Reviews - Should Graphics Effect The Score?

[Commando]

YEah the thing is there is a differance between what graphics SHOULD be rated as and what they oftentime ARE rated.

I think a lot of people rate it based on aesthestics i.e. oh it looks pretty, or awesome.

and if it doesn't personally appeal to them, oh its crap.

To me that's not informative.

I feel graphics should have something of a significant bearing on the game for the sake that it IS in fact a Videogame, many other aspects can be impaired by graphical glitches, errors, and anomolies.

Basically, to me, and other Videogame "purists" if you will, graphical ratings SHOULD be based on performance. What it means is A) did the developer make some kind of effort to utilize the processing power of the system (i.e. does the game in some way demand a full job from the hardware, whether it is number of chars, or detailed environments, or an array of well managed effects etc.. B) Does the game run smoothly throughout the entire operation, or is the framerate consistant. THIS is huge. (This is also another reason why I believe SONY systems to be inferior, it can't keep the framerate as well as ANY of its competitors). C) Do you find many errors, bugs, graphics glitches (things like white streaks or frame breaks) things that should've been caught in testing.
And so on, this is where the Technichal arguments come in on wether one game is graphically better than another.

I hope this is helpful.