something below 5. A score like 6.5 implys that 6 or 7 out of every ten things in teh game are good! That's not true. They're shit. Give it the score it deserves.

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Originally Posted by RABicle

The other probelm is that games that arn't any fun and fail at most things get a score like 6.5. Again, that's fucking bullshit. If the game FAILS at being fun then it deserves a FAIL mark, ie. something below 5. A score like 6.5 implys that 6 or 7 out of every ten things in teh game are good! That's not true. They're shit. Give it the score it deserves.

Agreed...But again, normally the games that get these types of scores never belong to the really "known" makers. Dirge of Cerberus and even Crystal Chronicles got a LOT of 6-7's, which was basically a nice way of telling Square "Okay, we enjoy your business...This is the lowest we can give your game without breaking the agreement". Hardly anything positive was written about them. Meanwhile, a good game from a lesser publisher is lucky to get a 6-7, due to the reviewers not really caring about it or the minimal amount of adverstising dollars they'll lose...Not hard to just harp on the one or two things a game does wrong, then knock its' score down just for the hell of it.

So figure a 6-7 for Suikoden V or Ys: Ark of Napishtim is more akin to an 8 or 9 IRL, a 6-7 for DoC or CC would be more of a 4 or 5 IRL.

A game's status probably plays more of a role than anything in these situations...

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by The Dopefish

I was thinking about this for a few days, and I came to the conclusion that video games are a little too conservatively reviewed. Here's what I was thinking: for any successive game in a series (ex: Madden, or GTA), if it isn't a significant improvement from the predecessor (graphically or gameplay-wise, like GTA3 was to GTA2) then there should be a half-point deduction for each successive game (so, by the time San Andreas came out it should have had a full point deduction levied against it). This way, video game reviewers could be more responsible for recommending games.

(Note: I realize how useless most video game reviews are. Most gamers are smart enough to get their reviews from multiple sources. Still, I don't think game companies should be able to get away with sequels that are virtually the same every year. Would people have gotten the next Mario or Zelda or Metroid games if they stayed virtually the same each year? How about Sonic, or Crash Bandicoot? Or Jak and Daxter? Or, dare I say it, Halo? Those 5 series are just an example of series that more or less stayed the same each iteration. Maybe I'm alone on this, I don't know.)

I personally don't think games should be rated relatively. They shouldn't have any kind of safety buffer of previous games if it is totally unrelated. If the previous game in a series was kick-ass, it shouldn't have any impact at all on the second game, whether you expect it to kick ass as well or not. Each game should be reviewed as if it were the only game in the series. They really shouldn't be able to use history to their advantage. Inversely, games that had a shitty beginning should not be looked down upon either as a first glance.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I just think that video games should evolve more often than they shouldn't. How often to great games really come out? Yeah, OK, those games shouldn't be bothered with much. I just think of Nintendo and how their games had evolved almost every single iteration (think Mario, Zelda) and since the N64 Mario has stayed mostly the same, Zelda has stayed mostly the same and Metroid doesn't look like it'll be changing much.

Like I said, I'm an idealist. There's really no expectation that this will happen, but it's not without hope.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I really can't say much for Mario, since there's only been one platformer game after it (and that is Super Mario Sunshine), Galaxy is supposed to be vastly different, so we'll see after that for Mario.

As for Zelda, sure the game's maintained relatively the same thing, but it's kinda like Final Fantasy. For Final Fantasy I - X, it's been more or less the same, but that doesn't diminish what a great series it is. It's the same for Zelda. Games don't necessarily have to change vastly to stay alive. Sometimes, just improving upon a working formula will suffice as long as nothing else is screwed up. Never played that much of Metroid, so I can't say anything there.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I mostly find reviews I read to be useful. I know it's the in thing for gamers to hate on reviewers and sometimes I disagree with the review but that's no reason to get silly about it. I can sympathize with these guys. Their job is to sit up until the early hours of the morning playing every game under the sun. If I had to play poorly made budget game #382919183 when I really want to be playing Twilight Princess I would probably write a three sentenced review aswell. "Yeah, the game sucks. What did you expect." It really ought not be a surprise when a game like FFXII get's a 5 page review.

If there is one thing I would change the way reviews are written today it would be to remove the numbered scoring system. Obviously when a game gets a 3.0 it means it sucks. But between 6.0 - 8.0 can be really fuzzy. Especially since anything below 8.0 is perceived to be a bad score by gamers. People have come to rely too heavily on the score alone and the number itself just doesn't convey enough information.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by The Dopefish

I was thinking about this for a few days, and I came to the conclusion that video games are a little too conservatively reviewed. Here's what I was thinking: for any successive game in a series (ex: Madden, or GTA), if it isn't a significant improvement from the predecessor (graphically or gameplay-wise, like GTA3 was to GTA2) then there should be a half-point deduction for each successive game (so, by the time San Andreas came out it should have had a full point deduction levied against it). This way, video game reviewers could be more responsible for recommending games.

Sounds like a pretty good idea, but what about the idea of using hindsight to see a game for what it is whether or not its an original or the 5th game in a series, or whatever? I don't know if the reviewers think of them as games for themselves and rate them as such. Perhaps not because of how often they like to compare games to other ones in reviews.

But I dunno. While I'm here: Hockey rules, Dopefish

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by JackyBoy

If there is one thing I would change the way reviews are written today it would be to remove the numbered scoring system. Obviously when a game gets a 3.0 it means it sucks. But between 6.0 - 8.0 can be really fuzzy. Especially since anything below 8.0 is perceived to be a bad score by gamers. People have come to rely too heavily on the score alone and the number itself just doesn't convey enough information.

That's true, the numbering system tends to be very subjective. If you force people to read the damn review instead of just glancing at the score, they'd get a much better idea about how the game actually is, not what the reviewer thinks. The score alone tells you complete shit. If you want to know whether or not it suits you, read the review, because even if it tells you what the reviewer thinks, it also allows you to judge for yourself whether you like or dislike what the reviewer thinks, and what aspects of a game do you like and which do you not like. For example, take one of Angry Nintendo Nerds "reviews" (this is the most extreme case). If he had written a review based on what he played and gave it a score, more than likely, it's a really shitty score. While some are supported, you really have to listen to him to know exactly what aspect of the game warranted that score.

FELIPE NO

I wonder if games should be rated among seperate aspects. For example, I will review Final Fantasy VI right now:

GAMEPLAY: 9/10 STORY: 8/10 SOUND/MUSIC: 10/10 OTHER: 8/10

But I think it would be a bad idea to add 9 + 8 + 10 + 8 (equals 35) and divide by 4 because for some people gameplay matters more and for other people storyline is the most important thing to them. So 8.75 would be the wrong score.

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Originally Posted by JackyBoy

I can sympathize with these guys. Their job is to sit up until the early hours of the morning playing every game under the sun. If I had to play poorly made budget game #382919183 when I really want to be playing Twilight Princess I would probably write a three sentenced review aswell. "Yeah, the game sucks. What did you expect." It really ought not be a surprise when a game like FFXII get's a 5 page review.

I wouldn't say it should be a surprise, but a lot of the "mainstream game" reviews read like "Okay, you know this game is getting a good score, I know this game is getting a good score, the publisher knows this game is getting a good score...So dammit, we're giving this game a HELLUVA good score and a real wordy description, while minimizing what it does wrong and overblowing what it does right" One of the more blatant examples is Gamespot, where they just take long reviews and break them into "pages" to make them seem longer and more descriptive.

In the case of Final Fantasy XII (and other "high profile" RPG's that generate a heated discussion over certain aspects), I find it hard to believe that the majority of journalists come to the objective agreement that each game is well done, when they're so heatedly discussed in basically every gaming community. They've gotten burned for "premature" reviews as well...The EGM one for Final Fantasy Anthology makes no mention of the various emulation issues which are blatantly obvious to anyone who plays the game (especially since most of the staffers mentioned playing FFVI on SNES...A scenario where you will definitely notice a difference).

A distinction should be made between a budget POS (like, say, Bode Miller Alpine Skiing) and a quality, but low profile game (Growlanser Generations). You can play Bode for all of 2 minutes to see it is a shitfest made solely to capitalize on Olympic Fever...There's enough crap to rag on for a short review in a single playthrough. But I'm not convinced you can do the same with something like Growlanser Generations, which is made up of two individual games with a lot of depth to them and was all but ignored by the mainstream gaming press (most reviews were puny and useless). Or even Suikoden V, which has a full-length Game Informer review that wastes half of the space yacking about FFVII.

I remember the "old" EGM, where all reviews were 1/3 of a page and all games were treated equally (four reviewers). Metal Gear Solid and Zelda: OOT getting their all 10's was well and good (with say-nothing-descriptions, I might add), but it was also nice seeing games like the original Guilty Gear and Magic Knight Rayearth getting the same type of face-time. It made for more of a parity factor and didn't make the "mainstream vs smallstream" thing so blatant. Also, unlike the current EGM, they didn't read like a poor man's message board trolling. Most were informative, with just the right hint of satirical humor when needed. That whole mag has gone to hell since Dan Hsu took over. I seriously just want to slap the taste out of that guy's mouth everytime I read something of his.

*Sigh*...I miss the "good" EGM.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

That's what I mean though. As long as there is no "overall score", then people aren't going to base their entire decision on it. Aspect scores are fine, but overall scores are rarely an accurate depiction.

I liked Gamepro's ratings though. They have a Graphics, Sound, Control, and Fun Factor. It is possible for games to score high on the first 3, but poorly on the last, simply because it's NOT fun, which is probably the most important "aspect" of a game.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Aspect scores are bullshit too. Do other media have to go through this rubbish? No.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by The Dopefish

there should be a half-point deduction for each successive game (so, by the time San Andreas came out it should have had a full point deduction levied against it). This way, video game reviewers could be more responsible for recommending games.

I used to be a reviewer. Games should not have scores, even if the reader just wants to scroll past the review and see how high it's rated. Too fucking bad. Do you know how many 10/10 reviews there are on GameFAQs? Just don't bother.

IGN gave Touch Detective a 5.5, God Hand a 3.0 and Jade Empire 9.9. Too bad God Hand is actually more entertaining than Jade Empire, and Touch Detective is a great puzzle solving game.

For this reason, I just use youtube. There's nothing else that interests me aside from actual video footage and/or gameplay footage. The video reviews at gamespot are pretty decent too, but then you get things like this:

"New highly detailed cutscenes in Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth are great, but then you're brought back to the outdated 2D world."

Apparently some people don't seem to know what the word port means. Personally I think VP: Lenneth is a great alternative; in VP's situation, due to the limited availability to the PS1 version (which are prone to not working if they're scratched) and how much of a cult classic it's become. Of course it isn't perfect, since VP just doesn't work with some people.

You might as well not waste your time in taking reviews seriously, because it's just an oversized cluster of someone's opinion. Someone should judge games for themselves (I'd vote for demo discs, or piracy, but half of you would probably just resort to this and not actually purchase the game in the end.)

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I don't think a game should get a lower score just because it's very similar to its prequel/s. That could be applied, to some extent, to sports games, because I find it ridiculous that there's people who'll buy every iteration of an EA Sports title every damn year. How much better can FIFA '07 be compared to FIFA '06?

On the other hand, even if Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime 2 are very similar to each other, I liked them both and I think they're both great games. Should I score MP2 less just because it's more or less an expansion pack? And more: if someone never played MP, should a reviewer let him think MP2 is of lower quality and thus deter him from buying and enjoying MP2, just because it's a sequel? And, even if I played GTAIII and Vice City, am I expected to enjoy San Andreas less only because it's just another GTA? Does having played all the iterations of a title mean that I should enjoy the latest iteration less, just because it's more of the same?

Of course, that doesn't mean that a great many revies aren't flawed. I personally think that sticking a score to graphics/sound/gameplay (whatever they mean by that)/fun factor (whatever thay mean by that)/longevity and calling it a review is beyond ridiculous. This is how magazines used to review games in the old days, but those days are over. And of course, there should be a somewhat objective score system. I'm sick of those Gamefaqs people who stick a 10/10 to any game they play, just because they think that if they like a game, then it must be a 10/10 game.

The British magazine EDGE does use more objective review standards. They'll never dedicate more than two pages to a game, no matter if it's FFXII or Dirge of Cerberus. And they'll never dedicate less than half a page to a review. They use a 10 out of 10 score system, with no decimals (really, those 7.6 and 8.7 are meaningless, I don't know why someone still uses them), and they attach a meaning to every score (eg: 10=revolutionary, 4=appalling, 5=average, 8=excellent). Since 1994, EDGE only gave five 10's. Of course, every review comes down to personal tastes in the end, but some reviews are better and more objective than others.

Anyway, I stopped using reviews to choose what to buy a long time ago. I buy what I think I may like, and if I don't like it, it's back to the store. Ever since I found out that I absolutely despise a 10/10 game like GTAIII, I knew that I can't trust someone else's tastes.

I was speaking idiomatically.

GTA3 deserves its 10 rating. Nothing is more revolutionary than a game others copy.

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Sure. People need to stop treating 10/10 like some kind of holy number.
I mean, take Advance Wars. What can you possibly fault about that game? Nothing, it's perfect, 10/10.

FELIPE NO

10/10 never means anything. It just means the guy who reviewed it liked it. It means nothing in terms of whether or not you personally like it or not. What happened to the old, renting video games before you buy it?

Will next gen have demos? Because those are good indicators for people to see if they really want to buy it or not. PC games already do this. Console games need to catch up since they now boast wifi.

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Originally Posted by Omnislash124

Will next gen have demos? Because those are good indicators for people to see if they really want to buy it or not. PC games already do this. Console games need to catch up since they now boast wifi.

Err, there have been demos for systems ever since the PSX/Saturn era. The PS1 and PS2 each probably had a few dozen demo discs at least (I remember the Playstation Underground subscription where you got a two-disc set of demos and some media every 3 months), and with some magazines like OXM they would have a demo disc every month. Some actual games even have playable demos included on them, either right from a menu or hidden with a button combination (like the Sly 2 demo in one of the Ratchet and Clank games).

As far as downloadable demos go, all the next-gen consoles and the PSP are capable of that. So far quite a few have been released on the Xbox 360, even though OXM still gives out demo discs with every issue.

Jam it back in, in the dark.