Eurogamer has dropped review scores

Agricola

High time. The 10 point scale is broken anyway. Everything was more or less somewhere between 6 and 10.

nesf

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

I wouldn't agree with that, film critics have been turning out witty, insightful and on-the-ball responses incredibly quickly and to very tight deadlines for decades. Great games writers can do the same - problem is, of course, there aren't many great game writers out there yet. And sadly most sites and magazines have limited space and resources for retrospectives and etc..., so often the main review is one of the few opportunities to actually get something worthwhile out there. Edge have the right idea with their post-script articles, allowing the writer to reflect on perhaps a more specific aspect of the game alongside the core review.

I do agree there is too much of a focus on getting stuff ready in time for an embargo (while ironically games have become harder to review in such controlled circumstances), but certainly with single player games a gut response by a writer is very often a fascinating one. Some games are too big for a quick turnaround too, but a full response to most can easily be formed in a couple of days (especially if you have the luxury of getting paid to do so).

I've become particularly fond of Kill Screen recently for more in-depth and offbeat responses to new releases, as an aside, although they do occasionally take a little bit longer before publishing.

It's apples and oranges though with film critics when it comes to many games. Ok, "The Last of Us" and similar storyline driven games can be reviewed properly but something like "Battlefield Hardline" is going to be a whole different story with a lot of educated guesswork going on. You don't have problems in film review like "how do we review a multiplayer game before people have played it in multiplayer?" You also have the problem of needing to learn how to play a game and an evolving "meta" even in single player games. Films also don't get patches and don't have the whole "well Paradox always did good patching before so should I soften my criticism because I think they'll fix this problem?"

Proper critique for many games can only be a retrospective thing, sometimes long after launch, e.g. a critique of Titanfall now would look rather different to the ones that came out before or shortly after launch in most cases, ditto Civilization: After Earth and such kinds of more formal critique, while highly interesting, are useless as a buying guide which is the main use people have for reviews. With multiplayer focused games reviewers are often forced into making predictions about a rather fickle mob when calling whether or not a game will still have legs in a few months (see current back and forth about Evolve and whether it can sustain a playerbase).


I think you're right that professional critique will always have a place and a useful one, I just think you're being unrealistic if you think reviewers can put out reviews close to launch that aren't going to be plagued with many, many problems due to the medium itself.

COYVB

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

I wouldn't agree with that, film critics have been turning out witty, insightful and on-the-ball responses incredibly quickly and to very tight deadlines for decades.

Different ball game. You can watch a movie and have a review written in 3 hours (I've done my fair share of movie festivals to know that it can be, and typically is, done a lot faster than that, too), that'll not get you anywhere close to enough game time to be able to give even a decent first impression

johnny_ultimate

Again, there absolute is different timescales involved (although I can't really imagine any game reviewers are expected to turn around a review in a day), not arguing that at all. But given sufficient time to play the game, any reasonable reviewer should - relatively quickly - be able to come up with more interesting conclusions than 'you should or should not buy this', barring those exceptional circumstances like online only titles that need more time to 'settle'.

Optimalprimerib

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Somebody's response to the first ten hours of an Assassin's Creed game would pretty much tell you almost everything (worthwhile) there is to know about the game :pac: Not much you learn when climbing your 20th tall building that you didn't get first time around

In assassin's creed? Just after the tutorial?

crybaby

good on them, I have been guilty on more than one occasion of scrolling to the bottom to see the score.

2smiggy

delighted with it , probably too many good games get skipped (and films too) because of out of 10 scale. I'm fairly guilty of it too with avoiding film because of IMDB.

Mr.Buzz

Finally! Now we'll actually have to read the whole thing rather than just scrolling to see score! I wish everyone would do this.

ebbsy

We need the return of the Predicted Interest Curve ( for the oldies out there )...............

CiDeRmAn

I remember reading the likes of GamePro and EGM back in the day and seeing folk measure one game being better than another, in a completely different genre, on the basis of one percentage point.
Deary deary me.

COYVB

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

I can't really imagine any game reviewers are expected to turn around a review in a day

It happens more than you would think

Doctor DooM

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

I remember reading the likes of GamePro and EGM back in the day and seeing folk measure one game being better than another, in a completely different genre, on the basis of one percentage point.
Deary deary me.

Even as a small child I could notice how GamePro and EGM rated way, way higher than the English mags.

Even in those days, review scores were a problem...

Retr0gamer

Fighting games seem to be a big problem when it comes to reviewing, Very hard to know if a fighting game will be good or not until the fighting game community really get a go at it. For example you'd swear SF4 was better than King of Fighters XIII going by reviews :P

Smash Bros Brawl got great reviews and from a casual prospective it's great but it makes a dreadful game for the fighting game community. At least with the no review score method you can at least get an overview of what the game is like from a particular part of the community and know which side it's coming from rather than a definitive metric at the end.

nesf

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Fighting games seem to be a big problem when it comes to reviewing, Very hard to know if a fighting game will be good or not until the fighting game community really get a go at it. For example you'd swear SF4 was better than King of Fighters XIII going by reviews :P

Smash Bros Brawl got great reviews and from a casual prospective it's great but it makes a dreadful game for the fighting game community. At least with the no review score method you can at least get an overview of what the game is like from a particular part of the community and know which side it's coming from rather than a definitive metric at the end.

Strategy games can be similar for different reasons, it can take a few weeks or a month of players having their hands on it for a title's shortcomings to show up. A reviewer can only see so much in the bigger games like Civilisation of Europa Universalis, it'd be unreasonable to expect them to have a comprehensive review even with 100 hours of gametime before launch. They can though offer a perspective on what they liked and disliked compared to similar games which is useful but doesn't translate into a numeric score very well.

CiDeRmAn

6/10, I mean who wouldn't be happy with that?

nesf

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

6/10, I mean who wouldn't be happy with that?

Developers getting a bonus if they average 7/10 or higher.

Doctor DooM

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Fighting games seem to be a big problem when it comes to reviewing, Very hard to know if a fighting game will be good or not until the fighting game community really get a go at it. For example you'd swear SF4 was better than King of Fighters XIII going by reviews :P

Smash Bros Brawl got great reviews and from a casual prospective it's great but it makes a dreadful game for the fighting game community. At least with the no review score method you can at least get an overview of what the game is like from a particular part of the community and know which side it's coming from rather than a definitive metric at the end.

I actually had an epiphany when I got into fighting games.

Reviews are irrelevant to knowing how good a game is. I'm a far bigger expert in fighting games than a reviewer could ever really be. Every subsequent review I read became more and more drivel as I learned more. My friends and I got into a joking habit of reviewing fighting game reviews! I usually deducted marks on reviews that focused on irrelevant stuff, which was basically all of them to a degree. Sometimes, the weakest character in the game would be mentioned as over powered.

I realised then- the same is true probably for all games. Any game you really dig into, they just can't do it. Not their fault. they can't put that much time into one game, or one genre.

Now a good reviewer can still write something interesting, but for opinions on how actually good a game is, the community that plays it is where that decision is made.

So the more you like a genre the less you should give a **** about reviews of games within it.

Benzino

Kyle Bosman discussed this in this week's Final Bosman, a good watch as always.

The Final Bosman