Last Guardian.

Everyone on the review team loves Last Guardian, and I think we all know exactly who's going to be reviewing it, and who's going to be content editing

Fair question. Since I look at things as a grade, I can see a 10-point scale using a 10- there's a significant difference between 9 (90%) and 10 (100%). I do think they should be more restrained in their use than they are now, but I can see it. I'd probably start thinking no perfect scores at about a 40-point system; the difference between 9.75 and 10 is small enough that it really starts to seem to talk about that upper echolon of perfection. By the time you're at 100 points, there really is no excuse to give any game a perfect score. There is no such thing as a 'perfect' game; a game may be the best when it comes out, but to get 100 points, I would expect to find not a SINGLE flaw in the game. And if I dig enough, I can find a flaw...

I hope not, but that's only because racing games aren't my thing and I'm biased. :P

GRID 2 was hinted at as coming in 2012 yesterday.

So you would rather a score that is out of 9.5 rather than out of 10? I don't really see the difference myself, but to each their own I suppose.

Different sites have different stances. Some award games 10/10 just for being brilliant games, some award them rarely for truly brilliant games, some never give them out because 10 is perfection and will never be reachable.

We're the very latter, nothing wrong with that.

Yeh but we are reviewing games, not setting up philosophical debates. Yes, perfection is never reachable. We can never know the perfect circle.

But is giving a game 10/10 really that big of a deal? No. We're talking about a person's opinnion. To say a site will NEVER give a perfect score tells me there is a problem with its review system. I see this as a problem that is very similar to sites that hand out perfect scores all the time. What we should try and do is find the right balance between the two. Don't hand out 10's all the time, but don't resent them either.

I was waiting for MGS4 ever since the third game came out. The entire (main) series has consisted of nothing but near perfect games.

If I had to rate them I'd say:

MGS - 9.5

MGS2 - 9.6

MGS3 - 9.5

Now what happens when MGS4 is not only as good as all these games, but completely blows them out of the water in every possible aspect?

The Music is the greatest in the series.

The gameplay is the best I've ever played - of any series. The s heer amount of content is redicolous. There are so many different ways of doing everything now.

The story is the best I have ever seen in a video game and perfectly ends Snake's character arc. It also features several very memorable characters and also sets up a perfect sequel for Raiden.

The graphics destroyed everything on consoles during it's time and are obviousley the best in the series.

If I were assigned to review a game like this, I would have to give it a 10. Anything lower would involve denial and lying to myself. IGN has only given two perfect scores in the last DECADE, and one of them was MGS4. Nothing wrong with that.

No, but it also means the game isn't being scored on a scale of 1-10, and thus it is misleading to imply such a score exists. Nothing wrong with scoring on a scale of 1-9.9 so long as thats the stated scale.

Of course it is, 10 is utter perfection, a game sent from the gods blah blah blah, and we all know that's NEVER going to happen.

It means, when a game here gets a 9.7 or something, you know it is something truly magnificant, rather than just another 40/40 from famitsu or whever it is.

If it is not possible to get the score, then it is not part of the scale by default. Let me illustrate by way of hyperbole. I can start to rank posts based on a scale of 1 to a billion, but nothing can get better than a 10. No possible way to get higher. Is my scale 1-10, or 1 to a billion? It is quite obviously not the latter as the bulk of the numbers are worthless, and the real point of comparison is 10.

These numbers are not valuable on their own. You can't just stick the number on it and have it mean something. I could rate a game on a scale I just invented in my head (and different from the one above) as a 20. How good is the game? The scale is a comparative one with an absolute maximum and absolute minimum. Any number that cannot be attained by something on the scale is irrelevant as it is not part of the scale. 10 games don't exist, and thus no game is judged against them. They are judged against the 9.9 being the top of the scale, and the best it could achieve.

Edit: More specifically video games use an ordinal scale for reviewing in almost every instance. I couldn't remember the name a second ago.