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Khuutra on 05 February 2012
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Mr Khan said:
Khuutra said:

Not so. When we accept that a single publication can have multiple reviewers we must also accept that they bring their different perspectives to the table, and when they do that we can only hope that they present their own views on a game as fully and truthfully as they can. If that means that one reviewer sees FFXIII as a 9 and another sees it as a negative seventeen, well, that needs to be presented. Honesty is more important than uniformity - "consistency" has too positive a connotation, here, and could only apply within the narrow band of a single person's reviews.

The root of the matter is the importance with which reviews are recieved, that is, the score, and more importantly it's contribution to metacritic. A site is monolothically represented by the score and by its contribution to metacritic, and it is operating in this context that the call could be made for greater consistency between reviews between reviewers can be fairly made.

What you advocate is a call to reason, which is noble in and of itself, but is not viable in the current state of affairs. As it is, sites are perceived as monoliths vis-a-vis reviews and review scores, and to feed these perceptions (which, in the entertainment business, is the root of financial gain), one should cater to that notion and thus advocate that employees act, if not as a stifling monolith (which would be bad for honesty altogether), then to at least judge games of a certain type under similar criteria

Your problem with this matter is similar to my problem with it, that game reviews specifically are utilized in ways that a review of any item should not be utilized, but then we venture into the murky realm of whether it is better for sites to assume that reviews are going to be received the way reviews *should* (under the norms you assert) be recieved, or simply go along with the status quo of how reviews are received, and this status quo, i argue, mandates consistency in the form of agreed-upon criteria, which will by no means force reviewers to have the same opinion, but will at least guarantee that games of similar design (that is, a game and its direct sequel) will receive scores somewhat within range of one another.


Damn Metacritic, and damn the system, and thrice damn bowing down to something that makes no sense in and of itself. Appealing to the current state of affairs does not move me. Reviews are not buying guides, reviews are not slaves to metacritic, reviews are not objective, reviews are not for fans; each of these are true! I don't give a shit if this is how the industry thinks it works (other entertainment reviewers don't think this way, for some reason), the fact is that it's a stupid and corrupt system that should best be ignored. THis review doesn't fit within that system. Great! I think that is great.

The status quo is not an argument unto itself.