Giant Bomb really need to post a staff article on their review guidelines and the ideas behind their scoring system to stop these arguments about mathematics and the implications of one score or another. These arguments are tedious.
I like the 5 star system. I like it being kind of arbitrary. I am OK with it being inconsistent if it needs to be. I especially don't want the standards of other sites and metacritic to be poor translated and mapped to this site.
I also don't agree with Jeff's opinion on almost anything but that's OK because I can read it knowing we won't agree on what is good or bad about something!
My counterpoint is: do they really need to? Does it really serve their users that much? I'd argue it's a misuse of their time to even bother to draft it up. I imagine the vast majority of their audience just watch video content and listen to the podcast, and Jeff occasionally reiterates his views of what he thinks GB's review system means. Even in this comments section people are still asking for a Quick Look so they can see Dan demonstrate the failings and thin content he talks about in this Star Fox review.
I come off as sounding really anti-intellectual when I say this, but written reviews of video games have never been more irrelevant and barely-looked-at than they are right now. I mean, I'm glad Giant Bomb does reviews out of tradition or whatever, and it gets their name out there on Metacritic, and sometimes I'm sure when a trailer comes out for GotY edition of a game it says "5 out of 5 stars! - Brad Shoemaker, Giant Bomb", but other than that, meh?
The site used to have an "About" page that described what each star rating meant for many years. I don't think it exists anymore.
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