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[Roto13]

Because gamers went nuts when Twilight Princess got an 8.8 out of 10.

 

[sn00zer]

While tbh there are far more crappy movies out their than console games......console games are too high of an investment for them to be 'bad'....I would say I am hard pressed to think of a bad retail release game ive played this gen....there were games I didnt like, but even those I wouldnt consider bad

 

[Kai Dracon]

I went through my own catalog of completed games and rated them all on a five-point scale a couple of months ago. At first, I really found myself being a victim to the industry standard of using only the upper quadrant of the scale to describe anything that's not total garbage. The upward shift will continue so long as people feel obligated to use big numbers to describe anything that doesn't suck because in the current model giving a game a 3/5 is condemning it even though that may be the most accurate rating to give it.

A while back I experimented with reviewing every game I'd played in the last few years using a four star scale. Eventually I realized I felt most honest only ever using "one star" for something I felt was almost universally bad, with nothing to recommend it to anyone else.

Past that, I ended up giving most games 2 stars, a small percentage 3 stars, and maybe 2 games four stars. For me a 2 star rating doesn't mean "mediocre", just "not too bad". Something that the right person could love, but not a superior game in its class. Or a game that would appeal to all people regardless of their tastes.

 

[Jebusman]

I ask this as a semi-serious question, but why is there no "rottentomatoes" equivalent for games?

Rather than taking the score of each review and averaging them all against each other, it just takes whether or not the review was considered positive or negative, and averages that out. It becomes less about what games are "better" than the others, just which ones are good or not. So long as it's above a certain point, it's "good". If it's not, it's "bad". End of story.

For example, if we consider LR:XIII's score on metacritic right now, it holds a 68.

Under the rottentomatoes style, if you split the good/bad right at 7/10 (with 7/10 going to good), it still comes out around 69% of reviews that are positive.

If you were to split it at 6/10, you're looking at 82% positive reviews.

The main issue I have with it is still the gripe many of you have with the current review scale, which would lead to a lot of games possibly skewing more towards good than bad unless the split was set high enough. But I personally think it would better represent the overall view of the reviewing public rather than relying on their scores.

 

[Kalamari]

Movie, TV, and Music creator bonuses probably aren't tied to Metacritic ratings like game developer bonuses are.

 

[flyinpiranha]

This is the single most accurate chart I've seen regarding reviews.

 

[Sotha_Sil]

I don't pay too much attention to them, as I often find myself a harsher critic than most. MC is good for filtering out most games, but I don't use it to make final decisions on purchasing games.

 

[Interrobang]

My girlfriend and I play a game whenever the new GameInformer comes in the mail where she literally reads me the titles of games and I guess the score it got.

I'm usually only a few decimals off the mark.

I think this is how most reviewers decide on a score. They write their real thoughts (if they have any) in the body of the review, but when it times comes for a score, they think of the game, the title, the developer and the publisher in their mind, and go, "hmmmmmm, 8.5."

Metacritic skews for this reason because it takes into account this type of mixed ruling.

 

[Jerry Orbach]

A 2.5 star out of four movie review is considered a weak recommendation.

By whom? Both Siskel and Ebert used stars in their print reviews and thumbs on their TV show, and both translated two and a half stars out of four to a thumbs down. Since their star scales stretched all the way to zero, this meant they each had access to six "negative" scores (0, 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5) and only three "positive" scores (3.0, 3.5, 4.0), which is not terribly dissimilar in practice to the standard six negative scores (1-6), three positive scores (8-10), and one cop-out score (7) used by games reviewers operating on a ten-point scale.

(Sidebar: does the fact that Ebert still managed to give more movies a thumbs up than a thumbs down - despite reviewing virtually every film with a theatrical release - definitively prove the ethical bankruptcy of the entire professional critical community, regardless of medium?)