Giant Bomb Review Scale

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#1  Edited By composite

This probably has been clarified before, so I apologize, but if anyone can help me out, I'd appreciate it. So long story short, reading Patrick's Backtracking, and he mentions American Nightmare, which he gave 3 stars. I get to thinking what that means, and if the Remedy guy is miffed that the guy who interviewed him about Diablo also gave his latest game a 60%. Or is it 60%? After thinking about it, I would now would like to posit a question:

Is the giantbomb review scale absolute (0 star = 0 %, 1 star = 20 %, 2 star = 40 %, 3 star = 60%, 4 star = 80%, 5 star = 100 %)

OR

is the giantbomb review scale like a school grade ( 0 star = less than 50 %, 1 star = 50 - 60 %, 2 star = 60 - 70 %, 3 star = 70 - 80 %, 4 star = 80 - 90 %, 5 star = 90 - 100 %)?

My guess it is the school grade one, but if anyone knows the official stance on this, that would be great (I know review scores don't matter as much as the words, but I am curious about this).

And which scale do you prefer?

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takua108

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#2  Edited By takua108

None of the above. Giant Bomb doesn't review games in percentages, and the scores they attach to their reviews only broadly cover how they feel about them, as outlined in the FAQ.

Also, Giant Bomb doesn't do zero stars.

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Canteu

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#3  Edited By Canteu

The score is absolute

1 star = 1 star

2 star = 2 star

3 star = 3 star

4 star = 4 star

5 star = 5 star

It is only because of metacritic, which frankly, anybody who knows about anything despise metacritic (including devs), which turns it into the 60%

He didn't give it 60%, he gave it 3 stars, which means "this game isn't a raging pile of shit but it isn't a banger either."

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BrockNRolla

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#4  Edited By BrockNRolla

View it how you want. Jeff has stated in past podcasts that he's fine with people viewing the system in either manner.

I view it more like the later because if I saw a game with a 60%, I would never play it. It is important to keep in mind though that GB isn't using percentages. 1 = Bad not 0%. 3 = Mediocre not 60%. There really isn't a need to translate. Any misconceptions garnered from such a translation aren't fair to the site. Metacritic is constantly guilty of this.

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Mister_Snig

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#5  Edited By Mister_Snig

When reviewers break down scores into stars, they generally don't associate those stars with a more detailed, number-oriented score. With Giant Bomb in particular, a score is just an indicator of how likely they are to recommend that game.

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#6  Edited By Bumpton

http://www.giantbomb.com/help/

They explain their star system there. I always assumed it was an absolute scale because the GB crew does not seem shy about their opinions. And I like it that way.

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lebkin

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#7  Edited By lebkin

While we don't believe any game is perfect, we recommend this game without reservation.

Still very good and easy to recommend, though it doesn't quite live up to its full potential.

The halfway point. An inherent appreciation of this game's specific gameplay style, characters, subject matter, and so on may play as big a role in your enjoyment as the actual quality of the game.

This game's problems outweigh its good qualities.

This game will make you wish you had died in a fire moments before turning it on.

Attempting to translate these into any numeric system lies madness, because everyone's numbers mean different things. I think it's best to leave them as stars.

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Justin258

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#8  Edited By Justin258

Three stars means it's passable, but probably isn't worth your time when so many other games are so readily available.

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hinderk

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#9  Edited By hinderk

Jeff has said multiple times that he thinks the 5 star system translates perfectly to metacritic, so I'm guessing it is the first one.

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Sooty

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#10  Edited By Sooty

2* - This game's problems outweigh its good qualities.

Catherine getting a 2 star review seems even more dumb now. It doesn't have enough problems for it to flat out be a bad game.

But whatever. Opinions.

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Hosstile17

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#11  Edited By Hosstile17

It isn't the most overtly specific grading scale around. The scores are only to be used as a guide for the overall quality of the game. It also seems to be designed to mitigate the forum fighting based on the "this game got an 8.5 and this game got a 9, so this one is way better". Also, the scale was designed so that the entire scale can and does get used. On an average 10 point review scale, rarely does anything score below a 6 and almost nothing scores below a 4. They designed this scale with the idea of movie reviews in mind. The whole scale can and should be used.

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zeushbien

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#12  Edited By zeushbien

@BrockNRolla: You would be missing some interesting games in that case.

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ssj4raditz

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#13  Edited By ssj4raditz

The description of a one star review always makes me laugh.

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laserbolts

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#14  Edited By laserbolts

Who cares?

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Jimbo

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#15  Edited By Jimbo

It's not really supposed to be converted like that, but if somebody is going to, then 3 stars should be taken as 50% not 60%. 
 
There is no 0 star rating. How Metacritic curently converts 5 star scales for example, it is impossible for any game to score lower than 20%, which means the conversion system is inarguably wrong and broken.

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MattyFTM

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#16  Edited By MattyFTM  Moderator

The scale isn't designed to be converted other scale. It's designed to exist on its own.

But looking a 100 point scales, 50% should be the average. 50/100 should be bang in the middle. Not a great game, not a terrible game either. Middling. Average. So if you were to convert 3/5 to 60%, it would be better than average. Good, not great or amazing, but still a good game. The issue is that other sites skew their ratings to please publishers. We get to the point where on most sites anything under 80/100 is considered a bad game. Which is dumb.

Either way though, the rating is the least important part of a review. The text is far more important than any number assigned to the game.

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jonny_mung

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#17  Edited By jonny_mung

@Matt

Either way though, the rating is the least important part of a review. The text is far more important than any number assigned to the game.

That comment gets 5/5 stars.

=)

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Ghostiet

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#18  Edited By Ghostiet
@Sooty said:

2* - This game's problems outweigh its good qualities.

Catherine getting a 2 star review seems even more dumb now. It doesn't have enough problems for it to flat out be a bad game.

But whatever. Opinions.

Exactly. I'm not going to rage about it, but everything about the Catherine review yelled "3 stars", as in "you really have to be into the concept to like it". Not "bad game that's playable and not insultingly awful".
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#19  Edited By Porkellain

@MattyFTM said:

The scale isn't designed to be converted other scale. It's designed to exist on its own.

But looking a 100 point scales, 50% should be the average. 50/100 should be bang in the middle. Not a great game, not a terrible game either. Middling. Average. So if you were to convert 3/5 to 60%, it would be better than average. Good, not great or amazing, but still a good game. The issue is that other sites skew their ratings to please publishers. We get to the point where on most sites anything under 80/100 is considered a bad game. Which is dumb.

Either way though, the rating is the least important part of a review. The text is far more important than any number assigned to the game.

QFT.

Also, reading a review shouldn't be the sole mean by which you decide to buy a game. Watch a QL, try a demo, get a Steam Sale, etc. You will have a more complete overview of wheter you'll like the game or not. For example, I loved Brink so much despite Jeff giving it two st~hey, have I just seen someone raging about Catherine review AGAIN? -.-

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Tackchevy

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#20  Edited By Tackchevy

I enjoy the GB system because it doesn't try to necessarily distinguish between games at a granular level. For example, they don't have to explain or justify the difference between a 9.7 and a 9.3; both are lumped in as "really good." The conversion just doesn't work for the modern period of reviews and gamer perception. With the current situation, giving a AAA title an 8/10 is considered some kind of great insult. It's not an 8, it's a "good with some minor issues." Really, the same thing as 8.5-9.5 on IGN or anything else. If another site wants to makes a faulty conversion, that's their mistake, not GB's.

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#21  Edited By composite

The thing that gets me then: the assumption is that this rating scale exists on its own in a vacuum (which it doesn't, any scale regardless of the symbol is inherently comparable to other scales), why even attribute a rating to it at all?

Read the review, at the end it is a GET! or NO GET! , or nothing at all.

No metacritic bullshit, no publisher whoring for that magic review number that the metacritic machine spits out. If a site abolished review scores all together, maybe that would start an industry wide trend, because it isn't Giant Bomb's fault that the industry places such a premium on review scores and metrics.

Personally though, if it is a 5 point grade scale, compared to the rest of the gaming press, it would start at 50 % and go up to 100 %, because lets be honest: if you create something that is below 50 in the evaluators eyes, it ain't average, it's a fail. Average doesn't mean median, it means when you look at the all the values across a range of values, it is the most common one. I would wager that 75 is more common than 50. Just my opinion, didn't mean to stir something up (we can all agree review score numbers are stupid, but they still have to be dealt with, just like speeding tickets).

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Elazul

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#22  Edited By Elazul

@Sooty said:

2* - This game's problems outweigh its good qualities.

Catherine getting a 2 star review seems even more dumb now. It doesn't have enough problems for it to flat out be a bad game.

But whatever. Opinions.

Well as the majority of the game is apparently a series of block puzzles, if someone were to aggresively dislike that style of gameplay as Jeff clearly did, then surely that completely justifies him giving it a two-star review? Really in that situation the two-star score sums it up perfectly, as the great, story content minority is outweighed by the (subjectively) not-so-great, gameplay majority.

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#23  Edited By BonOrbitz

@Tackchevy said:

I enjoy the GB system because it doesn't try to necessarily distinguish between games at a granular level. For example, they don't have to explain or justify the difference between a 9.7 and a 9.3; both are lumped in as "really good." The conversion just doesn't work for the modern period of reviews and gamer perception. With the current situation, giving a AAA title an 8/10 is considered some kind of great insult. It's not an 8, it's a "good with some minor issues." Really, the same thing as 8.5-9.5 on IGN or anything else. If another site wants to makes a faulty conversion, that's their mistake, not GB's.

This is exactly it. From a designer's standpoint, I also like it for the way the scoring system communicates through a visual means. You see it and get the message immediately without having to process anything because there's immediate understanding. I also feel that to fully understand, it's important to be familiar with the reviewer.

I feel the same way with 1up's letter grade system.

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#24  Edited By Jimbo
@Tackchevy said:

I enjoy the GB system because it doesn't try to necessarily distinguish between games at a granular level. For example, they don't have to explain or justify the difference between a 9.7 and a 9.3; both are lumped in as "really good." The conversion just doesn't work for the modern period of reviews and gamer perception. With the current situation, giving a AAA title an 8/10 is considered some kind of great insult. It's not an 8, it's a "good with some minor issues." Really, the same thing as 8.5-9.5 on IGN or anything else. If another site wants to makes a faulty conversion, that's their mistake, not GB's.

Yes and no. If any site knowingly allows their position to be continuously misrepresented (for fear of losing traffic, or upsetting publishers or whatever) then they are complicit. The media loves to whine about Metacritic and the disproportionate influence it wields, but more often than not they shirk their responsibility to actually do something about it.
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Branthog

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#25  Edited By Branthog

All GiantBomb reviews are 1/16th scale

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Mnemoidian

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#26  Edited By Mnemoidian

@composite: Well, yeah - but if you were to reduce it to a binary state (not sure if that was a suggestion to add a "Get" and "No get" at the end of reviews), then Metacritic is bound to convert that to 100%/0% reviews, which would be as bad.

Personally, I think that a 100-point scale is insane, and adding even more granularity to that through decimals is making the problem worse - review scores should not be compared, so what is the point in Game1 getting a 94 vs Game2 getting a 95? Or help us all... a 94.1 vs a 94.2 >_<.

You make a great point about removing review scores all-together, I believe Kotaku introduced such a model - they used to include pros and cons colored blue and red, but it's been a while since I read their reviews.

I think Jeff has explained (several times) in the various forms of "ask Jeff"-videos that exist around the internet as to why even have a score. I think he explained it well, but I don't recall what he said or where he said it (a jar time? on vyou.com?).

Anyway, I think you are thinking way too hard on the subject as soon as you try to attribute a value on another scale to the stars. Just like I think it's hillarious (but sad, because of what it may mean for the developer) when Metacritic converts a 3/5 to 60%.

And yeah, the stars are just an assistance to the written review. If the number-aggregation is all that matters, then reviews become rather redundant, especially on Giant Bomb where you can hear the reviewers talking about the games on the forums, in quick looks, on podcasts... etc.

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Hunkulese

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#27  Edited By Hunkulese

@composite: I prefer the thumbs up thumbs down systems. If you want more than a recommendation to play the game read the review. Even a 5 point scale is pretty meaningless.

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NTM

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#28  Edited By NTM

Yeah, it's none, but I'd still like to think of it as this:

1 star = 1.0 - 2.0

2 star = 3.0 - 4.0

3 star = 5.0 - 6.0

4 star = 7.0 - 8.0

5 star = 9.0 - 10

Though some of those may change because I like to believe in .5 as well, but putting it on the scale proves to be impossible. Say if a game were to get an 8.4, I'd say that counts as a four star, but if it was 8.5, that's worthy of the five star. That's just the way I think of it, not the way I believe they think of it.

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Bobby_The_Great

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#29  Edited By Bobby_The_Great

I generally view it as:

1 star = avoid

2 star = if you have a slight interest, rent it

3 star = if you're a fan of the genre you'll probably really enjoy it and look past its problems

4 star = more than likely, you'll like this game

5 star = people will be adamant in either hating this game or loving it.

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#30  Edited By sasnake

1 - 2 = Red

3 = Yellow

4 - 5 = Green

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#31  Edited By altairre

I love giantbombs review scale because it is so difficult to translate it into %. If you read the reviews and you get a hang of how the different members of the crew review games you will almost always know what to do with the score. There are reviews on GB where I just need to look at the score to know if it is for me or not and then there are games where I have to read the review to interpret the score. It also depends on the genre or what I have seen from the game so far. If Jeff gave Syndicate a 3/5 I wouldn´t even bother to give it another look but the 5/5 was pretty mindblowing so I read the review and decided that I still don´t want to play it because it is not for me. A score means nothing without context.

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OldGuy

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#32  Edited By OldGuy

I still contend that the BEST scoring system would be to slot each game into a list compared to all other games that the reviewer has ever played and use that as the score.
 
Example: Patrick has played 1257 games and then he plays Alan Wake's American Nightmare and decides to slot in at 702. So the score is now 702/1258 or (if you insist on have a decimal number) it gets: 55.802861685214626391096979332273.
 
No one is going to convince me that this isn't the ne plus ultra of scoring systems.

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Sooty

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#33  Edited By Sooty

@Elazul said:

@Sooty said:

2* - This game's problems outweigh its good qualities.

Catherine getting a 2 star review seems even more dumb now. It doesn't have enough problems for it to flat out be a bad game.

But whatever. Opinions.

Well as the majority of the game is apparently a series of block puzzles, if someone were to aggresively dislike that style of gameplay as Jeff clearly did, then surely that completely justifies him giving it a two-star review? Really in that situation the two-star score sums it up perfectly, as the great, story content minority is outweighed by the (subjectively) not-so-great, gameplay majority.

Yeah but when does not liking a game become a problem of the game itself? You knew what you were getting into, right? They played it before hand after all.

You can dislike a game while still agreeing that it's functional and not just plain terrible.

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Elazul

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#34  Edited By Elazul

@Sooty said:

@Elazul said:

@Sooty said:

2* - This game's problems outweigh its good qualities.

Catherine getting a 2 star review seems even more dumb now. It doesn't have enough problems for it to flat out be a bad game.

But whatever. Opinions.

Well as the majority of the game is apparently a series of block puzzles, if someone were to aggresively dislike that style of gameplay as Jeff clearly did, then surely that completely justifies him giving it a two-star review? Really in that situation the two-star score sums it up perfectly, as the great, story content minority is outweighed by the (subjectively) not-so-great, gameplay majority.

Yeah but when does not liking a game become a problem of the game itself? You knew what you were getting into, right? They played it before hand after all.

You can dislike a game while still agreeing that it's functional and not just plain terrible.

I'm pretty sure that's exactly what a 2-star means. A 1-star would be flat-out terrible.

Honestly I just don't understand why people are so outraged at Jeff's personal opinion. This site was pretty much formed on the idea that Jeff and the others should be able to give honest, personal reviews that are in no way supposed to be taken as definitive purchasing advice. If he genuinely felt that it deserved a 2 than what's wrong with him writing that? Would you honestly rather he just abandoned his review as soon as he realised he wasn't enjoying it?

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Sooty

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#35  Edited By Sooty

@Elazul said:

@Sooty said:

@Elazul said:

@Sooty said:

2* - This game's problems outweigh its good qualities.

Catherine getting a 2 star review seems even more dumb now. It doesn't have enough problems for it to flat out be a bad game.

But whatever. Opinions.

Well as the majority of the game is apparently a series of block puzzles, if someone were to aggresively dislike that style of gameplay as Jeff clearly did, then surely that completely justifies him giving it a two-star review? Really in that situation the two-star score sums it up perfectly, as the great, story content minority is outweighed by the (subjectively) not-so-great, gameplay majority.

Yeah but when does not liking a game become a problem of the game itself? You knew what you were getting into, right? They played it before hand after all.

You can dislike a game while still agreeing that it's functional and not just plain terrible.

I'm pretty sure that's exactly what a 2-star means. A 1-star would be flat-out terrible.

Honestly I just don't understand why people are so outraged at Jeff's personal opinion. This site was pretty much formed on the idea that Jeff and the others should be able to give honest, personal reviews that are in no way supposed to be taken as definitive purchasing advice. If he genuinely felt that it deserved a 2 than what's wrong with him writing that? Would you honestly rather he just abandoned his review as soon as he realised he wasn't enjoying it?

2 stars specifically mention the game's problems Catherine doesn't have enough of them for such a rating. As I say not enjoying a game and it just being bad are different things.

But hey, if Jeff felt there's too much of the puzzle block gameplay I guess he can justify that as a problem.

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Elazul

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#36  Edited By Elazul

@Sooty: Yeah, fair enough. I haven't played it so I can't really comment on whether I think the gameplay is objectively not great or if there's just potentially too much of it. I guess if nothing else, you know that your opinion differs greatly from Jeff's on this kind of game in case he reviews something similar in the future.

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Commisar123

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#37  Edited By Commisar123

@lebkin said:


While we don't believe any game is perfect, we recommend this game without reservation.

Still very good and easy to recommend, though it doesn't quite live up to its full potential.

The halfway point. An inherent appreciation of this game's specific gameplay style, characters, subject matter, and so on may play as big a role in your enjoyment as the actual quality of the game.

This game's problems outweigh its good qualities.

This game will make you wish you had died in a fire moments before turning it on.

Attempting to translate these into any numeric system lies madness, because everyone's numbers mean different things. I think it's best to leave them as stars.

Yeah this is probably the best explanation for the system.

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AlexW00d

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#38  Edited By AlexW00d

@composite said:

The thing that gets me then: the assumption is that this rating scale exists on its own in a vacuum (which it doesn't, any scale regardless of the symbol is inherently comparable to other scales), why even attribute a rating to it at all?

Read the review, at the end it is a GET! or NO GET! , or nothing at all.

No metacritic bullshit, no publisher whoring for that magic review number that the metacritic machine spits out. If a site abolished review scores all together, maybe that would start an industry wide trend, because it isn't Giant Bomb's fault that the industry places such a premium on review scores and metrics.

Personally though, if it is a 5 point grade scale, compared to the rest of the gaming press, it would start at 50 % and go up to 100 %, because lets be honest: if you create something that is below 50 in the evaluators eyes, it ain't average, it's a fail. Average doesn't mean median, it means when you look at the all the values across a range of values, it is the most common one. I would wager that 75 is more common than 50. Just my opinion, didn't mean to stir something up (we can all agree review score numbers are stupid, but they still have to be dealt with, just like speeding tickets).

Nope, the most common single value is the mode. The median is the middle, and the average is when you add up all the figures then divide by the number of them. Regardless, just ignore the star rating, it's there for idiots who can't read.

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Bourbon_Warrior

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#39  Edited By Bourbon_Warrior

@Sooty said:

2* - This game's problems outweigh its good qualities.

Catherine getting a 2 star review seems even more dumb now. It doesn't have enough problems for it to flat out be a bad game.

But whatever. Opinions.

Catherine was a crappy puzzle game with a alright story

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GuyIncognito

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#40  Edited By GuyIncognito

Convertible or not, giantbomb or not, often review scores are baloney.

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Sooty

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#41  Edited By Sooty

@Bourbon_Warrior said:

@Sooty said:

2* - This game's problems outweigh its good qualities.

Catherine getting a 2 star review seems even more dumb now. It doesn't have enough problems for it to flat out be a bad game.

But whatever. Opinions.

Catherine was a crappy puzzle game with a alright story

Except it wasn't crappy, the puzzles just outstayed their welcome a little bit, by no means is the game actually bad.

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Oldirtybearon

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#42  Edited By Oldirtybearon

@Sooty said:

@Bourbon_Warrior said:

@Sooty said:

2* - This game's problems outweigh its good qualities.

Catherine getting a 2 star review seems even more dumb now. It doesn't have enough problems for it to flat out be a bad game.

But whatever. Opinions.

Catherine was a crappy puzzle game with a alright story

Except it wasn't crappy, the puzzles just outstayed their welcome a little bit, by no means is the game actually bad.

Yeah, because the controls for Vincent in the block puzzles weren't inept. Because inverting the controls while shimmying around the blocks (and refusing to auto-correct the camera, leaving it to be done manually) was a good idea. The boss battles were neat in theory. Thematically they were welcome, but in practice all they did was throw a random chance at failure when you're already pretty busy trying to maneuver around the obtuse controls and shitty camera work. The gameplay is not the reason to play Catherine. At all. Add to those flaws that the story goes to bullshit fanfic levels of stupidity in the last two-three hours and you're still wondering why Jeff gave it two stars?

If Catherine was just an interactive story about a guy trying to figure out if he wants a family, if he wants the responsibility, or if he needs to keep his personal freedom, it would've been a much better experience for it. You could even keep the Jenga-style block puzzles. Just give me good control of the character and the camera, and it would be fine. Catherine gave me neither of those things, and it led me to resent the title upon completion (despite really liking the story, pre-stupidity).

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@composite: I think GiantBomb's rating scale is much, MUCH better than a lot of the other scales in the gaming journalism world. It's straightforward and to the point, without any goofy .1 differences that rarely ever mean anything. The only real issue I have with GiantBomb's scale is that when deciding whether to play and/or buy, say, a 3-star game, it's difficult when comparing them to other 3-star games. There's little to go on when picking between two games with identical ratings, since identical ratings are more common in this scale setup.

The ideal rating scale, in my opinion at least, is the 0-5 scale with .5 increments. It has the simplicity of a 5-star scale while still having enough difference in scores to distinguish between two games' quality.

GiantBomb has definitely made the overall review setup easier to work with. Kudos.