Could Game Critics learn a thing or two from Movie Critics?
1perfect - being entirely without fault or defect: FLAWLESS
This is the definition of perfect as defined by Webster’s dictionary. Perfect doesn’t really seem like such a complicated word or a word that is difficult to wrap your mind around, and yet… game critics seem to not fully understand what this word means. It almost seems as if they have made their own definition:
1perfect something that is… well… you know… it’s kind of like… well it’s OK if it has some obvious or serious flaws but it’s still perfect.
It would seem that today’s game critic standards are a bit… off. It may be partly to blame from the fanboys or it may be due to the fact that these game critics fail to have any sense of what’s “perfect” and what has errors. This blog post has mainly been spurred by such recent reviews as Halo: ODST, Uncharted 2, Killzone 2, and/or Gears of War 2. Going through these games meta scores they are indeed good games but, why all the 10/10’s, A+’s, 4/4’s,100/100’s, etc.? These games all have things in common. They have things wrong with them. Some of these things that are wrong with them might be larger than others but the same general idea occurs. A perfect score infers that the game is perfect, that there is nothing wrong with
it. So why is it that game critics continue showering such blockbuster titles with perfect scores when they just simply don’t deserve them?
Before we delve into that question, let me get to the basis of why I chose this title. I dare you to go on to metacritic.com and look for your favorite movie. The movie Transformers which was applauded by many, only received a metacritic score of 61/100. A 61/100. Gamers freak out when their beloved game falls below an 80/100 on metacritic. Titanic, a movie that won numerous awards and was very highly critically acclaimed received a 74/100. Star Wars 91/100. What is even more interesting is that metacritic seems to have noticed this trend in score awards. If you look at the general consensus of the review note at the top of the screen for Transformers, it says “Generally Favorable Reviews.” It didn’t take too much time to search for a game on the side of the screen that was around that score and I landed upon agame called Heroes over Europe. This game received a 62; the caption? “Mixed or Average Reviews. After some quick browsing on the “What is Metascore” section, I found out why they had to adjust the score system, and it only proves my point:
The reason for this special treatment for games has to do with the games
publications themselves. Virtually all of the publications we use as sources
for game reviews (a) assign scores on a 0-100 scale (or equivalent) to their
reviews, and (b) are very explicit about what those scores mean. And these
publications are almost unanimous in indicating that scores below 50 indicate a
negative review, while it usually takes a score in the upper 70s or higher to
indicate that the game is unequivocally good. This is markedly different from
film or music, where a score of, say, 3 stars out of 5 (which translates to a
60 out of 100 on our site) can still indicate that a movie is worth seeing or a
CD is worth buying. Thus, we had to adjust our color-coding for games to
account for the different meaning of games scores compared to scores for music
and film.
So why is it that movies seem to have such a hard time of wowing critics when game critics seem to be so very easily won over and hand out 100%’s like there’s no tomorrow. Sure a game might be good but a game should almost never be perfect.
One of the reasons I believe for these perfect or too high scores is simply because of the gaming community. If you are a frequent visitor to N4G, it should come as no surprise to you of the surprising immaturity and obsession of some users on here. One example is how NowGamer was widely criticized by many Halo fans for giving
Halo 3 ODST a 6.3/10. Frankly I applaud them for being completely honest and giving the game a score that actually seems realistic.
Killzone 2 may not have any articles of a specific site receiving hate mail for scoring a game lower than expectations (although not that they haven’t received any hate mail I’m sure of) but one specific review of
Killzone 2 set off an unprecedented amount of reports. Tek.no of Norway reviewed
Killzone 2 and found that the game was deserving of a 6/10. To this, I say fair enough everyone has their own opinion. Apparently the community didn’t take kindly to this. With around 100 reports on it (some of them being multiple reports from a single user) the story was failed and restored four times as I recall. It even got to the point where an admin/mod had to make an update on the story that said that the review is completely legit and yet the reports kept flooding in. So what does this have to do with elevated review scores? Well simply, major sites may possibly rate especially anticipated games with higher review scores in order to avoid an inevitable backlash from console obsessive fanboys that would die before their beloved game receive a, gasp, score under their expectations such as a 7/10 and if a site goes below those expectations, the usual comments chime in which they question the site’s credibility.
LITTLE KNOWN THEORY: I’m sure if you’ve been keeping track, all review
sites have lost their credibility at least once, but instantly gain it back
once they give their hyped game a good score.
Another reason could be is that reviewers may have gotten themselves in a rut and are being pressured by the community. With so many “perfects” or near “perfects” handed out to so many games, it would seem outrageous and unfair if an anticipated game scored under an 8/10. Gamers have become almost accustomed to this trend and with the dawn of metacritic (which ironically I’m using as somewhat of a basis for in this blog) it seems like this high score obsession has turned into the rule of law with games. Now, extremely high scores don’t bug me as much as when sites/magazines post perfect scores. Even worse is when sites find their review ceiling to be inadequate and then go and break it such as what recently occured with the PS3M3 magazine review in which it gave
Uncharted 2 a 21/20. I’m sorry, but no honest professional review would give an above perfect score for anything. Just the thought of it is absolutely infuriating. And what were the people doing in the comments? Rather than calling out the magazine saying “How unprofessional” or “Isn’t it impossible for something to be more perfect. Perfect doesn’t have multiple levels of perfectness, it’s either perfect or not perfect; not perfect, perfect, or more perfect.” No, many of the comments seemed to be “21/20, Only on the PS3” or “when a reviewer gives the game over %100, you know its[sic] good” (these are actual comments). Now I was hoping that with many of these kinds of comments, I was hoping that there were going to be people that actually had half-a-brain and argued with them or at least gave them a large amount of disagrees. I applauded the efforts of PrimordialSoupBase (Page 1 & 2), Valin (Page 4), and SolidSystem (Page 4 & 5) for actually bringing this score into a question. I then found it appalling that instead of these people getting the agrees they actually got a barrage of disagrees, and I wouldn’t be surprised if one of them lost a bubble. The fact that these users may or may not be fanboys is completely irrelevant and anyone that supports a score that crosses the review ceiling should be smacked in the back of the head, which going by the agrees/disagrees of that article seems to be much of the N4G community.
Switching to
Gears of War 2, this game is a great example of a broken review system. It was so absolutely, horrendously filled with bugs, glitches, and negatives that I needed two adverbs. Yet, this game managed to weasel quite a number of perfect scores. Good game? Sure (subjectively). Perfect? No way in hell!! Of course bugs and glitches that could easily be fixed by a patch should be taken a bit more lightly but the second there’s a negative with a game, shouldn’t that automatically make it imperfect? To tell you the truth, I made a user review for
Ninja Gaiden a long time ago and now I’m absolutely ashamed at the score I gave it. Even the revised score I gave it in the comments seems a bit high (I forgot to put the frame rate issues in the original).
One thing that is good about the game reviewers is that they are usually unanimous in their scores. This doesn’t happen with movie critics as they can range from a 9/10 all the way to a 1/10 per movie. If this happened to games it would really confuse someone interested in a game as to whether the game was actually good or not. With movies, it is not as big as a deal being that the cost of going to see a movie is only $7-10 USD where as a game costs $60 USD. With a usual unanimous score collection for a game it helps discern what games are good and which ones are bad. Some of you at this point may go, wait didn't he say in paragraph two that he applauded when a website gave a score that didn't fall in line with the other reviews in
Halo: ODST, or
Killzone 2 to which I respond: No, I applauded them for giving those games a "realistic score."
It would seem that magazines need a MAJOR facelift on the game review system. Close to perfect scores should only be handed out to the best of the best of games. Perfect scores should be handed out extremely rarely or even next to never. I say absolutely enough of this 10/10 crap that seems to be plastered and supported by 99% of game sites/ publications, the exception being gametrailers.com as they have never given a game a 10/10 (at least as I’m aware of). Everyone needs to lower the game standards and game reviewers need to raise the bar for what is considered a great, good, or average game. Whenever a game reviewer crosses the review ceiling, that is definitely a sure fire sign that game reviewers have lowered their bar WAY too much. If you’ve managed to make it all the way to the end of this, then hopefully I’ve at reinforced or at least swayed your mind at how broken the game review system is.
P.S. If you can give me one good reason why just one gripe with a game in a review shouldn’t make the game any less than perfect, then I would really like to know why.
P.P.S. Yes I know there were plenty of other games that could have gotten mentioned but if I wanted to write a blog with the same length as a novel I would have done so. And I'm sorry for the extreme formatting issues. I wrote this on Word and then pasted it here. Big mistake!!!
Story references
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/perfect
http://n4g.com/ps3/News-268492.aspx
http://n4g.com/xbox360/News-397575.aspx
http://n4g.com/ps3/News-394102.aspx
http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/transformers?q=transformers
http://www.metacritic.com/about/scoring.shtml#game
http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/xbox360/heroesovereurope
i agree with your blog, but i just have to comment on this:
"With around 100 reports on it (some of them being multiple reports from a single user) the story was failed"
Posts on N4G don't fail solely based on the reports. The mods have to delete the story if they want after they see the reports. Either that, or the story didnt get enough approvals
I like to think of a distinction between game critics and game reviewers. I think critics in all fields approach their subject matter with respective criteria, and subtract points for particular failings.
As a games reviewer, however, I consider a score to be a "strength of recommendation". In other words, all my scores boil down to how much I'm going to hassle someone to buy, rent or pass on a game. In this understanding and classification, a game reviewer is far more free to give out 10s, because they/we/I are declaring that a game is not necessarily free of fault, but such a worthwhile gaming experience that it's worth your time and money.
Good read and I wholeheartedly agree. I think that if a game is getting a perfect score, then I shouldn't be able to play the game and find anything at fault with it. Poor AI? Not a perfect score. Glitches? No 100 for you. Undercooked story? Try again. For me to deem a game worthy of a 10 means that it is the absolutely PINNACLE of its genre at that time in the generation and the thought of "this game would be better if. .." never enters my mind.
During my 25 or so years of gaming I've only come across 4 games that fit that and none of them have been on the current generation of systems, yet I'm seeing more perfect scores than ever. How is it that GTAIV got perfect scores all over the place when it nixed an absurd amount of gameplay features of the previous major entry in the franchise?
Once reviewers jumped that gun of rating a game higher than what most(and even they themselves retrospectively) felt it should have gotten, they unwittingly raised the bar of what an acceptable review score is. So now it seems that if the game is under 8 then it is a complete flop and waste of someone's time. It's a shame too since there are a lot of games that would fall between the average and above average range (5-7) of the score chart that are really fun. They're flawed but they provide ample entertainment for what they are.
This is all of course if you're one of the drones that mindlessly follow review scores to tell you what to play instead of making your own gaming decisions, sadly there are a lot out there it seems. So we need a change of the guards but I fear we might be stuck with this for a while. I've always favored the reviews from Ars Technica since there's no score given so the content carries more weight for me.
Gaming is politics. Many reviewers say to "READ THE REVIEW" because.... I believe it was Jeff Gertsmann who was talking about all the flak he got for his Kane and Lynch review on Gamespot. Basically he was told to review it well because they were sponsoring the site. Even though the game was junk. he didn't and lowered the score as you said above and wasa fired. He mentioned how sometimes even before you get to play a game your boss may call you in asking for "Your number score" while on the phone with a publisher... Thats how the industry works. Anything less then 90% is junk to most gamers now a days. It's not "AAA". I mean really comparing games side by side you wonder sometimes.
AS we raise out standards the scores always go up. Look at a game from a year or 2 ago and look now. Compare Modern warfare to Modern warfare 2 or Drakes fortune to Drakes 2. both the originals were fantastic but raising the bar sets totally new standards hence the constant "perfect" or close to it.
"If you can give me one good reason why just one gripe with a game in a review shouldn’t make the game any less than perfect, then I would really like to know why." Because a "Gripe" to one may not be a gripe to another. Maybe you don't like the control scheme in Killzone 2 because your used to Modern Warfare however everyone else in your review office may love it. Does that make it worth taking away a point? Maybe a mention of "I didn't like the controls but most people find them well suited" or "It would have been nice to be able to modify the controls" but maybe it's designed a specific way for a reason...
I agree games get too many high scores and most of it's not deserved. However thats gaming politics. Read the review and not the score. Everyone says "Play the game yourself to decide".... That however is expensive or can be... I found that doing research is just as good. Looking at numbers is not...
10/10 doesn't mean perfect... many people get this point wrong. It's just plain wrong to think that you can assign something a "percentage of perfect"... I mean WTF does that mean.
If I give some game 9/10, because it's awesome, what do I give the next game that's better? 9.9/10? What if someone makes a flawless, i.e. perfect game, but someone else comes along and makes something completely different but more fun?
Are you saying that if Gears 2 didn't have any bugs, it would then deserve those perfect scores?
Ask any reviewer who gave a game a 10/10, or 100%, or 5/5, whether they thought that game was absolutely perfect, and they'll tell you that it wasn't. Nearly every review mentions a couple of negatives. That right there tells you that these scores DO NOT MEAN perfect.
Another point I wish to make, is that if you say that no game is perfect, so that no game should get a 10/10, then your highest score is then 9. So you're effectively scoring out of 9. If a game gets 9/9 is it then perfect? How about we scale that back up to 10 again? Now is it perfect? Your first assumption that 10/10 means perfect is completely barmy and stupid.