Out of Infinity - A New Review Score System

Review scores are the cause of great controversy. Rather than reading the text of a review, many people would rather have it boiled down to a single number. Many positive reviews are seen as damning because they give a harsh score for what others may see as a minor fault.

Topping all this off, there are a number of people who cry foul whenever a game reaches the maximum score - be it an A+, a 10/10 or 5 stars out of 5. This is often viewed as a "perfect" score, and so implies in some people's minds that the reviewer believes that the game is "perfect".

Many people are agitated by this, because as they rightly point out, no game is perfect. Every game can be improved, and there can always be another game that is more fun than any game you care to mention. Even if that means just bumping up the resolution.

Another issue is that most people view ordinary, "out of 10" review scores as grading games against each other. Gran Turismo 1 got a 10 from this magazine, Gran Turismo 4 got a 9, therefore Gran Turismo 1 is better. Well it's not - the standard of games improves over time, yet the review score system doesn't take this into account. Once you've given out a 10, you can't keep giving out 10s to every game that's better than that game, because over time games keep getting better. Case in point, the metacritic average for MGS2:Substance is LOWER than the average for MGS2:Sons of Liberty; when Substance is the same game as Sons of Liberty just with added features. If you wanted to buy one or the other, Substance is the better buy, but review scores tell you otherwise.

To alleviate these issues, I have devised a new review score system. Rather than being "out of 10" or "out of 5" or "out of A+", there is no upper limit. If I give one game a 10, another game might be better still and could get an 11. Another game might come along that blows both those games out of the water, so I give it 100. You might say, that the scores are "out of infinity". The point is, that "infinity" is the technically perfect game - yet infinity isn't a number, so I can't give it out as a score.

This scoring system is more about grading games against each other, according to my personal preference of course. The number means less because it's a new review score system - people already have some idea of what an "8" means. It avoids the problems of review score inflation because inflation is part of what makes it. As games get better over time, the review scores go up.

You can't convert my scoring system into an "out of 10" ranking. It's possible - but there's no one way to do it, and no obvious way. If you have "out of 40", you divide by 40 and multiply by 10. But you can't divide by infinity, because everything ends up at 0. Which kind of isn't the point. Hopefully since the numbers can't be pulled into any averages, and they mean less than a usual score, it will cause more people to read the review text. But the score itself is there for comparison purposes.

The first review score you see will just be a benchmark. Stay tuned for my first review, of "Killzone 2", using this system.

[creamydingle]

LMAO I love these joke post guys on n4g put up gave me a great laugh Thanks. You should copyright your infinity score system then sell it to ign you would make millions lol.

[LightofDarkness]

If the score is non-quantifiable (the nature of infinity), then why post a score in the first place? Now it's incredibly arbitrary, as there is no point of reference with which to base the relevance of the score. What needs to be done is that magazines and websites need to allow readers insight into their scoring criteria, or better yet, devise one of your own. A 10/10 game doesn't make it perfect, in my mind it makes it the best game in it's category at the time of writing. Obviously, if Ocarina of Time came out today, it wouldn't deserve a 10/10. But OoT didn't come out today, it came out in 1997, and at the time it was a marvellous achievement. Criteria could be outlined as thus

Graphics (10 possible points)
- 8 points for overall aesthetic (How pleasant is the game to behold?)
- 1 point for technical achievement (Given the underlying capability of the machine, does the game elevate beyond what was previously thought to be possible?)
- 1 point for graphical leap (Given all other games seen, are the graphics a considerable advancement over most games to date?)

That's just a single category. Giving reviewers discretion would allow them to break up a single point into decimal numbers if so desired, correct to one place preferably. Now you could customize review layouts to different genres as well, as we all know an arcade racing game is hardly comparable to an RPG or puzzle game, so adjust criteria as such. Obviously, puzzle games rarely offer much in graphical achievements, so place greater weight on other review criteria such as difficulty and replay-ability (I suppose "Longevity" or "Value for Money" would cover those aspects). Just my own 2 cents on a more transparent reviewing method.

[thor]

It will seem arbitrary for the first few reviews I do, BUT that's part of the point of doing it. People will read the review text rather than the silly number I put on the end.

However, as I do more reviews, you will see what different numbers mean. How is my system any worse than a similarly arbitrary "out of 10" system? There is no way of gauging what "percentage of perfect" a game is because it's not quantifiable. The only reason we actually think of an 8 out of 10 as "a really good game that could be better" is because we've seen so many review scores before.

In a normal review system, a 5/10 could be labelled as an average game; a disappointment. Whereas in my scoring system, a game could get 200 and be better than many great games of the past, yet because its prequel got 190 it's actually a disappointment because it isn't that much better. So some magazines might give it a 5/10 for being more of the same, whereas my review system would acknowledge it for being good in the first place.

I'm not trying to do it the same as everybody else, I'm trying to stand out with my reviews. As I said, the main point is comparison. You said that OoT wouldn't deserve a 10/10 now - so in my system, a game that gets a 10/10 now would score higher than OoT, because the standard has been raised.

Perhaps you are right - perhaps I should say what different scores mean. But I don't know how good games are going to get. And that's part of the point of this system.

[Jinxstar]

I always thought the idea of rating it off the games price would be a good idea.I always wanted to see that...

i.e. GTA4 is a 65/65$ Because it's worth it's price. COD4 is worth 75/65 because even if it ws 75$ is would still be worth it. Prince of persia is worth 45/65 because it's just not big enough to warrant a 65$ price tag but when it drops to 45 it's worth it. Bionic commando rearmed is a 15/10$ game because it's great for a 10 dollar game and even if it came out at a higher price point it would be worth it....

What do you think?

[Spike47]

LOL JK.