A lot of people bog themselves down in arguments over the difference

>>376987457
Personally (and this is me by the way)

I think games should be given a five star review

0: Incomplete, broken, or not a game
1: Terrible
2: Forgettable/meh
3: Fun
4: Outstanding
5: GOTY

That's because review sites give shit reviews anyway because they're paid off to begin with.
If you've played games long enough you should easily be able to make your own judgment before buying.

0-100 is the same as 0-10.0 so it doesn't matter
0-10 in whole numbers is ok for casual reviews but in depth analysis should utilize a 100 point scale with weighted factors

>>376987857
So should the final score be the enjoyment of the reviewer

Or should the final score be the accumulation of the scores it gets in each category (gameplay, visual, sound, plot, etc)?

>>376987457
I'm not for shilling JewTubers but I think the dude from ACG does it well. Buy, wait for sale, rent, or never touch.

>>376987941
OP here, I actually was looking at his stuff and noticed he doesn't use whole numbers (unlike everyone in metacritic) so that's part of the reason I made this thread.

>>376987930
always the latter, but with each category weighted based on how significant it was to the game
for example a puzzle game thst has only graphics, gameplay, and audio should be scored primarily for gameplay, not a third for each

>>376987457
Games should be rated on a logarithmic scale and it should be continuous over its entire range.

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The experience of art is too subjective for numbers, and reviewing games on a ten point scale greatly limits your thinking on them as an experience and causes publishers/ developers to sell out ideas in order to achieve arbitrary goals of good scores.

>>376987930
>>376988091

It doesn't actually matter as long as they're clear about how they did it. The "problem" with review scores is that they attempt to boil a complex set of opinions down to a simple relationship with other or even hypothetical examples. But it's absurd to decry shorthand for omitting detail, because that's the fucking point.

The only thing anyone should ever take away from scores or aggregate scores is how much the product was generally appreciated. Anything more complicated than that requires real words.

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>>376987457
If you don't at least use a x/100 scale you're a fucking barbarian

Reviews shouldn't have numerical scores period. It has been proven time and time again that they don't work.

>>376987457
No, games shouldn't get numerical ratings, people value different things in games, for some one aspect of a game can be unforgivable while for other it can be a minor thing easily ignored or even enjoyed, revewers should just describe games and let the reader decide if they're interested.

>>376988457
OP here

If you post a review without a number score you just get ignored (with maybe one or two exceptions)

>>376988457
>>376988510

The fact that numerical scores are imprecise does not mean they lack communicative value.

>>376988457
You're expecting people to actually read reviews?

Few things are more pointless than a 0-10.0 review scale. No reviewer will tell you a difference between 8.5 and 8.6. Not a single one.

Only need a two point scale
>good
>cancer tier garbage

>>376988192
Actually to expound on this, games should be rated using a unit like decibels.

We pick a game to represent a reference "fun" level this game will be our 0 point which everything is measured relative to. We will call our unit dBf (decibels fun). The formula for calculation will be 10log(fun/reference fun). A doubling of fun compared to the reference is a +3dBf increase in fun. A halving of fun is a -3dBf increase. 10 times the fun is +10dBf. This scale has no limits.

>Not recommended for anyone
>Only recommend if you're a die hard fan of x or y and can tolerate faults such as z
>Recommended for any who enjoy X type of game/content
>Recommended for almost anyone, game is fantastic and will likely be very enjoyable for any who are interested in it.

>>376988579
Their communicative value is really minimal though. Especially 10 or god forbid 100 point systems, since they convey roughly the same amount of vague information as 5 point scales do.

5 - Amazing
4 - Good
3 - Ok
2 - Bad
1 - Garbage
0 - Literally unplayable

There, that's all you need.

>>376988579
That's the problem, they're comunicating imprecise things, they also encourage people to ignore the actual review and skip to the ratings and encourage reviewers to give out high numbers for a bunch of reasons.
Not that I hope we'll ever get rid of that system.

Vidya shouldn't have ratings at all, and reviews should provide consumer advice rather than being marketing blogs.

>>376988868
t. caveman

>>376987457
Nothing all that wrong with a 1-10 system problem is almost all reviewers fall into just using 6-9, I like the star rating giant bomb uses as well

For reviewers 1-10. And I do mean 1-10, no zeros or decimals.

For users positive/neutral/negative. That's all you need.

>>376987857
>0-10 in whole numbers is ok for casual reviews but in depth analysis should utilize a 100 point scale with weighted factors
no
if you want an in depth analysis read the review

the numbers are for easy navigation, a very quick summary of what the reviewer thought of the game, and a way to know if you should play the game or not without having to read the review and spoil yourself

what the fuck do I care if marble madness had only two stars for sound? I just wanna know if it's a good game that I should play, either call it shit, sub-par, mediocre, great or a masterpiece, that's literally all you need

>>376988931
What does a 87 tell you that a 88 doesnt? What does an 8 tell you that a 4 doesnt? If its not nothing useful then its practically nothing useful. Shits a waste of time for something as subjective as video game reviews.

>>376987560
People will still throw a shitfit and a half if something gets a 3

>>376989051
4/5 encompasses both 7/10 and 8/10, which in turn would stretch from 65/100 to 84/100. So yes, a x/5 scale is inadequate

>>376989108
That's why you give them stars rather than a number

It's sixty (which looks like shit and is a D in school) but three stars out of five looks better.

Honestly a 50 should be a bland middle of the road average game, not 70.

>>376987560
This
Fpbp

>>376988868
>>376988889

Sure, but there's nothing wrong with offering a simple rubric to compare with other products. The problem is that angry retards up in arms about the state of popular media need something to fixate on, and loosely communicative numbers are an easy target.

These stupid faggots aren't mad that numbers are being used to vaguely communicate appreciation. They're mad that popular things aren't complicated and smart like they think they are, so we have threads like these.

Don't be a stupid faggot anon. There's nothing wrong with catering to the lowest common denominator, and nobody's going to like you for being a snob. Enjoy what you enjoy, appreciate what exists for what it is, and try to stop being such a faggot.

>>376989147
That doesnt answer my question. What do the numbers mean to you? Whats the big difference between 7 and 8? Both show that the person thought that its an all around good game with some flaws. If you get that, then the score has done its job and if you need details you read the review.

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I wonder what would happen if a big review site made a review of a game and then randomized the final score for each unique IP viewing it.

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>The most honest review scale is on chrstcenteredgamer of all things

>>376989032
>either call it shit, sub-par, mediocre, great or a masterpiece, that's literally all you need
And to give an example, from the RTS genre:
Supreme Commander - Five stars
Age of Mythology - Four stars
Dawn of war 3 - Three stars
Grey Goo - Two stars
Stalin vs Martians - One star

if I want to know WHY supcom is a masterpiece and SvsM is garbage, I can read the review

>>376989301
/v/ review score shitposting would skyrocket

>>376989293
65/100 is just a little above mediocre while 84/100 is already pretty damn good with some flaws

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>>376989329
>Stalin vs Martians - One star
Say that to my face not online, see what happens

>>376989032
Right but what should each number coorespond to (and is zero included)?

You and I agree 1 is shit, 4 is great, and 5 is masterpiece.

The true middle is 2.5, so 2 is a little below that and forgettable meh, we agree on that

Is 3 a game that's fun (but not great), or mediocre?

i think the biggest problem is with the people who read reviews and conclude that the reviewer considers one game he scored at 87 to be better than a game he scored at 84, even if they're completely different genres.

There are games that I would score highly that I think are worse than other games I would give a lower score, due to the type of game they are or the scope of the game.

1-5 scale. Anything else is unnecessary

>>376987941
This is pretty good for consumer reviewers but what about more indepth reviews where you need to compare the game to many other games

>>376989545
as far as I can tell that game was the vidya equivalent of "Ironic shitposting is still shitposting"
>>376989582
Why should zero be included? 3 is the average value of 1-5. If you don't want to give bad games stars, just make the icon a dog turd instead of a star at that rating. Also see >>376989329 for examples.

I gave up on reviews around the end of the twentieth century. Anyone who reads reviews, or review scores, is an idiot.

>>376989478
Thats a rare extreme though which doesnt really justify anything in between, not to mention that half the time a 65 would be rated 6 or 3 for the sake of convenience of communication

>>376987560
Wayyy too complicated for 4chan autists. At most it should be:

0: it's shit
1: it's shit
2: it's forgettable
3: it's goat

>>376989646
Thats the problem with scores, they suggest some indepth process of evaluation when no such thing exists in these reviews and its just going with your gut

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>>376989646
Right, that's why I advocate basic scores based on fun (but of course attached to reviews that explain the game's categories in more detail)

A game's score should be the fun the player had at the end of the day. You could make a very fun game with a shit art style

You could also have a game that looks super realistic, with a soundtrack and plot that checks all the boxes but if you're not having fun then what good is giving the unfun good looking game a high score?

3/5 or higher is good games
2/5 or lower is bad games.

You shouldn't give more than two or three 5/5 scores per year.

>>376987457
Thumbs up or down only.

>>376987457
When you use decimals it's a 100 point scale.

Do you need 100 increments to sort out your games from best to worst? I guess so, but it's hard to give a definitive estimation of a game at any given moment. I'm just speaking for myself, but if you enjoy a game some days more than others, you're naturally "scoring" it a decimal point higher or lower, because so much of it is on your end as a receptive player. It doesn't seem too useful to me to pin a game down to anything more precise than a 10 point scale, and the review can fill in the detail that'll reveal how much a 7/10 scoring game stacks up against other similar 7/10 scoring games.

>>376989646
I think a lot of that rests on the fact that the pleasure of one game is so different from the next, and the scores don't bridge that gap (even though they seem to). I do think a highly scoring game should be highly exciting, even if it's a vastly different brand of excitement from another game. There's the kind of excitement that is more about a horizon being opened up by something new and experimental in a game (like in early 3D games or GTA3), against the excitement of mechanics and appearances that are more fleshed out and refined (the former clear the way to the latter).

Sometimes you simply can't score something highly because it's not enough of a jump from its predecessor(s), meaning that you enjoyed it less than someone who jumped into it without experience with the first. Sometimes you score something highly simply for introducing some cutting edge things despite some big flaws that would otherwise make the game a bomb, so on and so forth. The score can get loaded, but I feel like when I have the relevant experience and read the review I can make these things out (assuming the reviewer isn't a retard, of course).

The numbers are a total distraction of people actually reading the review and discussing the games merits and short-comings.

Honestly the best rating scale I can remember is simply "Buy-Rent-Skip" with more details enclosed.

I think a 4-point scale works just fine.

1-Complete trash, avoid at all cost.
2-Heavily flawed but maybe worth checking out if you're a big fan of the genre or it's on sale.
3-Competently made but does nothing new or interesting, still worth picking up if you like that sort of game.
4-A must-buy game, set new standards for the genre. GOTY-worthy material.

>>376987457
Same issue as rating people out of 10, 1 through 5 are all "don't buy/fuck." No real point to having that many grades of "don't bother." Four is enough.
>don't buy
>don't buy, maybe bargain bin buy
>p good
>buy this shit

Reviews are meant as a buying guide, not an art critique. Anons like >>376987560 miss this point.