RELIABLE REVIEWS

I am always fascinated by how some games reviewers come up with a score to underline their review with.  It seems to be a total necessity for every single commercial review outlet, whether it be on the internet or in a magazine, for the review to be summed up with a single score at the end of it.  The reviewer can toil away for hours trying to come up with a piece of writing that conveys the gaming experience that they have had but deep down they know that the only thing the reader is interested in is what the overall score of the game is.

I do video reviews of games on You Tube and one of the questions I was asked when I first started was why I didn't score the games.  The answer was simple.  There was no way I was prepared to create a ten or fifteen minute video whereby I try to explain the good and bad points of a game only to then spend nearly as much time trying to work out a balanced and fair points scoring system to sum the video up.  At the end of the day you should be able to ascertain whether this is a game you would like to try through a mixture of the footage shown and the commentary.

You see I have real problem with scores.  Whereas in the real world and mark over 6/10 would be regarded as being good, when it comes to video games and gamers, the likes of 6/10 and 7/10 are anathema.  They tend to be regarded as the safe scores that don't really praise a game to the gills nor condemn it to the depths of Hades.  I liken these scores to the awful word 'nice'.  I hate that word.  Nice is a cheap word that you can use to negotiate your way out of saying something is good when in fact you don't really like it.  This game is nice.  Urgh!

That's the conundrum that scores give reviewers though.  That said having read reviews for many games where it is clear that the reviewer has not played the game properly or for long enough then my sympathy for the said reviewers often wears thin.

Take Two Worlds 2 for example.  I have played the game for about 9 hours since I started to play it yesterday.  In those first few hours the game is tough, very tough.  Nearly everything can kill you and there is a temptation to restart in the easy mode because it seems that most combat scenarios end up in your character either dying or having to do a runner.  However the more I have played it and leveled my character up, the easier the game has become - just like an RPG should.  As you become more powerful only the new and more powerful adversiares should provide a challenge.  It is clear reading some reviews that those who write it off as too hard have clearly not invested the time needed to form a more balanced and fair opinion.

Now don't get me wrong, I am all for gamers and reviewers having an opinion on whether they like a game or not.  Not everyone is going to like the same game as it all stems down to personal tastes, however the job of a reviewer, especially those that are being paid, is to be as factually reliable as possible.  Quite how some reviewers were able to write with knowledge and conviction about the multi-player aspects of Test Drive Unlimited 2 when the majority of the online features have been offline since it was launched is amazing.  In the same way it is equally incredible how some review copies of games don't seem to feature the game breaking bugs that the retail ones do as there never appears to be any mention of these when the reviewer is waxing lyrical about the new 'best game ever!'

I am sure most readers will be familiar with the Driver 3 debacle a few years back when two popular magazine publications were granted exclusive reviews of the long awaited game.  All other online and magazine publications had an embargo placed on them until these two magazines went to sale.  By some incredible twist of fate, both the magazines (one for the PS2 the other for the X Box) scored the game very highly.  However this glowing opinion was not shared by the other publications or by the gamers who found a game that was bug ridden, unfinished and dreadful to play.

It is not recently either.  I remember reading an article a while back where some ex-employees of a popular Commodore 64 magazine explained how they had their scores bumped up by the magazines editor as the publisher of the game concerned had spent a large amount in terms of advertising revenue with them.  This was repeated some years later with a certain major website parting company with a member of staff over a dispute regarding the scores given to Kane and Lynch as the publisher had spent money on advertising the game on their site.

Bearing this in mind just how can any commercial website or magazine, where advertising is a key element in their income and ability to pay their staff, be able to offer a balanced and impartial review for games?  It's impossible to tell.  What the internet has afforded us is the luxury of not only being able to go to these sites but also the smaller ones where reviews are created by the gamers themselves.  It is unfair to tarnish all professional reviewers with the same brush but at least the option is there to offset their opinions with those of actual gamers.

Again it does not excuse those lazy reviewers who have not real passion for gaming and are merely at these companies as a stepping stone to what they perceive to be something better.  They are easy to spot.  They are the ones that clearly have not played the game properly.