There is a popular Dutch gaming magazine I like to read. The reason why I like the magazine so much is because the articles and reviews always feel like they were written with passion, a passion for gaming that is. Some game journalists don’t have a passion for gaming, but for journalism. While their form may be good, their reviews are worthless.

The game magazine I’m talking about gave Super Mario Galaxy a 100. A perfect score. Of course, you don’t hand out a perfect score every day, so the reviewer felt like he had to give his view on the matter.
Here is the (translated) transcript:

“My admiration for this game is based on both objective as subjective grounds. For me the mark 100 is the best mark that can express everything that Galaxy has to offer. I don’t care for crap about perfect games existing or not existing, because you have to assume for this that there is an objective method to measure one’s fun while playing a game, and I don’t, because I’m a practical person. Besides, Super Mario Galaxy is just a perfect game.”

This got me thinking, maybe we are looking at reviews in the wrong way. Too many reviewers look at games as a summation of different factors: graphics, sound, story, etc. But that isn’t what games are about. Games can have an awful story, but still be a lot of fun. The same goes for graphics. Could Super Mario Galaxy have been improved? Yeah, maybe it could’ve had a better story, or maybe the final boss could’ve been better, or maybe less of the music could’ve been MIDIs. But would these improvements make the game more fun? No, they wouldn’t. While an RPG may benefit from a better story, SMG wouldn’t have been more fun to play, and that is what really matters.

Last issue, the magazine gave LittleBigPlanet a perfect 100. The reviewer wrote the following:

“You might be wondering after reading this review why the hell we gave this score of 100 points, but it is exceptionally hard to explain how hard it is to explain this game. The amount of fun we had is hard to put on paper.”

The reviewer then proceeded to try and explain just how much fun they had playing the game. And that’s what games are about, aren’t they? Fun.

And that’s what we should care about in games. Not graphics. Not sound. Not whether it’s bugfree. It’s whether it’s fun or not. If a game has terrible graphics, it can still be fun. If it has some crazy bugs, it can still be fun. If your guns make odd and wacky sounds, the game can still be fun. And fun is what’s important in a hobby.

Microsoft Sam loves video games, especially old ones. Join him each week as he reviews his favorite classic games. This week he reviews Wheel of Fortune for the NES.

Microsoft Sam loves video games, especially old ones. Join him each week as he reviews his favorite classic games. This week he reviews 3D World Runner for the NES.

In any sort of entertainment industry, reviews are necessary or the consumers are going to war with no ammo. Without reviews, you basically have to trust the words of the people making the games, and every single one of them is going to say “This is the best game EVER.”

Unfortunately, this is about what we get from game journalists anyway.

This is hardly a fresh new opinion. People have been complaining about integrity in reviews for as long as there have been reviews. As such, there are going to be a lot of points you’ve probably heard before, often, and a lot more eloquently, so I’ll get those out of the way first.

Most gaming websites and magazine are in the semi-unique position of being in the business of criticizing games, while simultaneously asking their makers for money via advertising. It’s hard to take “10/10 game of the CENTURY” seriously when it’s wedged between 2 fullscreen ads for the game and hidden under a pop-up of the main character.

Don’t ask how they crammed 2 fullscreen ads on one screen.

Then, of course, the ever ubiquitous numerical score. Not necessarily bad on their own right, but until someone can tell me the difference between an 8.5 and an 8.8 I really don’t care. Ideally, the stupid things could just be abolished, but for those that simply must discretely quantify their objective opinions, use a smaller scale. Everyone basically uses a 5 point scale anyway.

1-6: Crap
7: Semi-Playable
8: Good
9: Great
10: Peerless

Really, anything under a 5 is an outlier anyway. I’m personally partial to the simple “Buy, rent, or avoid” scale.

That’s what you’ve all heard before, but there are even more deeply rooted problems with reviews that haven’t been driven into the ground yet.

Don’t spend half of your text on summarizing the plot. This one is a big pet peeve of mine. So many reviews read like a high school book report that the author is trying to pad to reach the minimum word requirement. This is especially bad on the internet. If I’m thinking about a game purchase, I’m probably going to read a ton of reviews in rapid succession, I don’t need to know that it’s about a grizzled space marine shooting aliens every single time. Spend some time talking about the game instead.

Let me know who you are and why I should listen to you. Back in the day, Nintendo Power used to have each reviewer rank their favorite genre’s. This was extremely helpful. If someone who liked sports games and shooters said an RPG was boring, you could take it with a grain of salt. A game I spent a lot of time researching recently was Fallout 3. I despised Oblivion and it’s prequel Morrowind, so I didn’t have high hopes for Fallout, but I love the series. For every glowing review I found, I made a point to dig up that reviewers opinion on Oblivion because it let me know what to expect from their opinion in general. This was a lot harder than it should have been.

It turns out I really liked Fallout despite being bored by Bethesda’s previous games.

There is a lot that can be done to improve game reviews, but in this day and age it’s becoming easier and easier to know what to expect from a game simply by the oceans of video and demos and other media that there’s really no excuse to be surprised anymore.

A need for quick opinions is upon us. Sometimes we’re tired of the mainstream and we just want a taste of the alternative. When one cares not to read or compare arbitrary numbers, one needs a blast of reviews:

• Beetle Adventure Racing (N64) – A licensed racer that takes the emphasis off the vehicles and places it on the tracks, which offer unique and diverse locales smattered with short-cut upon short-cut that feature more secrets and replayability than one could find even in multiple playthroughs. The inclusion of various multiplayer modes only add to the icing on this visually fast, heart-pounding, and rather delicious cake.
• Linger in the Shadows (PSN) – A “game” designed around the idea of “art” that somewhat confuses the notion but still manages to compel with it’s smooth visuals and ethereal sound design, whilst making vast use of the Sixaxis motion controls. With support for trophies, several hidden extras, and a price-point of only 3 USD, it’s worth a look.
• VICE: Project Doom (NES) – A platformer in the nostalgic sense that moonlights as a schmup and a point and shooter. Classic difficulty, superb visuals for an NES title, and varied, distinct enemies serve to make this title an old, forgotten gem.
• Sumotori Dreams (PC free title) – A game akin to a tech demo, this title uses AI and physics instead of prewritten animation to simulate Sumo wrestling and “staying on your feet.” Short and comical with a fun, little Easter egg, it’s a good time-waster by yourself or with a friend.
• Dementium: The Ward (NDS) – A FPS that makes exceptional use of the hardware, rendering a smooth frame rate and making excellent use of shadows to instill the player with fear. Although the puzzles are simplistic and the game is somewhat repetitive, it has enough staying power for a solid play-through.

Originally, there were to be some negatives, but the whole point of an alternative set is that these are what one would play instead of the usual tripe. So it goes.

There’s an assumed quality we expect from game reviews. When they’re professional, we expect long dissertations quantifying exactly why they are worth 60 hard-earned United States Dollars. Within that quantification, we expect numbers: hard numbers, often based on a 1 through 10 scale. These numbers dictate the value of a game; whether or not they do that arbitrarily is a different matter altogether. They do it! That’s what we expect.

However, there are nothing but problems with this system. The largest of which is that the industry relies heavily on these numbers. The reviews are written in order to give the consumer the edge when making a purchase, but when money’s tight, the consumer tends to lean toward only the best and is less likely to purchase anything below the magic 8. Games tend to work on a numerical hierarchy when employed in this scale: a tier, if you will.

10-8, a game’s worth buying; 7.9-6, rental; 5.9 and below, don’t bother.

Is this completely unbalanced? No. It’s incredibly ridiculous, but it’s naïve to expect less from the consumer. The publishers have latched onto this and are ardently doing their best to swing the score in their favor. Can you blame them? It is a business: a business of pumping out semi-decent product to meet end-of-year earning standards. So when it comes to making a sale, publishers are looking for that magic 8 in the Metacritic. This, of course, leads to some dubious behavior. Jeff Gerstmann was fired due to publisher Eidos’s complaints (unofficially), and the publisher has just recently started the same kind of controversy again, although they’re more honest about it this time around.

So what to do? Well, don’t listen to professionals. They’re not experts on subjectivity nor do they merely share their personal opinions. They are on the payroll and their wages are based on what’s expected of them. In essence, trust someone who plays games for fun. If you are such a gamer who would put his opinion down in writing, may I suggest you do not emulate the professionals. Look where that’s got us. The best thing to do is to do away with numbers. Certainly, it would be tough to adjust to something that isn’t immediate. We’ve no time to read, obviously. After the steep-learning curve, one could implement any number of prose-based assessments that could act as abstracts. A demonstration:

• Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) - A broken semblance of what once was that not only doesn’t make good on promises to restart the franchise, but instead repeats old mistakes and breaks them further. Obviously released too soon, it may only appeal to those who are truly devout to the series and are willing to overlook distinct flaws.

Perhaps a little heavy-handed, but accurate nonetheless. It sums up the idea of the game without going into full details and suggests who this might be for. This is the whole idea of a review, and this is what should be glorified. The actual article can take care of the finer details, but the abstract should make the judgment. If one felt so inclined, reviews could even simply be these short blurbs. Here’s a few examples:

• Little Big Planet - A whimsical, somewhat floaty platformer that, despite reliance on only two play-mechanics of jump and grab, remains fun and inventive due to the easily accessible yet deeply complex “create” tools. However, spotty online management inherent in Sony’s online platform and a total reliance on thereof causes the game to loses some of it’s charm and longevity. Unless you feel the innate drive to create under some heavy guidelines (read: restrictions), it may be best to wait.
• Soul Calibur IV - An excellent fighting engine bogged down by an out-dated story mode, a backwards create-a-fighter mode, a conditional online mode, the removal of of some of the better modes of previous installments, and gimmicky characters that serve as most of the new fighters (one of which will cost 5 USD). Some interesting character changes make up for the breaking of others, but essentially the game is only superb when played with friends in the same room, and merely decent at any other time.
• Bionic Commando: Rearmed – An offering of nostalgic gameplay with a fresh coat of high definition and self-referential humor that offers a challenging yet reasonable play experience that is appropriately paced and perfectly affordable. With nifty bonus unlockables, fun multiplayer modes, and a bevy of challenges, it’s well worth your time and time again.
• Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood - A melding of the idea of Sonic’s speed and the RPG genre and of Sonic’s wide canon and other media in which he appears, Sonic Chronicles offers an experience that feels fresh, innovative, yet still remains true to Sonic fans of all varieties and may still appeal to those who aren’t. With a dialogue tree system that branches some of the plot, although only just slightly, the game offers a rich story and plenty of lore, which, were the excellent Elite Beat Agent style battle system not there, would be enough to justify at least one play-through.

Even if the standards never change, do yourself a favor and at least find a critic who isn’t under the dollar of who he’s critiquing. If that proves impossible, pray they release longer, better, fuller demos to help you, yourself, form an opinion and justify a purchase.

As things are now, it is, by design, deceptive.