[Typhoid]

I've always figured the reason every game (from a major developer) gets a 6-7 (out of 10) if it's a bad game is because if reviewers shit all over a game - even if it's bad - that company will be less likely to send that review company more free games to review. It's a catch 22. If you honestly call a game shitty, and you're a credible reviewer, that company probably won't eagerly hand over their next game to you. Obviously some probably would. But it's a fine line on both sides.


I've never ever ever ever paid attention to game ratings, though. They do nothing to tell you about the actual game considering it's entirely subjective to the handful of people reviewing it - none of which are you. And in the game playing and enjoying experience, what matters to you is the only thing that's important.

I've had countless fun hours playing shittily reviewed games - because games tend to not just be rated out of 5 or 10. They're rated out of 5 or 10 on a grading curve that encompasses all games that are like it.

An average game (of ____ genre) would get an (let's say) 8. Unless a game that was similar was released recently. Then you can't just rate the new game out of 10. You're really rating it out of whatever the most similar game got. "Well it'd get an 8, but _____ got an 8.5, and this is nowhere near that, so we'll HAVE to give it a 6.5 or 7."
Which in the grand scheme of things means absolutely nothing.

Now, clearly there are comparable things for certain game types. Racing games and FPS games are pretty easily reviewable on top of each other. You can definitely compare Bad Company2 to CoD. But to compare an RPG for the Wii to a (different) RPG for the PC/PS3/360 doesn't make much sense, but that's sort of what they have to do.

I view it like being in different leagues. The New York Yankess, good team. Great team. Let's give them a 9 out of 10. Not perfect, but damn good. Now let's take a minor league baseball team. Let's go with the Hickville Poopshooters. Now the Hickville Poopshooters could possibly be the best minor league team. So they'd get an 8 or 9 out of 10. However, in the grand scheme of baseball they would hardly even show up on the scale considering the likes of the Yankees. You can't give the Poopshooters an 8 if you gave the Yankees a 9, despite the fact they're in different leagues and will never play against eachother. So now you give the Poopshooters a 3 out of 10, because while they're good, they're not Yankee good. But this would probably upset the people of Hickville who are sitting there thinking "Hey, we're not even in the same LEAGUE as the Yankees, so why should we be compared to them? We're good in our own right." To which reviewers would say "Baseball is baseball".

Everything I said was probably in the OP's link, but that just shows I read nothing.


Edit: I don't mean to make it seem like I think games don't get shitty reviews. they do all the time. But reviewers seem to be afraid of giving a truthful review to a bad game if that game is from a large developer - unless the game is offensively bad. I just typically find that the reviews by the general populace after the game is released is by far better, and more reliable than a handful of companies who get sent the games for free saying how good or bad it is.