Let's talk prostit...err, Reviews.

[DTG]

There's been a great deal of animosity towards increasingly incompetent reviewers the past few years. Their scores don't reflect their words, there's clear bias toward certain systems or franchises and a complete ignorance regarding unique or casual Wii games.

Now I've written many reviews in the past as a freelance writer on various websites and I must admit I often fell into the same trap many other reviewers do today. I found it difficult to assess Wii games as it was unclear by what merits to judge them by and my own opinions often reflected in my scores rather being a completely impartial guide for gamers.

I want to know what you think reviews are missing today and what you think an objective, useful and informative review should be like?

The past few weeks I have been reading many reviews, judging them, tearing them apart and trying to identity aspects that are either missing or flawed. Since I will be writing reviews on my site and presenting them to readers of different tastes and preferences I want to be able to write reviews that are actually helpful to people rather than just being a prostitute to any franchise commanding a large fanbase.

Here are some of my own opinions on what reviews should be and will try incorporating in my own writing.

As a frequent on IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes what jumped out to me is the huge disparity between movies scores and game scores. The highest rated movie on all time for example is a 9.1 on IMDB, held by Shawshank Redemption while the typical score for an excellent movie is in the low 7's on RT. Gaming review scores have become nothing better than fanboy banter thanks to the insistent fan demands for higher and higher decimals and the typical fanboy massacre that now follows a 9.5 review.

I've thought about eliminating scores altogether, but rather than do that I'm going to follow the more strict and accurate schema of movie reviewers though this will likely gain me quite a few haters. Very few of this generations 9's and 10's have actually been deserved and the multitude of suck up reviews have made the meaing of a 9 or 10 next to worthless.

One of the most important yet difficult aspects of a review is to be impartial and objective. How much shit can mario party take for being a "casual" game while others like GTA4 are worshipped as the Messiah of the gaming landscape? One solution I came up with is to give two scores. One score to reflect my personal opinion and enjoyment of the game and another score that aims to asess the title purely on it's technical merits, thus highlighting a clear division between the two.

Technical merits of course include graphics, sound and gameplay but also cover whether the game suceeds at providing an ejoyable experience to it's target audiance, identifying that audiance and giving a low down on what other sort of gamers may or may not enjoy it. It also means clearly identifying every flaw and every strength of the title.

I'm really interested in your input guys, on what changes you think can help raise the review industry out of the cockroach infested scum-hole it is today? Not only to start an interesting and good discussion here but I'd also like to take some of the idea's and incorporate them into my future writing as well. The controversial reviews on megaton games like Halo3, GTA4 and MGS4 has really destroyed the credibility of video game reviewers to the point where I read them for pure entertainment rather then for the reason I should be; for help on deciding whether a game is or isn't for me.