Why is the Review System Broken?

[68soul]

WereKitten said:

Strategyking92 said:

I believe a reviewing system should be as such:

Buy
Rent
Fans Only
Avoid.


It covers everything in the video game genre. With only 5 words you can sum up every score in the history of reviewing video games.

edit: and this way people couldn't bitch about .5 points off of a certain version because it would literally mean nothing in the categorization. This would also more often than naught remove any slight bias tward a late port.

The trouble with that is: who're you advising to buy or rent or avoid the game? A game could be a definite buy if meant for kids aged 5-8 in love with the Merc's cartoons, and a definite avoid for an horror-hungry teenager.

One thing is the description and critical analysis of the game per se, the other is judging it as a product that people can buy, and in this second idea of what a review can be you should take in account the variety of the public.

That's where all the confusion comes when reviewing games that don't add much to previous experiences, or for late ports. Do you rate an incrementally better game as better than the original, or do you rate it in the context of people having already played the previous? Who should buy, rent or skip the new one?

My point is that the what the game is, what it tries to be and how good or bad it fares at reaching its goals should be mandatory in the final synopsis of a review. Anything less is misleading, including any kind of score or consumer advice.

In this sense, I see nothing wrong with some reviews being attuned to the mainstream commercial trend, and others being completely independent. Different kind of public will look for the Cannes' palm d'or badge under a movie poster, for Ebert's quotations or for glowing reviews from the "Family fun" newsletter.

Which, once again, points to the fact that we should have more variety in how game reviewing is approached and less self-referential short-circuiting between publishers, reviewers and core gamers community. It's an unhealthy relationship.

 

Excellent post, WereKitten...

I also purchase games for my kids, and i have to trust my own feeling, and my own knowledge in videogames, because most critics won't think about the kids: the right difficulty, the right genre, the right graphics needed, the best replay value... the problem is most critics will always refer to their own preferences, their own tastes, and it's something that just can't be universal... a "must-buy" for someone will always be an "avoid" for someone else, just like it happens with records, books, movies, comics, etc...

That's why i've already posted this before in this thread: the most important thing is to find critics who share your tastes, and usually score the games just like you would do it yourself...

In my case, Nintendo Life has became my reference, even if i still check Metacritic to have some "global point of view" as well... but to each his own, we just have to know what we really like and what we're lookin' for, and get some help to know if a game we may like is well done, or poorly done... games we will never like are always out of the equation, that's just the way things are...