Percentages are best

this

I don't remember the name, but about 20 years ago (I think) there was a magazine in Germany that rated games in a way the OP suggested. The ratings were "thumb up", "thumb to the side" and "thumb down".

I prefer Ars Technica's system, it summarises what people realy want to know out of a review.

Buy, Rent or Skip.

Isn't that what Screwattack did?

They did it a 'buy it', 'rent it' and 'f it', and I like the system myself.

It's as if I were to tell you we should change how we mesure temperature to cold, so-so and hot.

1. people like convinence: suggesting that everone read the article is counter to everything the masses want...deal with it.

2. a higher grandularity system (ala rottentomatoes.com 0-100%) is great because people like the know the difference between a movie/game that is pretty ok from pretty good from really good to omg this is amazing. 

3. the only thing that is broken about services like metacritic when compared to rottentomatoes is that there aren't enough people writing reviews to get a truely accurate aggregation of public opinion.  as video games become more popular these types of systems will be much more reliable.

lol, love it. xD

I say let the reviewer review the game how they like.  Whethere it's no score, 10 points scale, 5 point scale, 3 point scale, or whatever else that's all fine.  The important thing is finding a reviewer or set of reviewers you like and trust. 

After that, does it matter what the other sites do?

I like this way the best