Yeah, I think everyone is just jumping on the OMG numbers are bad!! bandwagon and forgetting why numbers are supposed to be bad-- it makes them not read the review.

Having any kind of numerical rating isn't bad at all and it can help you decide between two games.  If there are two games I want but I only have enough money for one, what do I buy?

In a buy, rent, skip system I'm stuck between deciding between two buys.  What's worse is even with the written review, I might still not be able to get a feel for which is better.

In a numerical system, I could see one is an 8 and the other is a 7.5.  Granted 0.5 isn't a huge difference but it can help me decide.

And that brings us back to the root of the problem-- reading the review.

You can actually get away with not reading the review if you find a review source you like.  you can begin to learn their style and trust them.  Let's pretend my review source is VGC.  Of course I want to read the review but since I trust them, I probably mostly agree with them.  If they tell me Game 1 is an 8 and Game 2 is a 7.5, I can trust their judgement and get Game 1 even if the written review doesn't give a clear indication of which is better.

Again, that's why you just find a review you trust and let everyone use whatever system they like.  Afterall, reviews are nothing more than opinions.  If you don't put stock in a certain reviewer, don't read their reviews.  It doesn't matter if they gave your favorite game a 4/10.

And just a note-- the 3 star or buy, rent, skip system isn't all sunshine either as it falls into the exact same problem as the 10 point scale.  If you don't read the review you're stuck with a buy (7-10), rent (6), and skip (1-5).

1-5 is the best, because:

1: bad
2: below average
3: average
4: above average
5: great

3 is halfway and reserved for average games. Above average, that is, good, games get 4 but are still below 5, which is reserved for very good games. Then there's 2 for games that might be playable but are below average and 1 for games that should be avoided. Make it 1-10 and you'll have 9-10 for great, depending a lot on the reviewer, 7-8 for above average, 5-7 for average, and anything below is just bad, 1-2 being there just for the worst games that are reviewed because the reviews might be funny. And make it 0-100 and it'll be a lot like 0-10 with the exception that you won't necessarily be able to properly explain differences less than 5 points.

Seriously, 1-5 is easily enough to see if the game is good and if you want to know more details, you should read the review anyway no matter the scale. Only a fool trusts a game whose metascore is 92 to be clearly better than a game whose metascore is 90. And I'm not sure we even need seperate scores for games above 95 - they're all supposedly some of the best games ever.

Most people really dont read reviews. This includes movie and music reviews. They look for the ratings. I dont even read reviews hardly and I write them. Truthfully I feel I could write a decent first paragraph, make my body paragraphs about unicorns and dragons, and my final paragraph about if a game is epic or its garbage and i know people will accepted because they only care about the score and maybe the final paragraph. Only a small number of people will question the review. And when buying a game I base my decisions on, how much money I have, was the score decent, and if the score was between 6 - 8 I read the final paragraph.

Games that we would rate between 5.6 - 8 I would say would be rent; above buy; below skip it. At least with this system I'm forces to read or skim a review in order to make a real judgment to buy something and not hope the reviewer wasn't a total fanboy, paid off, or something giving a game a good score.

^^^thats the EXACT system we have, you said yourself that you dont read reviews. READ THE F***ING reviews and you wont get shafted. Anyone with half sense can read a review and tell if its written by someone who is a fanboy or not. Take Goldeneye, a GI reviewer gave it a 6.5 i disagree but the points he made werent wrong, they were a little blown out, yes the game has some slowdown but not anywhere near what he was talking about. He barely mentioned the online, he crapped on the motion control which i thought was okay and i dont even like motion control for FPS. IGN gave the same game a 9, but the didnt talk about some of the negative aspects like no voice chat. In this day and age a console FPS with no voice chat should not be 9 but hey that was his opinion. still a good game

100% is the perfect system and will always be! XD

1 to 10%: The producer should organise a mass suicide in the studio

10 to 20%: The studio is doomed to make Iphone games for the rest of their lives

20 to 30%: The game sucks hard

30 to 40%: The game simply sucks

40 to 50%: Not unplayable but way below average (Also know at the Wii Series Constant)

50 to 60%: Bad average game

60 to 70%: Some potential but that's all

70 to 80%: Good average game

80 to 85%: Better than most of the games

85 to 90%: Great game!

90 to 95%: Awsomeness resides in this game

95 to 100%: God came himslef to deliver that copy, enjoy!

Yeah, Wii owners get lots of sex.