For someone unfamiliar with the European grade system my brain is in knots.
Is it:
7 - A
6 - B
5 - C
4 - D
3 - …E? Do y’all use E over there?
2 - ???
1 - F
or maybe
7 - A
6 - A-/B+
5 - B
4 - B-/C+
3 - C
2 - C-/D+
1 - F? but where did D go? Do y’all not use D?
I don’t find any value in giving a game a rank anymore. I’ve been burned too many times by the Metacritic ratings of games in the past that I don’t really think it’s worth it. It adds a competitiveness to media consumption that I find a little odd, and is mostly a means to feed consumerism to a degree.
We give a game a score to inform others whether or not they should purchase said game, or to inform ourselves if our purchase was worth it. The currency we’re using can be legal tender or our time, but either way we’re grading how our investment has paid out; we’re determining how how high a game’s value is.
Using a rigid scale is also nearly impossible because of the diversity of video games and their genres. For example, I would give Resident Evil 3: Remake an 8/10 and I would also give Ridge Racer 2 (psp, 2006) an 8/10. Are these games equally as recommendable? No. I would tell people that Ridge Racer 2 is the more approachable game. Does that mean that it deserves a higher score? REmake 3 a lower one?
Part of the reason I love this forum is this community that it’s made. Y’all are incredibly good at expressing your opinions and experiences surrounding the games you play and it informs me of what a game actually is and whether or not I’d like it.
Actually, y’all are so good at it that it makes me self conscious of how I express myself and has made me realize that I’m a big ol downer most of the time lol.
Despite all that, it’s still really fun to grade things. And reading makes me tired. So I use a 3 star scale:
One Star: Didn’t like it, not worth playing
Two Star: Good game, you might like it
three Star: Everyone should try this game.
Three Stars does not mean that everyone will like it, or that it is a “perfect” game. For example, I would say Indika is a three star game despite it’s technical problems.
I go out of 10 but I can’t come up with 10 games for my personal barometer as requested. Just know that the only 1/10 games I can think of are Lunar: Dragon Song and Hogwarts Legacy** while for me Hades, Tears of the Kingdom, and Yakuza 0 are 10/10s
**yes I’m very sorry that I’ve played the TERF witch’s game (didn’t spend any money and was just curious), and yes it is truly abominable. I’m not even talking about the many abhorrent things about Harry Potter or its creator when I say this is probably the worst, most laughably bloated, most tonally incoherent open world game I’ve ever played. I can only imagine that anyone who says it’s pretty decent hasn’t played more than a couple of hours
Adding some games as examples (RPG edition):
Really, most games fit somewhere between main sequence and giant, including most entries in beloved series (Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, RGG, SaGa, Fallout). Exceptionally bad games do not get stars. They are dark matter and fall outside the star ranking system.
Today we have ranking of things.
Yesterday,
We had daily gaming. And tomorrow
morning,
We shall have what we do after streaming.
But to-day,
Today we have ranking of things.
I’ve always liked scoring games on whether you’d recommend playing them or not. Doesn’t allow for granularity but it tends to force me at least to read the review it’s coming from.
For my own scores, mostly on backloggd or letterbox, I tend to give things at least 3 stars if I had a good time. Less than that is where it starts becoming it had not a lot of fun. But to be honest I haven’t played a game to completion that I was having no fun with in a long while.
The large ranking list I saw others make looks like fun though. Might mess around with doing one.
I am aware that this is a tangent, but I would like to share that I reference this Wikipedia article like, monthly.
When I want to pick fights with my friends about games or really anything I rate everything on the IGN 7.1-9.5 scale. I once rated someone’s school presentation a 7.2 and they realized they needed to go rework some of it.
For older things I use the “Will I put this on my Ambernic RG35XXH?” test.
The bottom of the scale is “I cannot be bothered to put Frank’s favorite Bethoven’s Fifth game on it.”
The top of this scale is “I will take the time to move the bin/cues, do that thing where you have to hide the folders by putting a period in front of them or something and then write an .m3u playlist so I can play Chrono Cross on this trip” scale.
Because a single axis of grading is too limiting I’ve come up with my (patent pending) 4 square ranking system. Depending on the conversation you can either simply place anything in one box, or you can navigate it more as an X/Y chart and place something with different amounts along the different axes. The two axis’ I use are Good-Bad and Interesting-Uninteresting. Note that (to me) the Good-Bad axis is not actually a statement of quality but more a statement of craft. Therefore Deadly Premonition can be Bad but Interesting, while being one of my personal favorites. Also note this rating scale works for everything. Hot Dogs are good and interesting. See reference chart below
My typical flow chart when I rate a new game on Backloggd is:
Question 1: Did I generally have a good time with this? (Or was it kinda boring/forgettable, or the premise didn’t work for me, or I just generally Did Not Vibe)
If the answer is no, it’s 2 stars, otherwise go to Question 2.
Question 2: Am I excited to recommend this to other people? If yes then it’s 4 stars, otherwise it’s only 3.
As far as I’m concerned, those three categories are sufficient for game reviewing (although I also have some 1 and 5 stars just for special games).
I think sonic 06 is interesting but its interesting in a different way to deadly premonition
I think we need to move into the third dimension at least to properly compare and rank visually
Joining backloggd was a great decision for this review alone (and many other reasons):
(I have not played The Witness and have no stake in this; I just found it funny)
that’s a family guy joke FYI
Family Guy was allowed in my household even though The Simpsons was banned for being crass
forgive hunter’s parents lord for they know not what they do
I hecking knew someone would come to Sonic 06s defense lol. Bad and uninteresting is the hardest corner to fill.
What about bad, uninteresting, and craven?
-bad platforming and level design. Too easy to get lost. Too easy to miss jumps. Platforming itself feels awful. The combat is a wishy washy attempt at “souls-like” with difficulty all over the place when it comes to grunt enemies (yawn inducing) to bosses (random spikes). The cosmetic only treasures make a mockery of exploring. The reset of enemies, again grafting “souls” ideas to gain gamer cred without actually engaging with those ideas in a meaningful or fitting way.
-uninteresting story (a rote by the numbers “woe is me” jedi story again). Uninteresting gameplay (bad platforming + bland action = uninteresting). Uninteresting labyrinthine levels (need to check that “metroidvania” box on the steam keywords too!)
-craven. As with grafting popular buzzword features onto the game instead of making something with its own identity (souls! metroidvania! rpg-lite! platformer!) to cater to the lowest common denominator of player, lets make damn sure not to upset the Gamers™️ who got all uppity about Star Wars going “woke”.
I know expecting anything more from a Star Wars game in the 2020s is foolish, but I do not see how one can consider this anything but a bad, uninteresting game at best.
At this point I’m starting to think Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order clogged the toilet in @mack41 s house and left without saying anything
idk why but it’s too easy for me to poop on. The problem is it’s the only game I’ve completed that I truly did not like, most games I play have some good to them! I don’t play many bad games :/
Not playing bad games or watching bad movies is something I struggle with sometimes too. Like I don’t want to waste my time watching something bad when there is so much good in the world, but how can I know how good something is if I’m not using the full ranking scale (to bring the convo back to this thread) and watching / playing the occasional bad thing? In fact some of the bad movies or books I’ve read stick with me longer than good ones because they’re so shocking in their mediocrity. This is where my 4 panel ranking system comes in, because you can watch bad movies that have something interesting going on and still feel like you didn’t waste time
I don’t do it on purpose, I may come off as critical but can usually find a few redeeming things about “bad” stuff. I agree that it’s important to not just interact with the 10/10s so you have a full view on a medium. Just find the soulless corporate things hard to enjoy more often than not.
