Let me start off with a little background. I've been a member of this site and many like it since 2004. I have become part of their culture and am even going to school in an attempt to be a journalist. I consider myself to be well informed and know there are far more casual visitors to Gamespot. But one focal point for everyone in gaming journalism is the review process. This is where people come to see if their pre-order is justified, or if a game they were on the fence about is worth that leap onto the other side. It is also a place of ravenous and disturbing "fanboyism".

Everyone who plays video games has a genre they love the most. Some are fans of lengthy and deep RPG's while others love the run and gun adrenaline rush of the First Person Shooter. They become attached to franchises within these genres and the fine details found therein. This is when the preview coverage becomes just as popular as the reviews themselves. With high profile games like Uncharted, Elder Scrolls or Battlefield, these events feature highly scripted and carefully thought out demos. These demo's are a lot like an interactive commercial. The whole point is to sell you on the game so that all important pre-order will be made. They're known as a vertical slice. All the mechanics (the vertical part) crammed into a small amount of time (the slice part). Editors/News-hounds impressions are based solely off these small teasers. Playing a game in it's entirety and experiencing all of what it has to offer is a completely different story.

The hobby of video games is also an expensive one. Depending on how early in the life cycle you choose to invest, you could be paying anywhere from $200 to $600 (lets hope that never happens again). That's a lot of money to lock yourself into one brand. Think about this for a minute. When you buy a Toshiba DVD player, your not restricted to the "Toshiba DVD's". But when you buy a Playstation, you are only allowed to play Playstation branded discs. This creates a very unique situation for console developers. Their whole livelihood depends solely on how well the consoles are selling. Plus they ask for another $60 on top of that for each game. To the average person, that is a decent chunk of money (especially come November). There's suddenly a lot of money involved in you having that single experience, and when a review comes out to be contrary to your opinions, this can create a problem.

Herein lies the rubs. Game sites, by their nautre, post as many of these vertical slices as possible in order to gain more traffic. This creates false expectations for the final product and then when the review lands, if it's not a perfect 10 (or at least a 9.0) that the consumer inferred; a proverbial "feces-storm" ensues.

There's an inherit problem with a 10 point scale that passes over most people. All games have a written review and a number associated with them. This number is a reflection on the reviewers over-all thoughts on the game. But more and more frequently, this number is what's used to determine how good a game is, and not the reviewers more in-depth analysis. This is partly the fault of aggregates like Metacritic who average out scores of professional outlets into one "super score". This itself isn't particularly egregious, but it also makes the numbers more prominent than they should be.

This leads us to the biggest mistake of the average consumer: comparing numbers. I believe that reviews are completely seperate entities from one another. This is especially true when talking about games of completely different genres. Normally this wouldn't be a problem, but that number is always there for direct comparison. For example, Jeff Gerstmann gave Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 a 10 for this website all the way back in 2001. It's perfectly reasonable to say that game is not worth a 10, but if the argument is valid then the score is valid. But this Tony Hawk review teaches us two valuable lessons. Just because it has a higher score than say, battlefield 3, does not at all mean it's a better game. I'm sure most of you would agree with me. The second lesson is that games age. I'm sure if that exact same game was released tomorrow, it would not receive a 10.

So many games are released now-a-days with such high quality standards that it's sometimes easy to forget that Gamespot uses a 10 point scale. A lot of games do get in the 8-10 range, but that's only a reflection on how well the industry is doing. Saying a game is inferior to another because it recieived half a point less is as ridiculous as it is frivolous.

Maybe it's a sign of the times, or maybe the 1-10 scale needs to be rethought. The fact remains that the score today holds a much higher value in many eyes than the written review itself. It's a quick and easy way to compare two games someone might want to purchase, but it's the wrong way to go about it. Maybe the current trend of making everything in video format has soiled our ability to read, but it it shouldn't ruin our ability to reason.

P.S On a personal note, a prefer a 5 star system with no half stars, like Giantbomb. It provides a clear indication of what the reviewer thought while being simple enough to avoid the "this game should have gotten a 9.5 not a 9.0" craziness. But as i understand it that's not good for recieving games on time because it doesn't transfer over to metacritc very well. It's weird how peoples bonuses and salary increases are dependant on certain goals on Metacritic. Maybe we should just shut down websites like Metacritic and Gamerankings?