Let’s think for a moment about the perfect game, movie or book- what do they usually get in a review? A nice hefty 10 out of 10, now everyone’s views are different but the general consensus is a true 10 out of 10 is impossible. Now think, how many actually get this legendary score? Why not a good chunk as you would fear, it’s clearly evident that 10 out of 10 gets handed out like it’s going out of fashion. There impossible score- is possible it seems.
There are a few scenarios which reviews are given a higher score then they deserve, or the other way around- giving out worse scores.
A favourite series of the reviewer will get placed in the higher bracket even though it doesn’t deserve it most of the time. A few examples of this are the latest handheld titles from Nintendo in the Zelda series- both Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks are at best a 7.5, that is the proper score when it’s not justified by any other means. I for example enjoyed Spirit Tracks way more than Phantom Hourglass, so I would then add on another 1.0 or so to show this. While I’m at it, if it’s at launch the review will get another 1.0 because of the “hype”.
Continuing to discredit my past reviews as well as everyone else’s, let’s talk about competition- as in especially gaming related- a scenario like Mario verses Sonic. While now cute and cuddly friends- in the past where never seen together- creating a rip, if a reviewer had bias towards say Mario, Sonic titles would be rated lower because of this. Also when Sonic had its huge downfall since its first few games, something like this would scale it even lower by a lot more than 1.0 points. The simple fact is while the series has rebounded in some ways from its lowest low- it has ended up disrespected because of that by the majority of reviewers, and this continues for the simple fact unless the series had a memorable moment in the persons childhood, it would never be considered a series contender until all the older reviewers die off like the dinosaurs.
Or at the end of the day does it really matter? Well I think it does, because at the end of the day- its still pretty bias, for example even if something is say a new IP- if the reviewer had no hype or thought it was going to turn out crap, the instant they play it and it turns out to be awesome- there goes its ranking through the roof. In the end the reverse occurs if it’s subpar and the reviewer had the biggest amount of hype for the game- it’s going to be slapped down pretty dam hard- maybe harder then it deserves.
Oh and with my random rabbling’s I almost forgot to include something about how the review system is flawed and no one treats the scores as what they should be so everything is automatically jacked up anyway. For example 5 should be the point of most- aka it’s the medium, it means its good but its not the best thing in the world- aka average. But instead this point is used as a “bad” average, and the average score is something around 7-8 depending on the publication.