I like to think of myself as above all of this. I'm a grown man and I can get whatever I want. Sometimes, I just find myself hating on a certain population because they seem overly smug. At some point, I've hated on Nintendo, Sega, Microsoft, and Sony--simply because the fans of a particular company were being a bit too vocal with their praise.
I don't really care about scores anymore. I tend to know what I want and I've really enjoyed some 5/10 games to the point where I can replay them over and over again. At the same time, I've gotten some 9/10 games that I couldn't bring myself to play halfway through. I've been at this long enough so I can already see what reviews a game will get long before the game is released, too.
What I agree with the most is when The Sess says that we don't need numerical values. Imagine if art critics were to compare a DaVinci painting to a Van Gogh (Mona Lisa is a 9.5/10). It makes no sense--but we've come to accept this. Back in the 80's, I read Gamepro Magazine and another mag called Game Players. At the time, Gamepro didn't provide a ratings system. It just told the good and the bad about a game and based on that, I decided if it was a game that I wanted. It wasn't until somewhere near the launch of the Snes that they switched to a ratings system (a bunch of smiley faces). I instantly used this system to try to prove to my Genesis owning friends that Castlevania III (Nes) or Joe and Mac (Snes) was something they should be jealous of.
Instead of taking a game at its own merits and our own personal tastes, we've allowed ourselves to fall into this whole thing. Who has the higher score based on some other guy's opinion? Which game has the best sales? Which game has the best graphics based on some arbitrary graphics scale? I'm sick of it. I know what I like and I know what I want. I don't think I'm going to play the "My game is better than your game because" pawn anymore. I think I'm going to go back to basics.
