What review score system do you like most?

Just the basic "Whole numbers (i.e. 8/10, 9/10, etc)" and using Decimals or Increments never made sense to me. Kinda draws confusion among scoring the game itself.

*Shrugs shoulders*

Whole number is the best. No controversy, its just boring, flat number.

Written will always be the best, but if you want a quick idea, increments or whole numbers will do. Regardless, the way they decide on numbers is gonna be unbelievably arbitrary.

I generally don't care. I take each score style and slim it down simply to Good, Average, or Bad. Then I basically see if it's a type of game I usually enjoy to see if I give it a chance. That said, I don't pay much attention to reviews as they're often a simple opinion and I generally don't trust other's opinions.

I tend to disregard game journalists by and large now.

Basically it's as a general gouge, Steam, or Ghost, our gaming leader.

Written reviews are the only things of value, not the imaginary numbers used for nefarious purposes.

I think a whole number system is best if a score needs to be applied. like, its hard to figure out the difference between an 8/8.5.

really though, its best to follow someone consistently and understand where your tastes align and differ. scores are only so helpful when the game is in a genre or sub-genre you dislike.

Just a written review. Numbers are worthless except for fanwars. Even the argument that they serve to aggregate opinion - yeah, except that the average opinion has nothing to do with your personal tastes. Just read a few reviews and think about how the content applies to you, I say. Esp when you find a few reviewers with similar tastes to yours, their hands on info is worth so much more than a number.

Also, from a statistical standpoint the ratings are a disaster. But that's a different rant

Decimals are utterly stupid. Nobody can be that specific.

I prefer the decimals myself, makes things a little more nuanced.

Increments

I don't care for reviews, but of all those options i took written review with no score, scores are for fanbase(s) to

over, and we all know to which fanbase i'm referring to lol.

The written review, and not just that, but one that is professionally-written by someone who truly understand the games he is reviewing. The written reviews would have to be detailed, long, and not written by someone who is ignorant about the games he is reviewing or make false generalizations about them. Also, the reviews should avoid having the review's personal views as the main focus. Some of GameSpot's past reviews are guilty of the things I mentioned.

Reviews are opinions made from words, not letters or numbers.

Increments are fine. I mean, it's there a really big difference between an 89 and a 90?

True.

Shit, I would argue numbers themselves in gaming have basically become 9-10 good, 8 ok, everything under 7 BAD, for most goobers.

Websites know this shit and manipulate folk with this sheep think tripe constantly, IGN especially mastered that art to the point of memery.

Long? Don't have time for that. Can't even remember the last time I read anyone's review. Besides, any time I write anything remotely resembling a review, it is mostly or completely ignored. Big waste of time. If I did it for a living, I'd get tired of saying the same things over and over. So I mostly just let numbers represent my thoughts, which I do have even if I don't spend a half hour putting them into words. Quicker to just quickly find the general consensus on something after glimpsing at some footage. Usually glimpsing at footage will make me ignore the general consensus anyway and not touch it. All the glowing long reviews in the world won't convince me Ghosts of Tsushima is a game I would enjoy.

Kinda liked the old GameSpot ways, with giving a score to each aspect of the game like gameplay, sound, graphics, and other things, and then finish it with "tilt", and then sum it up to a total score. Even if a game would have ok gameplay, awesome sound and graphics, but you hated it for other reasons, you could punish the game with a bad tilt score to lower the total. Or the other way, game was bad or ok in all aspects, but you loved it because it did something special, you gave it a high tilt score. Was a good way of getting a review of a game without reading an actual review, imo.

Yeah, the bold is why decimals was better than what we have now. You differ between an 8.0 and 8.5 game. Better than everything getting an 8, imo.

And it wasn't really about "being specific". The number was just what the game automatically got when combining all numbers of the scores you gave the different aspects of the game. Back then games actually got different scores as opposed to now when they just slap an 8 on everything.

Eh, I liked it anyway.. *shrugs*

my own opinion has served me well so far,i dont need to be told if a game is good or bad,death stranding was shit and days gone was great

yet one scored 9 snd the other got a 6

mind blowing stuff eh

hah

I really enjoyed decimals here on Gamespot.

But honestly I'm not sure I can tell you the difference between a 8.6 or a 8.7.

Though the difference between a 9.2 or a 8.9 was always clear.

I like increments.

The whole numbers don't really reflect the scale well enough. with whole numbers, there are so many games that would get 9, and would have to hand out too many 10/10s.

There's a difference between 8.5 , 9 and 9.5 games. a 10 should almost never be awarded, like once a decade:

• The Last of Us 2 for the '20s
• The Last of us for the '10s
• Metal Gear Solid 4 for the '00s
• Zelda: OOT for the '90s
• Super Mario Bros for the '80s

And then 9.5s should be a once a year kind of thing.

I like the whole number method. This is how I break it down...

0-5 Game is bad, stay far away.

6 Game is still *bad (*see 0-5), but the dev’s marketing paid us a few bucks to not 0-5 it.

7 Still bad, but marketing paid us a bit more.

8 Average to generic.

9 Average to generic, but marketing paid us a hell of a lot more or it truly is a great game.

10 Sony bought a half page spread or Nintendo launched an average Zelda game.

Voted whole numbers. Think that’s pretty reasonable. No score is boring. Especially considering how overly long and spoilery most reviews are.

Lol this is accurate 😂

Metacritic is god.

Anything with numbers is trash.

I prefer the eurogamer approach than straight up numbers.

Reviews that don't sound like they just recycle the main talking points of all the other reviews. Doesn't mean a I have to agree with it or take their endorsement as gospel, but I can respect that.

I miss the days when video games journalists were accused of being shills for game developers and their reviews were influenced by things like swag or advertisemwnt revenues. Now they just want clicks, they just feed into or against the biases of their audience, whatever gets clicks.

Decimal system was fun for SW shit.

Otherwise, just don't care, scores can go. Nothing inherently wrong with scores, gamers just put far too much weight on them. Should never be the main takeaway.

Of course they're here to stay. In that sense, would prefer they avoid the granular nonsense. 10 point system at the very most. 5 point would probably be even better. A score isn't ever going to be a nuanced reading of a game lol, that's what the review is for. (or at least should be, whole other convo)

"I give this game... A 9.62 OUT OF 10!" foh lmao

This industry has historically sucked when it comes to using the full scale. Mainly uses the top 30% of it, and having a greater range seems to help enable that along with the fanboy trash.

Ideally...

5 - great

4 - good

3 - average

2 - subpar

1 - bad

Lets be real, product scores are generally intended as a starting point for people who don't know wtf they're looking for. That first step in narrowing things down when you're uninformed.

If you're a long time gamer they shouldn't carry any weight. Especially in an age when you can so easily watch, read about, and discuss any game you're on the fence about, from a wide range of sources.

In the old days of SWs: decimal points were hilarious.

Outside of that: written reviews and/or YouTube videos with no number or grading system.

They're leeches, they don't do any work, they just compile others review scores, and let users score games without playing them, oh and certain sites scores weigh more heavily than others.

Its as cancerous as the people who use it.

None of these. I prefer letter grades and their variations. So, if a game is bad, we just give it an F and dont go into splitting hairs over a 4/10 vs a 2/10. They are both horrible. Why do scores even go below 5? I really prefer letters.

A, A-, B+, B, B-, C+, C, C-, D, F.

Tricky subject, because when numbers are taken into consideration often the wrong factors are tallied up.

For example, a game might score poorly in terms of it's story or character development but it might not be the sort of game that requires that.

Or conversely a game might be extra points for being original or unique, but what if it still sucks?

Honestly, I think the best reviews are just when people are being honest about theiropinion. I can tell the difference when someone is truly passionate about something vs just mentioning "positives" as though they were completing a school assignment or something.

I've found that I can get a feel for how I might or might not like a game if I read LOTS AND LOTS of reviews (both negative and positive) from different sources. Only then do I get a clear picture.

I like decimals. Gives more of an overall feel to the whole thing. Although reviews ultimately don't mean jack shit.

I played the games then look at the numbers. Sometimes the score makes sense but a few times the scores doesn't make sense.

A good example is Valhalla. I literally lost interest in like hour 5. No good loot, most of the combat is meh, repetitive stuff, etc... I went back and look at reviews at 80s on metacritic/ How did Valhalla score an "8"??