Review scores

[kaelyor]

Recently someone posted in a forum a list of scores for a bunch of games from a magazine, he then concluded based on the scores that the magazine was bad. He did this with no reference to what the reviewer had actually said about the game and how he had justified his score.

My issue here is that the poster didn't care what the reviewer had to say, he just cared about this arbitrary score that means nothing, as though he bought games only based on their scores, and not actually on the physical issues they might have. In my opinion reviews should look to give some kind of "if you like this y, then you might enjoy x". Rather than "x is a 6/10 game". What does being a 6/10 game even entail? It could entail so many different things. The game could be good, but buggy at launch, it could be derivative, the story could be weak. These elements might not matter to you, maybe the game is a total blast as long as you skip cutscenes or something. And if you read the review or had a comparison to another couple of games you might have played you might know that. Furthermore if reviewers could at least sideline their scores (if not totally get rid of them) in a manner EDGE does (they put the score in a tiny tiny box at the bottom of the review) then maybe people would stop citing them as the only way of measuring a game, rather than personal enjoyment being a factor.

/vent off

Thoughts?

TL;DR I don't like that people see review scores as the only way to decide whether to buy a game, or to say one game is better/worse than another.

[Xacez]

Reviews are good, the score based system currently used is dumb as hell because companies can buy themselves high ratings. Metacritic needs to disappear.