Continuing on from A Review on Reviews Part 1, we return to dissect the parts that make up a review. From words, to numbers, to the person behind it all. All of these pieces create this much talked about part of games journalism.
The actual review serves a couple of different purposes that play to the different parties interested in it. The main goal is to provide a consumers guide to that specific game. Ultimately they are the people who will listen to them the best. Whether they listen or not is something that will be discussed later.
Another purpose the review serves is to be a mirror for game developers. It can spot out major flaws or strengths that a developer can use to better their current or future games. The text of a review is a description of the ups and downs that take place through-out the game and weigh them for their merit.
If the text is the actual review then the score is the summery. Most publications use a score to represent the general feel of that review. For those less inclined to read, they can quickly glance at a score to get the general feelings of a review.
A misconception about review scores is the idea that you can rank them.
The idea of “Game A” getting a 8 and “Game B” getting a 7 so there-for “Game A” must be better. Reviewing in that mind set would require you to consider every game ever, instead of the one in front of you. So when a game is given a score, it’s meant to reflect that game, not be compared to every other game.
Why should anyone care about the person who writes the review? You don’t know them personally and they just write the words right? In reality they do play an integral part to a review. Knowing a little about a reviewer can go a long way in finding someone you are more apt to listen to.
If a reviewer has similar tastes to you, then a review can be helpful in finding the next great game or avoiding a bad one. How deep a reviewer goes into the game also determines the review. If they are interested more in the design side as opposed to the surface graphics, sound, replay value level, they are more inclined to write reviews reflecting that. When you understand a reviewer they become just as much help as the review itself does.
I’ve waged my complaints and explained the pieces. Now in the next part of “A Review on Reviews” I hope to give some better ways of looking at reviews. Hopefully thwarting many flamewars and uneducated discussion in the process.
I’ve always been of the belief that scores should normalised to the most simplistic means possible, a simple score out of 10, without sub-categories and all that malarcy.
Let the review speak for itself; the score should simply be a summary.
Agreed on the subject of sub-categories. Simply giving a game a single number leaves a bit too much to the imagination. Most people don’t bother reading reviews anymore, they simply glance at the score. A game can still be good gameplay and story-wise, while the graphics are bad, but a low single score might put people off.