Some Turkey Day Ponderings on Review Scores - RaychelSnr's Blog

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Some Turkey Day Ponderings on Review Scores Stuck

Posted on November 26, 2009 at 03:34 PM.

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It's Thanksgiving day and while I wrote this full article quite awhile ago, I feel it's a good day to publish it with news being slow otherwise. I covered my frustrations with reviews in an earlier blog post as well, so if you want a refresher check out my earlier blog here.

The most frustrating aspect of reviews for me is scoring the game. The thing is, there are just as many theories on how to properly score a game as there are theories on how not to score games. At OS, we encourage our writers to factor in a number of factors on how to score sports games to try to get as universal of a rating system as we possibly can. But it has been and will always be our policy to not score games for reviewers, that opens up a can of worms which you don't want to go down.

Here is a basic overview of what we look for:

Gameplay - First and foremost, we encourage our writers to consider the gameplay. How good is it? Is it representative of the sport it is representing? Most importantly, is it fun?

Game modes, innovation - Does the game offer different modes, does it innovate? How much lasting appeal does the game give? What are the online modes like?

Presentational Elements - How does the game feel from the moment the game turns on? How are the graphics? How does the game audio work? Are the commentators good?

Game Value - One of the more overlooked components of our reviews is the value aspect of games. If two games are completely equal but one is $20 and one is $60 brand new, then you have to take that into account with any final score.

So basically, games are judged differently depending on their price point and platform. Otherwise, games on handheld platforms would be hard to score above 4 or 5s since they don't measure up to their big brothers on the major consoles.

So with all of that said, what do you consider when buying a game? Do you look for gameplay, presentation, game modes, good value or a combination? How would you review games if given the chance?