Isn't the thumbs up/down rating system actually trademarked by Ebert? or his show atleast?
I'd thought of a perfect rating system myself, instead of using % or X/10 or X/5 you'd throw games into plain catagories. There would be 5 of them but you wouldn't think of a game as being a 2/5 or whatever , each catagory would represent a range of quality because honestly who gives a shit whether a game is an 98 or a 91 or even an 89%.
Category 1- with a traditional rating system games scoring between 0 and 25% OR an F would get tossed in here, regardless of what percent they were on something like gamespot the simple fact is that they are horrible games that shouldn't be played ever except possibly as a joke.
IE-
Category 2- 25 to 50% OR a D on a traditional scale, these games are incredibly flawed in many ways but despite how much they get wrong the odd person may find the one or 2 aspects that were done well. In other words it could be enjoyable for a very small audience but it's a poor game by most standards.
IE- Lair for PS3
Category 3-50-70% OR a C Generally speaking the majority of games out there fall into catagory 3, these are enjoyable games that range from being pretty good to pretty "meh".
IE- 90% of all licensed video games(movies/tv/comicbooks etc)
Category 4- 70-85% OR a B ,this category is for good games. Laugh if you must but there are a number of games that many gamers would consider great additions to their library but hardly system sellers. This may be because of poor production values, features that were left out or perhaps even just bad english voices , who knows. CAT4 games are worth owning , just not for everyone. IE- Blue dragon, heavenly sword
Category 5- 85-100%/ A, and as the % shows games in category 5 are NOT PERFECT they are merely great in many aspects, any flaws are insignificant and are countered adequetly by the positives. These are games that most people would generally buy a console to play it on. IE- GTA series, Halo, most final fantasy games, Mario galaxy
The greatness of this ratings scheme is that no one can really bitch about game X being 1% higher then game y. Also a critic writing the review could go into detail about comparing similar titles within the same category. I find most gamers can agree on what games are very good , most critics as well, as soon as you add math to that opinion though it becomes an annoying debate. "why did zelda only get an 8.5/10 whine whine" with this 5 catagory system even an 8.5 rating for zelda would put it in the high catagory.
Catagory 5- 85-100%
