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.

Why is it that anytime I look to see if a game is good, people always point to numbers? Not even the text of the review or the pros and cons of a game, just a number. How does a number tell me how great a game is or if I’ll like it? How does a number show me if a game is fun? If a number is all that makes a game good, how come I and countless others enjoy games that have a low rating? Is it because I just have a crap taste in games, and so does everyone else that enjoys it, or is it something more?

The answer is simple, numbers are all speculative, they are there to entertain those who do not have the patience to read a review, they are also there, on an unintentional level, so that people who are biased against a game can laugh about it receiving a “low-score”. Let’s say we have a game that scored a theoretical 8.8/10, you are going to find people that even though the theoretical 88% is above average, will say it sucks compared to <insert higher score here from a game probably not even in the same game genre>. Why does that happen? Because people like to be abusive and get under your skin when there is no threat of physical harm because they haven’t invented a device that allows you to punch someone in the face via the internet yet.

If you want to know about a game, read about it, don’t just take a number and say “Oh well it scored a 6/10, it must be horrible”. Read the review, decide if the game you’re looking at appeals to you. Decide if the cons outweigh the pros or if it’s worth your money. Numbers mean nothing without context, and if you really need to compare games, at least compare games that are in the same timeline or genre, because it really does not make sense to compare StarCraft to Halo just because THEY BOTH HAVE NUMBERS ATTACHED TO THEIR REVIEW!