Restaurants, hotels, cars, Olympic performances, and earthquakes (to name a few) all have rating systems: established, criteria-based scales reviewers/judges/instruments use in evaluation. You'd think that reviewing games would be an easy shoe-in to the world of reviewing, but lately I've been more rankled at how game sites and publications handle their ratings.
Before I start arguing with the three friends I know have an opinion on this, let me state: I realize reviewing a game is much like reviewing a movie or a book: any entertainment, successful execution and the artistic value is so completely subject that unless we readers agree with how the reviewer thinks (at some point), our opinions are rarely swayed. Why? Value is a hard thing to get a bead on, to pin a prize on. Different people look for different things.
Or should they?
The excerpt below pretty much states my own opinions on game ratings:
[A perfect "10" rating] is something that should be given out relatively rarely, and only to those games which are truly deserving. It shouldn't be given out everytime the developer throws money at us, or just because it's part of a franchise that has previous garnered high scores. Yet it should also not be tucked away like some sort of emergency score, only to be used in case of the videogame equivalent of the Second Coming.
Ms. Game and Watch is comprised of opinion pieces and like the article I'm referring to, I don't expect you to agree with what I or Anthony at Destructoid think but if you disagree, I would always request a good reason backing your difference.
I go to a restaurant for an experience. Sometimes I go out to eat things I am perfectly capable of making at home. When I go out for say, a burger and fries, I'm relishing in the experience of eating in a place different than my dining room. I hear other people or ambient music, I see people on the street or other diners, I feel the weight of unfamiliar cutlery and take everything in: this is gestalt in its truest form, my friends! A critic gives consideration to every part of a restaurant experience; the food itself is the centerpiece.
Having illustrated the unified whole that is evaluation of enjoyment, let me transition to how I think games should be rated.
A scale of 1 to 5 or 1 to 10 gives us a quick picture, a cursory glance and a snapshot of what we should expect. My rub is that if you play a game for the first time--even if you spend ten minutes with it--you're going to form some opinions on different components. One single-digit score shouldn't satisfy your need for evaluation. What about say, 30 different number ratings on the same game? I think it'd be a better model to work from. Yes, games need to be evaluated on a "metacritic" level; not just the opinions of one guy who was told by his editors to have a final draft in his hands title a month and a half from now. A publication that gives out an "A" to every game that doesn't suck in an obvious way is really giving out a "B". A's, I think, should be incredibly rare, and should draw almost unanimous approval from consumers and reviewers alike, such as with games like Okami, which got rave reviews at its E3 premiere...or Bioshock, which everyone loves. Yes, these games are not perfect, but they deserve A's--not this or this. This toes the line, if for no other reason than the only thing different from CoD3 was the much needed and improved multi-player feature. It should have probably been titled CoD 3.1.
In discussion, I eked out a lifecycle I think applies to game production, consumption and resurrection: If we become more critical about what games we buy (look at several reviews, not just one, consider the reviewer as a person with individual tastes and opinions), we become more selective. Our selectivity and refusal to buy a game that has a franchise name slapped on it, with franchise sprites stuffed within, with crappy programming/dialog/sound/graphics help these types of games being made. I'm sure you've been privy to the desperate pleas of some video game reviewers who protest that the only reason they have to review the latest iteration of say, a crappy Naruto game, is because companies know that anything titled "Naruto" featuring the characters (or even perhaps 'From the makers of...', as films tend to do) will bring in money. "If you stop buying these shitty titles", they caution, "they'll stop being made. And that makes [us] suffer a lot less!"
What then?
Better games start being made. Developers (in an ideal world) realize that cheap flash-powder and smoke-and-mirror gimmicks won't work for a segment of the population. They'll realize that games don't belong to a gender, but they do to an age group. Rather than attempting to lure us to an 8-bit Mario sprite (extending from a tentacle sprouting from that ugly anglerfish that is nostalgia), they realize that innovation is always possible. Where new creation is not possible, they eschew tactics that play on our character affinities in the most indulgent of ways (i.e., having a Smash Bros. for the Wii is awesome! Making it just like the other iterations is ...pointless? For people like myself who sort of missed the hype the first time, it's not the most welcoming of experiences, but that's another post.) but still give us something we find much enjoyment in.
To illustrate my point: The first Mario Kart: genius. The first Smash Bros. Brawl: genius. Every iteration gets more tired, even though they change platforms. Feel free to disagree. This isn't to say I got a kick out of say, Mario Kart DS or Smash Bros Melee but it was kind of like the same food in the same cafeteria but on a different day. Sometimes the meatloaf is too salty, sometimes it's not salty enough. The potatoes were a little watery today but they were decent last week. If you're smart, you'll bring your lunch once in a while, or even go out.
Be a smart consumer. Read, read, and re-read all you can before you get a game. Once you're used to reading reviews, you know what to look for. You see that reviewers are like you: they have certain likes and dislikes. They have more experience with certain games than others. They can be fannish and they can be wary of change. Sometimes they can even be in denial (ergo the perfect 10s I see for crappy, run-of-the-mill games). Kirby is cute, I agree, but he is not excluded from the possibility of being in a terrible, waste of time title. Money talks, and it works both ways. Popular crappy games ensure more popular crappy games. Well-made games indicate gamers want more well-made games. This is what we're about!
3 comments:
I think any single review of a game has to be weighted by that reviewer's tastes. For example, a Halo fanboy's review of Halo 3 has a certain percentage of the score reduced in proportion to the fanatacism. Similarly, reviews of rpgs by Madden-lovers would get a slight bump to account for the probable biases against story-driven gaming.
I agree that the metacritic/rotten tomatoes route is a good one. I would like to see, at some point, the abandonment of scores, ratings, grades, etc. and instead see game critics or reviewers describe the games failures and successes, especially with relation to what audiences would find certain parts of the game un/appealing. That, however, would require readers to delve further into the review than if there was just a numerical score at the top of the page and I trust some people will not put in the effort to read through text to determine the game's value to them.
So I read this and thought about it awhile. And here's what I thought.
You know what an awesome feature in reviews would be? To name the game's biggest cheap draw, and maybe even rate how pronounced it is on a scale of 1-10.
For example, a Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball review would start out something like this.
Vice: Boobs
Intensity: 10/10
So you know that unless you really love boobs, you can ignore the game (and the rest of the article.) Or Smash Brothers:
Vice: Nintendo Nostalgia
Intensity: 6/10
So if you don't really love old Nintendo characters, chances are you won't like the game, but there's still some chance you might anyway, and should at least read the rest of the review.
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