Got news for you Shinji. They bought lots of copies and they loved them. You may want to consider your qualifications if you can't translate a basic sales number or meta-critic score. You've also released the original Chrono Trigger three times already. Chances are fairly high that I don't need a third copy of a game I already own twice over. I'll come back for you later, Squeenix.
There's just so much rage going on right now that it's hard, even for me, to avoid becoming too political when it comes to basic gaming. If a game gets a score that doesn't seem right, people go nuts. If a feature is toyed with, boycotts happen. For the purposes of narrowing the focus of this article, I'll be sticking with review scores for this go.
Video games are very difficult to quantify. Movies are a different beast, because however difficult pinning down a score might seem, all that the reviewer ultimately needs to determine is whether or not the movie is worth watching. It comes down to a movie being a "must-see" 5/5, or a 3/5 aimed at people who are fans of a specific genre or just have some free time and need to spectate. Games, on the other hand, are hampered by a million major and minor things that all have to add up. Some elements are passable and some are not, and that also determines on who reviews the game. If Braid receives a 95% and Uncharted 2 receives a 90%, then one would assume that Braid is a superior game. However, that doesn't take into account that Braid is a simple 2D platformer, that Uncharted has an expansive multiplayer campaign, the platform in question, and the general fun a user will have playing it. Price and replay value are also factors, but you wouldn't know this from a score. We're also assuming that if the same reviewer handed out both scores, than he could easily be biased to a certain platform, genre, or anything really. Money could even be a factor.
So scores shouldn't be that important, but in a way, they are the most important thing you don't realize. If I walk into my local GameStop and see a game that interests me, I will look the game up before buying to see if it stands up on its own. If the game registers at 72%, my first misguided instinct is to lean toward the "don't get" side of the spectrum. Millions of choosy gamers don't have the kind of patience I do, so when 72% shows up, immediately they drop the notion of buying the game at all. What if that game was Devil Survivor, a game that is considered an excellent entry in its genre, but a game that some people would outright hate? While nothing can top being informed, it would truly suck if gamers who loved the game saw the sequel potential fly out the window because 10,000 people who would have loved the game never even consider buying it because of a numbered rating? At the very least, that score was powerful, even if the actual numerical rating isn't all that important.
I tend to read my reviews a little differently. I do glance at the score, and if the game isn't thrashed at the 1/5 or sub-30% range, then I check the text. It's important to get together your impression of a game, but equally as important to know what to expect and look for all the cues. Ghostbusters: The Video Game would be a good example, because I can easily this game being reviewed anywhere from 60-to-90%. The game has everything you want if you're looking for a Ghostbusters game, but the lack of replay value and the short story are deal-killers to some people. So seeing a solid 75-80& score doesn't tell me what I need to know. I wanted to be a Ghostbuster in HD glory, and I got that. I was willing to buy it. Other's would not
So, when I read a review, I look at what the criticism's are and what the praises are. I know, going into the review, what my expectations are. That includes failures. I rented Eternal Sonata and read a couple of reviews for it, and while the game received generally favorable marks, no positive that I saw matched the positive's that I needed to see. I like my RPG's to be either insanely fun or truly epic, and the impression that I got was that the game was a solid RPG based on a gimmicky story...exactly what I was afraid of. Knowing what to look for in a review can save you from buying a 90% POS vs. a 70% gem according to your tastes.
Ultimately, it all boils down to whether or not a game is fun or not. Most reviewers tend to forget this as a rule. The graphics segment of any review is outright bullshit, usually, except for cel-shaded games and first party Nintendo titles, where journalists conveniently forget their own code of conduct. I've seen writers nitpick on graphics and drop the game's rating down at least 5% because the graphics weren't advanced enough for their taste while the game remains fundamentally awesome.
So the moral would be to simmer down on bashing game ratings, because it's never going to be close to a perfect approximation of "fun". By all means, continue to bash for logically screwed up things that reviewers do, but remember that a bad score isn't the end of the world. Reader averages and Wikipedia "second opinion" lines do wonders already.
This is probably why I'm a fan of Zero Punctuation, though. It's actually refreshing to start from the standpoint that a game is utter crap until proven otherwise, and to also hear what a developer doesn't do to advance a genre. Or attempt to, and fail.
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