The Perfect Review System

[Mythmaker1]

Intrinsic said:

Mythmaker1 said:

Today's common review system is an average-based 1-10 scale. 5 and under is below average and 6 or higher is above average. If I tell you the game got a score of 6, then, you'll understand what that means.

Using you're system, what does a 6 mean? The scale is not average-based, and the points for that total could have come from anywhere. Was it a 22200, a 11112, a 20202, or a 10212? The fact it scored a 6 means nothing. So why even try boiling it down to a single metric?

That's just the concept behind the rating. I haven't even delved into the issues with the individual categories (firstly, that it has basically the same problem as the overall rating). It's straddling an unhappy medium between too much and too little stratification, and the result is the sum of its weaknesses, rather than its strengths.

First off, a 5 doesn't ,mean average in today's review system. being that reviewers just toss around unnecessarily high scores these days.

With my system, if really fine tuned, there wouldn't even need to be a total aggregated score. But rather, scores on different categories that make up the game and which also happens to cover all aspects of a game either directly or indirectly. So under the gameplay section, the game mechanics for that specific title will be reviewed and scored. Then under emotion (it could be called anything), which covers story and music/sound design, the game will be accessed too, with considerations made to what kinda game it is, like a story focus won't be heavy on a game like Mario or a racing game unlike say an RPG or something. Basically, if a game tries to take itself seriously and waste gamers time weaving a story, then it better be a good one.

Basically, my system would mean that every game fundamentally gets scores for all the different categories. As opposed to one purely opinionated total score. This way, if a reviewer complains about spotty multiplayer, then we already know exactly how many points it would lose, if he further complains of sporadic broken frame rates, we know what the cost will be...etc 

Rather spectacularly missing the point, but it doesn't really matter.

I'm sure the system is great. And I'm sure you put a lot of thought into it. I, personally, think it is a pointlessly overcomplicated and unintuitive system designed to fix the wrong kind of problem, but I haven't seen it in action. Maybe it just works, somehow. By all means, try it out.