But still not in the realms of utter stupidity of a percentage.

( Edited on 19.11.2006 19:53 by Oni )

But why does it matter? If it's superfluous or even confusing for you, fine, ignore it, round it up, do whatever.

I'm sorry but I really can't see the issue here, it's not as if anyone is forcing you to discuss why one game got point two more than another.

Example:

A game gets 4/5 on one site and 85% on another site.

The reviews raise the same points, and come to essentially the same conclusion; the only difference is the number.

Where's the issue here? Some people will prefer to see that this particular game is slightly better than some other title according to said reviewer.

You on the other hand can walk away knowing it's a great title that you will then decide to buy or not depending on the content of the review and your personal preference.

Personally I think it would be more confusing if everyone rated out of five, then games could be getting the same score but for completely different reasons.

At the end of the day you're still going to want to read the review to get a proper opinion of your own (or heaven forbid you could play the game), the score, no matter how precise is only ever a rough guideline.

It's just that some people (not me, and clearly not you) like to compare scores for their own reasons, and I think we should just let them and be done with it.

Gamer7's review scoring system:

A+ - A landmark game at the pinnacle of its genre.
A - A distinguished and entertaining game.
B - The game may have minor flaws, but remains an enjoyable experience.
C - An average, pedestrian game.
D - Multiple flaws, unimaginative and boring.
E - Severe problems that make the game unplayable.

So basically, it's like the 'special' Out of Five system I mentioned earlier. Out of five, with essentially 6 going to those extrmeely rare, awsome games that come out once or twice a gen. You can't get a better rating system than that.

We're clearly on different wavelengths here, and neither of us are going to budge, so I'll just leave it here. I've said all I want to say.

Out of five is my personal favourite - I remember C&VG magazine using it years ago, and I was bitter at them for changing it, to the point that it was one of the reasons I stopped reading (along with it generally becoming crap).

Second favourite is 10/10 - adds a bit more accuracy and specifies and diversifies better than 5/5. I do like 5/5 purely for its simplicity, though.

Same. Reviews are pointless as far as I'm concerned...

Personally I'd say out of 20 would be pretty much perfect...

Any scoring system is flawed, /100 or percentages are going to be overly precise and /5's are going to be too vague. In a /5 scoring system a 3/5 could be anything from 40%-60% on a percentage system, that's ranging from below average to above average and a 5/5 would be anything from 80%-100% on a percentage scoring.

I always use percentage/decimal scorings as an estimate, when I used to score games with that system it was always a case of; "Is this game better than an 8/10? Yes. Is this game good enough for a 9/10? Almost. Um, 8.7/10 sounds right." Its not an accurate scoring system, its a translation of a feeling, its an approximation of where a game sits between two scores, whether its just good enough for one score is it just below another.

Ultimately scores are for the lazy, you see a game that interests you, you read the score to see if it warrants a further look, you read the round-up and if your mind still isn't made up you read the review. I can understand people not reading many reviews, most of my game purchases are made based on game boxes and blurbs on product pages, a review might make me interested in a game but I'll only buy what I feel looks good.

Out of 10 system is fine, as long as they keep the scores integers. Out of Five is overly simplified, good and great games are blended into one cateogry.

Again, I'll restate: I don't think it is possible to say a game is "95% perfect". I agree with you there. You can't do it, its not a proper scientific test, its just someones opinion. However, you can use gut feeling to say "hmm- I'd give this an 8; but its a bit better than that. How close to a nine is it? A little bit of the way. Ok, 8.3".

The problem is actually that you are viewing games as percentages when you look at this kind of thing. I'm not, hence it makes sense to me. When I see 8.3 I look at a games scoring system, and it says that "8" is a great game. However, given that it has an 8.3 or an 8.5 or whatever, I can see that it stands out a bit from other "great" games. At the same time, if it had 8.8, I could see that it was pretty damn close to being a really amazing game, and it must have fallen down on a few areas.

At that point, I can somewhat sympathise with gamespots system, in that it graphically identifies the specific successes and failures of a game- e.g. it gets a 7 for sound, an 8 for gameplay etc. What I disagree on is using those to "calculate" an average which forms the score- that implies viewing games as percentages, and thats obviously what you don't like, and neither do I.

Ultimately, you might say that real information should be in the review itself- however, I disagree for a few reasons:

No.1: Clearly a review has to be consistant. If a certain level of appreciation is communicated in the review text itself, this should also be made clear in the score.

No.2: A heck of a lot of people can't be bothered to read most game reviews because they are either a) very long, and not particularly interesting, b) poorly written on a lot of sites c)really more opinion loaded than the scores d)too time consuming, and so on.

No.3: You said you didnt think you should have to do simple maths, and everyone else should use their brains and read the review- isn't that hypocritical? You say you cant be bothered to think about the score, but everyone else should think about the text.

Basically, yes, I agree, we can't scientifically ascertain the exact "%" that a game deserves, but I think you can't see that this is up to your perception. Changing the scale doesn't change this- you have for some reason changed the way you view reviews when ranked out of 5- but really, that just implies that it is split into quintiles, and thus a game ranked 4/5 is 80%. If you can apply your way of viewing reviews to the current system, you wouldn't have this problem. Perhaps people shouldn't use the % symbol as it implies something absolute, but other than that its all in your head.

Essentially- what you are saying is the equivalent of telling scientists not to publish their calculations with full accuracy, because you would then interpret the information as the absolute truth. You would prefer for a vague idea of their findings to be published- this is, in essence, a fault in your own perception of their findings, and not in their findings themselves. As long as you don't view game reviews as an absolute judgement, but rather an indication, this isn't a problem.

I think that the out-of-five system isn't really detailed enough. I think I would really struggle to categorise every game ever (or even the number of games a person reviews in a lifetime) into 5 categories.

In theory, you obviously want your scoring system to give enough information without bothering with the insignificant stuff and making things stupidly complicated

As a reader, do I really care if a game is rated 83 compared with 84? well probably not. Especially considering that different reviewers all give different numbers for different games.

So you need to find a balance, and to me, that means rating things out of 10 or 20.

I think the biggest problem you're going to find with the out of 5 system is that games simply can't be judged on their technical performance alone. Games are supposed to be fun, and as far as I'm concerned a rating out of 5 doesn't give you enough room to judge that.

Out of 10 isn't as bad, but I still feel there's needs to be something in between to distinguish those awesome games from those amazing games. Hence the 20