Myself, my colleagues and, in general, "thinking gamers" have taken issue with the mechanical, score-focused review for quite some time. After all, a video game is a media experience; it's not a list of control issues and framerates and mini-game roundups with a number attached. You could evaluate any game with that kind of literal, obtuse scrutiny and never really capture what makes that game good -- by the same token, you could praise a game for its vividity and technical perfection, and yet that title could leave no impression on you whatsoever. I always cite FFXII as an example of this; it was maybe the height of game design for RPGs, and for the Final Fantasy series in particular -- if I were to review it in that way, I'd slap a big fat 9 on it. My initial impression of it was enormously positive. Then I finished it and forgot about it. It was a great game, but impossible to love.Whether that's because we expect fantasy RPG epics to transport us, to help us escape, to mean something to us, is a topic for another time -- the long story here is the oft-cited illustration of why literal, numerical reviews just don't work, and many of us have been clamoring for some other way to evaluate games for quite some time. We've said it might be better if they read more like a book or film review; at worst, given a star rating, not some ridiculous number-point-number arbitrary assignment.
Then, I realized something. There are so many games coming out right now or in the near future that I want: Origins, Dementium, Galaxy, Assassin's Creed, Crysis, Mass Effect, Umbrella Chronicles, and on and on. Again, I'm not the best example of an "everyman" in this case, because I buy significant titles for awareness of the space and to inform my consumer writing, keep it timely and on-point. I would have even bought Manhunt 2 if it hadn't been so universally panned by a lot of people I look to and trust for opinions on these things (not people who write number reviews). But these, of course, are only the titles I am already largely certain I'll buy -- what about those titles that fall in between? How will I know what's worth buying?
Truth is, I usually go to GameSpot or IGN and I see what they thought of it. I check the number.
Why? I'm not sure, exactly, but I think it has to do with the fact that I can form an impression of a game in advance and decide whether I want it the same way one would do with film -- you see a trailer, you read an advance interview with the people involved. The team behind it is someone whose work you've liked in the past. It's a concept, environment or theme that interests you. Of course, gaming isn't film -- a game can be gorgeous, interesting and thematically inventive, but if it doesn't play well -- if it's buggy, poorly executed, the level designs are iffy and the controls are overcomplicated, the concept's not going to work. Or maybe something that looks like an in-depth RPG from a distance is really a strategy title up close, and strategy titles just aren't your thing (they aren't mine). These are the things that you want to make sure check out when your belt is tight and your wallet is thin. And these are the things you will know from reading a GameSpot review.
Why the number, though? Well, if you were to take any two weeks of new releases on every platform, and read them one after another, eventually you wouldn't have a point of reference -- it's because the games are scrutinized so closely on an elemental level that you need that point score in order to determine how one review is weighted against another. It's not so that you can look at an 8.8 and say "zOMG TWILIGHT PRINCESS ISNT PERFECT," and it isn't so that you can say, "zOMG, THEY SAID BIOSHOCK IS BETTER THAN HALFLIEF". The score simply gives you a context in which to frame the explication.
If a game gets, say, a 5.5, a 6.2, that doesn't mean I decide not to buy it. It depends on what the reviewer docked points for. Something might've bothered them that wouldn't bother me, or that caveat might've been insufficient to deter my interest. Case-in-point: Rule of Rose. GameSpot said 6.5, IGN said "a bit rubbish." Yeah, it was, totally. A lot like pulling teeth to play. But I found, overall, that it was thematically fascinating (and no, that isn't a thinly-veiled reference to my loli fetish). I may discuss it on Aberrant Gamer shortly -- in other words, it was different, and I'm glad I played it. When it came out, I heard from everyone it was terrible, but I bought it anyway.
I have a theory. I believe that many people spend more time reading reviews of a game they already bought and played than a game they're considering buying. Because as I've already said -- when you really want a game, it doesn't really matter to too many people what reviews have said about it. That's not to say reviews don't play a role in game sales, but I think advance press and trailers play a bigger role, and so do the discussions and informal reviews that take place on the game blogs. "I want to buy this, because everyone says it's good" -- when "everyone" is actually a sort of perception of internet buzz, not our real friends or colleagues necessarily, but whatever mentality is presiding in the forums.
I think the greater relevance of reviews, largely, is to help us as a gaming community frame our medium, create reference points, make sense of our experiences, fit it into a sort of cultural mosaic. So we know where it stands, and so we know where we stand. The type of scoreless, concept-based (as opposed to mechanic-based) review that I and most people in my school of thought favor are a step in the right direction in terms of informing the overall experience in advance -- but it does seem that a competent, legible mechanical evaluation with a number to place it in context has value, too.
