| HappySqurriel said: One problem I have seen with the review scores is inconsistent consideration of how good a game is for its time ... Most of the biggest games being released are sequels to games that have been on several generations of hardware; because of this reviewers (whether conscience of it or not) are influenced by the previous version of the game and the review score it received. Now, there are two ways to compare a game to its previous version, how the game "Directly Compares" to its previous version and how the game compares "For its time" ... (Note: Just using GTA 4 as an example, not a serious critique) When you compare Grand Theft Auto 4 to Grand Theft Auto 3 in a direct fashion Grand Theft Auto 4 is a far better game and should receive a far better score. On the other hand, when you compare the two games for their time Grand Theft Auto 3 was a revolutionary product which force everyone to see videogames in an entirely different way whereas Grand Theft Auto 4 is an incremental improvement over the formula established in Grand Theft Auto 3; therefore Grand Theft Auto 4 should receive a far worse score than Grand Theft Auto 3. Now the reason this can cause problems is you will see reviews for games like Metroid Prime 3 which use the "For its time" argument to dock it marks, while other games Like Grand Theft Auto 4 do not receive the same treatment.
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Great post! For me GTAIV was not a perfect game, not until it hits PC anyways! But anyway, it was so much better for me than GTAIII, it was a whole other world. I could actually play and enjoy it, where I hated the third one. Just the range of things, its a freedom simulator really. Its for people who want to do whatever the hell they want, its quite a release from a boring day at work. For that reason its a 9.5 game, because it means a lot to a lot of different people, in a lot of different ways.
Perhaps one of the big issues at hand is finding a few reviewers with a similar taste in gaming to yourself and then check it with friends and hype and if it sounds good, buy into it! If you get someone who likes FPS games to tell you that Halo 3 is the best game ever and you don't really like FPS games of course the game will not live up to the scores for you.
Tease.
