You've obviously never played Farmville.

Couple things I found wrong with this post:

1. You liked Big Momma's House 2?

2. How does liking a bad movie and hating a good movie mean that Rotten Tomatoes' system is "thoroughly useless?"

3. The reason the Rotten Tomatoes system works so well is because you weigh all of the different factors into the movie before saying whether you approve of it or not. You might consider all the good and bad points in the movie and give it a thumbs up or thumbs down. And even if you think that's imperfect, how could anyone possibly weigh all the different points of a game into a scale out of 10 or 100? That's far more illogical.

4. You didn't actually explain the difference between what makes a good film and a good movie. Big Momma's House 2 had crappy acting and crappy writing, and I doubt it had much in the way of special effects or cinematography. Yet you still say you loved it. Or is that you recognize it's bad and still like it? And from what you described, SotC sounds really bad.

I think it really isn't a problem.  We just need to know where the line between a game you'll pay good money for and a game you won't is (which is usually 7/10).  Everyone knows something below a 7/10 isn't worth getting.  A movie only costs 6 bucks to see in the movies so a six or a 5 in a review isn't bad, plus they are much more subjective; some might think a movie sucks when others say it's a classic.  With games it's usually quite obective which ones suck and for which reasons (graphics, polish, controls etc...)  The 7/10 avarage is something us gamers know and can relate to since we bought our first nintendo magazine (at least this is the truth for me).  Game reviews are by gamers for gamers and as long as this stays this way, no probs.  At least on my behalf.

THeres nothing wrong with reviews, its the damn whiny gamers "my game go choice didnt get the score it deserved, wahhhhhh"!  granted there are some reviews that missed the mark. Goldeneye Wii got a 6.5 in GI, now having played the game it is far more deserving than that, the guy made some good points but it was mostly crap (ie. complaning about blands menus??? bad graphics???) IGN gave it a 9.0 that is a little to high, considering the game does have some bugs online and off and no online speak

I bolded the part that felt like a thousand knives of fire stabbing into my heart and twisting slowly.

First of all, so much more than that goes into a good film.  You've got almost every art form in there, with music, fashion, photography, theater, architecture, and storytelling, and any one of those parts can ruin an otherwise great film.  And every one of those is reviewed subjectively.

With games, it's pretty much the same criteria, but you turn photography into graphics, theater into gameplay, and architecture into level design.  Any one of those can ruin an otherwise great game.  And every one of those is reviewed subjectively.

The difference is that good film reviewers generally write for everybody and they take art criticism seriously.  Game reviewers usually write for a niche audience and don't take art criticism seriously.

I love the reviews here though.  I only read those and user reviews.  Most other reviews feel like they're trying too hard to sell me something.

^ yknow, i've never seen you around here before...

Have you actually read the reviews? Some that are considerred "fresh" have a relatively harsh review, whilst others considerred "rotten" are actually quite positive about the movie. Rotten Tomatoes doesn't work as well as metacritic for example, because it's adding an extra layer of interpretation and subjectivity to the whole process and to the final metric. Opinions aren't black and white (or fresh and rotten).

All this because GT5 is not getting the reviews some people were expecting....Niiiiiiiiiiiiiceeeeeeeeeee

1) Yes. Yes, I did.

2) That was just an observation. I was pointing out that Rotten Tomatoes' scoring system was no more useful than any game scoring system.

3) Middle ground. There's no "average" on the RT review scale. What if it was an average movie? What if the acting was decent, but the story was atrocious, and overall it was just something of a timepass? Is that good or bad? I could say that perhaps it's a 6/10. Is that good? What about 6.1? 5.9? Similarly, 60% positive reviews makes a movie "fresh", but with 59%, it's rotten? Because a decimal score has so many more score captions (one word descriptions, I suppose), the jump resulting from a 1% increase in score isn't anywhere near as significant.

4) I do recognise that it's bad and still like it. A movie can be bad and still be enjoyable. A game can't. Shadow of the Colossus wasn't a bad game, as well you know.

maybe if you read the original post, you would realize that this isn't about GT, and i'm actually saying lower the scores of games because most are too highly rated.

You didn't read the post.... Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiicceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee