the_dengle on 17 September 2013
| binary solo said: Rotten Tomatoes did have a video game rating system several years ago. Because reviewers are such dicks about scoring RT had the fresh/rotten cut off at 7/10 and 70% or more games needed to have 7/10 or more for the game to be fresh. These days though they'd probably have to make the cut off 7.5 if they wanted to have most games not in the 90%+ area. There's no essential reason for requiring different cut offs other than the fact that most games critics aren't nearly critical enough. Personally I think the rotten tomatoes system is better as a meta-measure of games than the meta-critic or Game Rankings system. It takes some of the BS out of arguing over whether 89 or 90 makes for a better game. If game A is 90% on the RT method and game B is also 90% then does it matter if one game averages 8/10 and the other averages 9/10? No, the vast majority of reviewers really liked both games. And people should be confident in both games being enjoyable if the games fit their personal preferences (genre, art style, etc). |
I really can't emphasize this enough. Almost every review I read for popular, well-received games reads like a list of things the reviewer liked about it, and a couple of things that could have been even better. Hardly any actual critiquing of game design takes place. It's awful.
Unless, of course, the game is atrociously bad, in which case the review just slams on it as hard as possible. Again, though, very little is gleamed from this other than "don't make your game an unplayable, broken mess, unless you are Bethesda in which case carry on."
