Out of ten, out of 100, binary systems... there's a lot of ways to score a game, but what works best? And do they matter?
There’s a belief amongst a lot of game journalists, and I tend to agree with it, that a lot of people don’t read game reviews ‘properly’. To our mind, it should be a linear process, starting from the headline and standfirst, progressing through the review itself, then on to any supporting scores and comments – like our own Gameplay, Graphics and Sound scores – before finally coming to the last judgement.
That is, the final score itself.
It’s certainly how most reviews are written. But most folks find it hard not to read the score first, and it often feels like a lot of people just look at the score.
The thing is, though – and we’ve touched on this before, especially in regards to Homefront – that a score is nothing without the context of the review. Things get even more complicated by the fact that the modern reviewing landscape, especially that of the score itself, is horrendously skewed toward the upper end of the scale.
Frankly, we’d like to see that change.
Screw you, Cole Phelps One of the reasons we’re thinking about this right now is our review of LA Noire, which some subscribers should be getting about... now, in issue 126. In fact, we’re fully expecting to get a rather angry phone call from the local Rockstar gang once they read our review – it’s a known fact amongst game journos that Rockstar takes ‘negative’ reviews very seriously. They certainly make a point of reinforcing positive reviews, and we’ve gotten heartfelt phonecalls in the past telling us how appreciated we are for “getting what Rockstar are trying to do”.
There’s a dangerously seductive lure about that kind of feedback, though. You can often feel, down the track, that any negative press you give a game might somehow draw the opposite response, and see you kicked out of the Gets What Rockstar Does club.
The most curious thing about all this is what constitutes a ‘negative’ review these days. To a lot of the industry, anything below 80 is an outright fail. The way some companies react if you give their game a score in the 70s, well, you’d be mistaken for thinking you’d kicked their cat to death or pissed in their stash. But then, look at the effect a score like that can have – THQ’s stock dropped dramatically when Homefront received a day one Metacritic score in the 70s.
(and don’t get us started in Metacritic – we’ve already ranted enough about that)
If you want a comparison, let’s look at the kind of marks an essay for university might get, and how they’re graded. In fact, my partner recently got a High Distinction for one of her English essays (clever-clog that she is). A HD is a well regarded grade – the highest, in fact. It encompasses a percentile range from 85-100, and if you score above 90 you’ll even – at least in the University of Sydney’s English Faculty – qualify for peer review in a journal or somesuch.
Below the HD is the Distinction, which is still pretty sweet. That range is from 75 to 84.
To get back to our LA Noire review, to put things in perspective it scored a Distinction from us. It’s gotten a score that would make most uni students pretty pleased. And yet, whenever we’ve mentioned our LA Noire score to a lot of other game journos, we’re being told how brave we are, and getting oohs and aahs at our boldness, or cries of “How could you?!” from those who liked the game more than us.
Does this seem odd to you? It certainly does to us.
Issue: 137 | June, 2012