Reviews, scores and sequels – far from perfect?

There has been a air of muttering and discussion in the gaming community recently with regards to game reviews and scores, in my opinion very welcome discussion as to whether the current model and system is effective and accurate and indeed a fair way of rating and judging the plethora of new releases that hit the shelves every week, some with every increasing hype and publicity surrounding them. Now that we are in November there are two months coming up packing to the gills with big releases, and that’s after such big titles as Halo 3, Bioshock, Metroid Prime 3, Heavenly Sword, Guitar Hero 3 and the Orange Box have already been released within the last couple of months. With all these titles competing for your hard earned money reviews will play a big part in many people’s purchasing decisions, so what exactly is the problem with the way things are at the moment? Well one of the big things people are quite rightly contesting is the scoring systems favoured throughout the industry. Typically games tend to be rated either out of 10 or 100 (as a percentage) but when it comes down to it who decides if a game is worth 86 or 58 or even quite how a 77 game is better than a 76 game? Personal choice? Along with these rather meaningless numbers that can be associated with a game, comes the belief that anything below 70-ish is rubbish. This comes from having too wide a spread of numbers, logically a 50 game should be average, not bad but not great either, however in reality these games are marked in the 60s or 70s. Very few games tend to score below 50, So why have these numbers as an option? Even the magazines and sites that score out of 10 don’t avoid this problem, naturally a game rated 5 will be seen as bad, and best avoided, so average games scores get a bump as a result. Then comes along the issue of perfection. Scoring on a numerical scale implies that a perfect score is possible, it also implies that a game that received this mark is therefore perfect. This is, of course, a load of old rubbish, there is no such quantifiable thing as a perfect game, no such measures exist to mark such a thing, even without such heavy weighing factors as personal opinions there are millions of variables which cannot be measures in such a way. I mean what in life can be? Have you ever had a perfect meal? A perfect date? The term can only exist in quantifiable situations, a perfect score on a maths test for example, a perfect score on the snooker table etc. But while games remain scored this way reviewers will be reluctant to hand out 10s, equally a scoring system out of 100 will never give out the 100 score, meaning that there are scores that will never be used as part of the rating system, it’s crazy. Logically a 10 game should be a rare occurrence, but not impossible. A game that stands head and shoulders above others, that represents the pinnacle of the genre or platform should be applauded as such. One solution is to adapt a similar rating to that used with relation to films, a scar system out of 5, as some have commented a pictorial system doesn’t imply perfection and therefore is less psychologically limiting. However many would argue that scoring at all does games a disservice, how often have you looked a review score first without paying attention to the writing of the review? After 500 words of carefully selected prose, all that matters to some is the number at the end, similarly after years of hard work and thousands of man hours poured into a 20+ hour gaming experience, for many people it boils down to the review score. In this respect I have sympathy, gaming has become such a lucrative hobby and with so many games vying for your attention often review scores are all they have. But equally this leads to rushed reviews, heavily weighted scores for the most hyped games and a general unbalancing of the system. Big magazines and websites fight to get their reviews of the big games out first scrambling to deadlines, are they giving the games a proper run through? How can you just such things as the online service and longevity of the ingame features when you have a couple of days to complete the game and get your review up? Yet these articles are so sought after, and so lucrative that the cycle continues. Unfortunately because of the nature of the beast review scores are here to stay, like them or not. Without a measurable way of rating a game the power would be lost. Central to much of this debate, and what certainly sparked these thoughts in my own mind was the subject of sequels. Unlike films, where sequels are often viewed as inferior and money driven, gaming suits itself to sequels and they have been, in one form or another, it’s backbone for many years now. Yet as new generations of games roll around there are cries to old days of innovation and creativeness, but what many fail to realise is that such a leap is not possible any more. How can any game simulate the jump from 2D to 3D. From pong to Mario? When any art form is in its infancy the leaps are huge and revolutionary, but become less as time progresses. Film critics do not criticise films because they fail to replicate the same sense of shock as the first time they saw Star Wars, or watching a film in colour, or with sound? So why do a lot of game reviews begrudge such a thing? A recent review of Mario Galaxy in Games TM magazine praises the game highly, in fact I spotted barely a negative comment, so why did it not garner a maximum score? What else would it have needed to do to make this jump? The review claims that it is more of an evolution than a revolution – similar claims were recently made of Halo 3 recently. But what else could the developers do? There may well have been justifiable reasons for the score the game received but they were not clear in the review. Sometimes it feels like sequels are actually punished for building on work established in their predecessors, especially if their predecessors are celebrated. No game can replicate what Mario 64 brought to the table, so why mark them down for this? If Galaxy can improve this, add new ideas and show genuine innovation and be celebrated as a better game in itself, why should it be marked down? Surely it should be marked up? I admit that games should be punished for not showing innovation and merely being carbon copies of what has gone before (many EA sports game spring to mind) but the notion that a game could never score as highly as Zelda Ocarina of Time or Mario 64 purely because they are not as revolutionary now is ridiculous and basically trips up all new games at the first hurdle by saying ‘no matter how good you are, you can’t match up to this’ which limits the reviewers opinion from the off. A game that is a sequel needs to be looked at in light of its place in a series, but also as a game in its own right. If the previous game had not existed, what would you think of it? Without the hype and the previews and the claims of the developer, how do you feel when you play the game? How does it compare to similar titles? If the bias of the familiar is clouding out your opinion, ask yourself whose fault that is, the games or your own expectations? This is not an issue that will go away any time soon, but in the future when looking at games, take time to read the reviews, read a few not just one and from a variety of sources. Ultimately games are to be enjoyed, worrying about which games are better than others, or certain games place in the all time rankings is missing the point, as I have said before the games are meant to be enjoyed, savoured and appreciated and with such rich picking this winter, there should be plenty out there for everyone, regardless of the reviews.