gaming What's in a review?

[Discordian 6,013]

Many people seem to have many different ideas about what a review should entail. This goes for game reviews, movie reviews, book reviews or any OTHER media reviews. There doesn't seem to be any single concrete idea behind what a review is for. Some people believe a review should be entirely subjective, others believe it should be objective.

 

I put this review under "gaming" but it goes for anything at all that gets a review for one reason or another, even if it's not media related such as a car.

 

What do you say? What do you like out of a review for anything? Or if you are a reviewer, even a hobby reviewer such as myself, what do you like to put in yours and what do you like to see in the works of others?

 

Personally I believe a review should be informative rather than telling others some arbitrary scale on which the game rates as if the number has any power compared to words. People always say 10/10 shouldn't exist because there is no such thing as a perfect game. Some will circumvent that by saying "it's not perfect, nothing is, but it's pretty darn good" but this defeats the purpose of 10/10 which is: 100%, no faults, one whole, no room for negative. The number scale is faulty and isn't even stable because everyone will view it differently. Some people think 5 is the average, which technically it is, so will rate based on 5 being, for lack of a better way of putting it, "half good, half bad" while others say that 8/10 and up are the only GOOD games and everything else is worthless. That is the epitome of an unbalanced number scaling system. If you can think of about as many negatives about a game as positives (assuming they all hold the same weight for you, which adds to the imbalanced nature of a numbered review system) than that should, purely in mathematical concept, be 5/10 NOT 8/10 which implies there's more good than bad but a couple of things that throw it off. Numbers are absolute but their meaning changes too much from person so you can't judge something as ambiguous as "how good is this game" based on a number that can have two thousand different meanings depending on viewpoint.

 

Words are more powerful than a number in this case. With words you can tell someone why you like a game, you can tell someone how the fanbase reacted to it, how the average gamer might react to it, what it's like compared to other games in the genre, or other games in the series even. You can give your opinions or just tell people about the game.

 

To me, a review is about informing others of a game and possibly how it was received (depending on how long it's been on shelves) MAYBE mix in a few of your own opinions too but I largely feel opinions can skew the point you are trying to get across. Even going so far as to suggesting whether someone will or won't like a game or should or shouldn't buy it can be disorienting and may influence others' opinions on a game more than it should. I firmly believe a review should be mostly neutral and not sway one way or the other very far.

 

Now it's your turn.

It has occurred to me this may have been better suited for the general discussion forum. Could a mod maybe move it for me? Thanks.

[Creamy Arty 6,251]

Movies, games, books, or whatever are meant to be a subjective experience, meant to remove the audience from reality for a little while. Subjectivity always finds its way into a review, intentional or not. That's not a bad thing. Adam Sessler isn't an RPG guy, he's said so himself. Even so, he's reviewed them before and told his audience whether or not they would probably enjoy it based on their personal genre preferences, despite not being overly enamored with it himself.

 

I hated the 2009 Star Trek reboot for canonical reasons but I couldn't deny everything it did right as a generic sci-fi action movie and some moments where the actors perfectly portrayed characters already established by other actors. Maybe you could say that I just did a double review of the movie; one subjective and one objective. As a Star Trek movie, it was dreadful. As a generic sci-fi action movie, it was fantastic.

 

People should also look to more than one review before buying something. Dan Neiman used to review movies for the biggest newspaper in the state of Virginia. I couldn't take his reviews seriously because he hated every, and I mean every movie he reviewed in his many years on the job. I don't mean he just harped on a couple bad aspects of the movies. Every movie was the worst film of all time if you were to take his word alone. That man loved to be miserable at the movies.

 

Should I ever review something it's not going to be as simple as a 1-5 or 1-10 scale. I'd rather break down different components of the game or movie and score those individually. Things like controls, graphics, audio, character development, etc. Sure, it's a bit tedious, but I think it gives a better representation than aggregating everything. I also think numerical scores should only use whole numbers or halves. Scores like 7.9 or 6.95 are stupid. You can't justify one tenth of a percent or five hundredths, the only exception being if you're somebody like Metacritic who aggregates scores and are trying to be overly precise.

[PonyEcho 1,610]

well when i review Comics i follow these guidelines 

Plot, Writing, Art, Characters, Enjoyment.  each one i give a score of 1-10 and once that's done I double it then divide by ten

that what i put into a review when i want to give a score.

if i review anything else like a movie or a game i'll simply go into detail about it and if it sound appealing to someone they'll likely enjoy it, tho there are occasions i'll simply flat out say if its a good buy.

that's basically my style but i haven't done a review for awhile.

Edited January 17, 2013 by PonyEcho

[Discordian 6,013]

Movies, games, books, or whatever are meant to be a subjective experience, meant to remove the audience from reality for a little while. Subjectivity always finds its way into a review, intentional or not. That's not a bad thing. Adam Sessler isn't an RPG guy, he's said so himself. Even so, he's reviewed them before and told his audience whether or not they would probably enjoy it based on their personal genre preferences, despite not being overly enamored with it himself.

 

I hated the 2009 Star Trek reboot for canonical reasons but I couldn't deny everything it did right as a generic sci-fi action movie and some moments where the actors perfectly portrayed characters already established by other actors. Maybe you could say that I just did a double review of the movie; one subjective and one objective. As a Star Trek movie, it was dreadful. As a generic sci-fi action movie, it was fantastic.

 

People should also look to more than one review before buying something. Dan Neiman used to review movies for the biggest newspaper in the state of Virginia. I couldn't take his reviews seriously because he hated every, and I mean every movie he reviewed in his many years on the job. I don't mean he just harped on a couple bad aspects of the movies. Every movie was the worst film of all time if you were to take his word alone. That man loved to be miserable at the movies.

 

Should I ever review something it's not going to be as simple as a 1-5 or 1-10 scale. I'd rather break down different components of the game or movie and score those individually. Things like controls, graphics, audio, character development, etc. Sure, it's a bit tedious, but I think it gives a better representation than aggregating everything. I also think numerical scores should only use whole numbers or halves. Scores like 7.9 or 6.95 are stupid. You can't justify one tenth of a percent or five hundredths, the only exception being if you're somebody like Metacritic who aggregates scores and are trying to be overly precise.

 

While you have a point about subjectivity I find that it kinda ruins things when no one agrees with your opinions. I'm one of those types that people tend to disagree greatly with so all I'd be doing is fueling misconceptions if I were to throw around subjectivity which is why I lay in the middleground and just stay descriptive and comparative, because it's far easier on other people whose opinions will likely vary from mine if I'm merely describing the game with MAYBE throwing in "i like this" here and there.

 

If you read any of my reviews you'll notice that no matter how hard I try subjectivity still bleeds into them one way or another. It's practically unavoidable in all honesty but I try to keep it to a minimum for the above mentioned reasons.

Edited January 18, 2013 by Discordian