I don't like the new Gamespot rating system. Specifically, I don't like how you can only rate in jumps of half a point. It takes away a large amount of a guy's ability to make small judgement distinctions between the quality level of a game. I'm sure that I'm not saying anything now that hasn't been said a hundred times before, but to me it is a fairly significant issue. Recently, I decided that after some 35 odd hours of playing Suikoden V (and a few more hours watching the wifey play it prior to my getting my greedy little hands on the game) I decided it was time to rate it. (I intend to write a full, and very extensive, review of this excellent game when I finally finish it.) Now here is my dilemna. This game is a better game than a 9.0. However, it doesn't quite reach a 9.5. If I was to rate it before the change to the rating system, I would have given it a 9.3. This would have placed it comfortably behind God of War 2 and Knights of the Old Republic on my sliding scale, but right about equal to Final Fantasy IX. (Off the topic, I think I'm going to bump down Oblivion to a 9.0. Suikoden V and its beautiful storyline and cast of characters has reminded me of how shallow Oblivion was in those areas.)

As I already mentioned, I consider Suikoden V to be about as good of a game as Final Fantasy IX, but not quite as good as Final Fantasy X or Knights of the Old Republic. And therein lies the problem with the new Gamespot rating system. How exactly can I express such differences? If I was to rate all four games today, I'd probably have no choice but to give all of them a 9.5. This would indicate that the games are all exactly equal to each other in quality, and frankly that isn't the case. They have small, but important, quality differentiations that I can now no longer indicate in my ratings.