9.4

Pros

Great, believeable open world game with hours upon hours of gameplay
Loads of quests to keep you occupied
Retains the Fallout atmosphere and feel
Lots of hidden quirks and bits of background info that can be fun to read
Multiple ways of going about a mission
Range of fun items and weapons is large
Some of the DLC is actually quite good!
Bizzare array of characters
Black, Fallout humor
Mods, mods, mods (PC version only)
Optimised better for multi-core compared to Oblivion (PC version only)

Cons

Animation is still not good enough (Hey Bethesda, how about adding a third person diagonal amimation)
Some poor quality textures (even on highest settings on PC)
Mixture of VATS and pure action doesn't really work entirely
Poor voice acting sometimes causes loss of immersion

7.0

Pro's:
Alot of things to do, You don't feel limited.
Awesome weapons SISHKEBAB!
Karma system.

Con's:
Graphic, Story, Glitches.

I agree. John117, it's your thread so far be it from me to tell you how to operate the scoring system but using 7 as an average makes it very difficult to rate games. It means there are only 3 points available to distinguish games which we consider to be above average where as there are 6 points to distinguish bad games.

OT: Using your scoring system I'd rate the game an 8.

Pro's

Large world, Lots of side mission and plenty of gameplay hours, Interesting characters, Freedom in developing your character, VATS can be fun

Cons

Travelling is often frustrating especially when being forced down metro stations, Lackluster story, Wasteland is repetitive, Far too many glitches, Fire ants (though that last one may just be me)

Off topic: Does anyone know why when making lists I seem to have double spacing compared to most other peoples posts?

That's how the majority of gaming magazines or gaming websites handle the ratings.

5 out of 10 is simply bad and not worth it.

An 8.5

It's a very solid game, has a few flaws and it's story isn't the greatest. On the other hand it managed an open-world atmosphere very well (far better than Oblivion thank god) and was good enough in its gameplay to keep me hooked through till the end.



Oh and I also hate the scale used in gaming which is 7-centric. On a personal scale I see this game as more of a 7/10 game (and Oblivion a 3/10 game).

8.8

Good - the setting, the atmosphere, some good missions, lot's of stuff to do, companions, etc. VATS

Bad - poor shooting, little too much brown and a little too much similarity between one place and the next, a buggy would have been nice, main story ends very weakly - like, we're thinking about some DLC to raise level cap and finish things up with a proper open ended finale weakly. Terrible 3rd person view. Usual bugs/glitches an open world game brings plus the usual balance issues.

If the shooting without VATS was decent, and they'd finished off the story fully in retail version then I'd give it 9.2.

@Barozi

Yeah I know which is why I only really pay attention to Edge and Eurogamer. The only reason I can think of for 7 being an average is so that reviewers can still score medicore to decent games an 8-9 to keep publishers and fans happy but I guess I'm getting way off topic now.

No, just like in school, 70 is the arbitrary number they picked to be the "average".  If something is higher than a 70, it passes, if it's lower, it fails (or at least a D which in some wierd places it passes too but ignore that).  I guess the better world be the norm.

The actual average, as Infinity pointed out, is 50 but that just isn't the scale people use.  Any game 70 and above is passable, anything lower than that, and you start worring.  Things in the 60-69 range may still be alright if there's something in particular that appeals to you, but lower than, and it's probably just a bad game.

And the score is 8.01!

What grading scheme are you talking about that you can't get a 0 on?