Gamernode: Columns - Game Review Score Inflation

Game Review Score Inflation

Category: Industry, Posted: 11/08/2007 at 04:27PM CST by Frank Ling, Editorial Director

Inflation It seems that there have been an awful lot of high review scores for video games of late. I scan internet gaming news sources and it doesn't seem that a week has gone by without someone announcing, "(fill in the blank.com) gives {fill in name of game) a 10 out of 10!" or other high score in the high 9's.

I don't know about you, but handing out high scores like this seems to be making more news than the actual games themselves.

What I'm trying to say here is that either video games have really gotten that much better than say, three years ago, or our standards for what constitutes a great game have gone through an inflationary stage--the value may not really be there.

A perfect score or near perfect score used to be reserved for the cream of the crop--games that would be talked about for years to come as either ground breaking or history shattering. But now, the frequency of these high scores seem to be more pronounced than ever before, and I really have to wonder about this.

Yes, there are games out there that do merit high scores, but scoring a 10? I just don't see it justified in many cases. Giving out a perfect score is saying, "There is virtually nothing wrong with this game and it is basically perfect in everything it does." That's a tall order to fill by anyone's benchmark.

Some gaming site gave the PC version of Gears of War a 10/10 the other day. I've played Gears on the 360, and enjoyed it. It wasn't necessarily ground breaking, but it did a great job of doing a shooter right. The PC version has some extras and such, but saying that Gears is better than other shooters in its category is not only hard to believe, but it just ain't so.

I know reviews are subjective by nature, but it seems that, all of a sudden, giving a perfect score to a game is becoming all too common and it makes me pause in wonder.

If scores are actually inflated, as I speculate, then review scores will lose value over time and mediocre games will get better scores than they actually deserve.

The final result won't be more sales for the game industry, but a bunch of gamers who will be sorely pissed off that their "perfect" game is far from it.

Posted by Mercer on 11/08/2007 at 10:31PM

I agree there seems to be a general lowering of standards...

Posted by Wasabi on 11/09/2007 at 01:01AM

I was certainly pissed off with Bioshock's high scores. The feedback it had received made me buy the game, and I have never been so disappointed with a game ever.

Posted by Kester on 11/09/2007 at 03:27AM

I think the problem is that the raters don't really take into account the age of games, and the level of hardware at the time.

For instance, HL1 was ground breaking, and got near perfect scores, averaging above 95%. Now you get the Bioshock's, Halo 3's and the like and the raters seem to think, these games look and play so much better than HL1 does, and therefore give them better scores, without taking into account the limitations that have been removed through years or hardware and software advances.

It's also, unfortunately, a vicious cycle. As new games get released they are bound to look, and play better than older games, therefore the ratings slowly rise up. You then have games that once would have scored a decent 80-90% getting 90-95% scores.

Consumers need to also realise that 80-90% scored games are still great games, instead of thinking that a score in that range makes it inferior.

Posted by Quasar on 11/09/2007 at 04:58PM

As an example of this, I was looking at some old game advertisements on the Internet and stumbled upon some game ads for the Atari 2600 game, Moon Patrol, which incidentally, I have. The ads said things like, "Astounding graphics. Excellent game play! The best ever...", stuff like that. Of course, by today's "standards" the game is probably laughable. But in context, the reviews are correct and right on the mark.

So basically, I think review scores are probably just a little inflated, and as you say, getting a 80% or so isn't a bad score by any means. Even a 75 is respectable if you look at a game as a solid game.

Posted by sig220 on 07/07/2008 at 09:39PM

This is why I read EGM as opposed to any other magazine. They have only ever given out two perfect scores in the entire 15 or 20 years it's been around. They realize that there is almost no such thing as a perfect game.