So, I'm reading Topher's Ikaruga review and the comments resulting from it. Other than the usual half-ironic cries of "biased!" and "Anthony would have given this a 4!", I saw many repetitions of one particular sentiment that I feel deserves further discussion: namely, that the 10/10 score should only be reserved for "perfect" games.
Now, I wrote the original articles which eventually formed much of the basis for Destructoid's current review system, and many of the comments in the Ikaruga review more or less echoed my thoughts on the 10/10 score back in 2007.
It's now 2008, however, and I've come to understand that I was dead wrong. A 10/10 score should not mean perfect, because there's no such thing as a perfect game. As tiresome as I'm sure it is to have one of the reviewers bitch to the world through a frontpage post everytime someone misunderstands their review, an explanation of 10/10 nonetheless feels necessary to me.
Disagree? Hit the jump, and I'll try to convince you.
No Country for Old Men: The scene with Ed Tom at the hotel at night is shot in a confusing, inefficient way that makes the whole moment far more esoteric and distancing than it was originally intended to be (the other character is supposed to be in the room across from the one Ed Tom is in).
Blade Runner: The romantic subplot doesn't quite feel legitimate, and the shot of Roy releasing the dove at the very end is incredibly contrived and contradicts the story's promise that all natural animals are pretty much extinct.
The Godfather: When Sonny is beating the crap out of Carlo, James Caan throws a really, really, really fake-looking punch that misses Carlo's face by at least three inches and the viewer is totally taken out of the experience.
Now, those are three of my favorite movies of all time. I think those films are some of the most brilliant, subtle, emotional works of art I've ever experienced, and I will defend their quality to the death against all comers.
But they are not perfect. They're the best examples of cinematic achivement I've yet witnessed, but all of them have numerous and readily-identifiable flaws. Does that make them any less wonderful? Does that mean The Godfather doesn't deserve a 10/10 score? Of course not.
Everything is flawed. Nothing is perfect. If The Godfather isn't a 10/10, what is?
Now, extrapolate this way of thinking to videogames. Every single videogame you will ever play -- ever -- will be riddled with flaws of some sort or another. Fallout's skill system is totally unintuitive. Shadow of the Colossus had a crappy camera system. The main ship in Ikaruga is twice as big as its hit box.
None of us have ever or will ever play a truly perfect game, and anyone who says otherwise is simply ignoring a few flaws they don't find to be terribly relevant. Perfection is an ideal, never to be practically reached by any art form at any time. That's just the way it works.
With that in mind, why would you waste an entire point on the 1-10 grading scale by devoting it to something that can, by definition, never truly exist? Instead of calling 10/10 "perfect," why not just call it "will cure cancer"? They're both equally likely to happen within our lifetimes. To hold the 10/10 score back as an ideal for the perfect game, just in case it ever exists, is to degrade the entire 1-10 system into a 1-9.9 scale.
Really, what good does it do a reader to see that a game rated 9.85/10, just because the camera isn't perfect? Are we truly improving the grading scale just by avoiding that elusive 10.0 at all costs, or are we just jerking off as we fantasize about an imaginary game which might one day come into existence and blow us all out of the water?* Who honestly cares about the difference between a 9.8 and a 9.9, especially when time and genre and context make it more or less impossible to reliable compare review scores against one another?
This isn't to suggest that the 10/10 should be thrown around willy-nilly, of course. I still don't agree with Dan Hsu's 10 score for Gears of War based on his text, and I've only awarded a single 10/10 out of the dozens of games I've reviewed. A 10 should still stand for a game which is, as the Dtoid official guide says, "Incredible. As close to perfection as we've yet seen in in the genre or gaming on the whole. A polished, unparalleled experience."
It's something that should be given out relatively rarely, and only to those games which are truly deserving. It shouldn't be given out everytime the developer throws money at us, or just because it's part of a franchise that has previous garnered high scores. Yet it should also not be tucked away like some sort of emergency score, only to be used in case of the videogame equivalent of the Second Coming.
*If so desired, the reader may mentally drop the words "out of the water" and get a thematically identical sentence.
Contest:
3:39 PM on 04.17.2008
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j/k, nice write-up
reviews are opinions, and vary from judging, say, a figure skating contest.
when your judging a figure skating contest, if the scale is 1-10, and the first person comes out and does a technically flawless performance, you can't give them a 10, you never know what may be coming out of the next skater. i'm pretty sure travis pastrana didn't get a 10 for dbouble back-flipping his motorcycle two times at the x-games. the fucker flipped a motorcycle, twice!
with games/movies/books/music its different. its an opinion. a game may be exactly everything the reviewer wanted from it, with no glaring flaws that detracted from the experience, in which case, the 10/10 is justified.
bottom line, your an ass if you take any one review too seriously. its that persons opinion. i'm sure with a little googling, you can find someone with an opinion similar to your own. thats the magic of the internet.
NOTHING is perfect. Therefore, limiting the use of a 10/10 only for perfect games makes zero sense, as a perfect game cannot exist, effectively rendering the 10/10 rating useless.
10/10 is reserved for games that reach the absolute pinnacle of near perfection, with only minor flaws and gripes present. That's how it's always been.
What am I saying? I meant to say "fucking indie fag rev." sorry.
(Grade School formate) I thought was an excellent choice just because It's so widely understood.
But ofcourse the Dtoid POV's expressed by the editors here has been reviews=opinions. And I'd have to agree.
This article: 11/10
It's not bitching at all, it's further explaining and clarifying the reviews which are a pretty complex concept (especially with Destructoid's unique way of doing things) that even the smartest guy could misunderstand.
You don't really have to do it, but you guys are meeting the reader halfway here. That's really cool.
I'm all for as many of these articles as possible. The idea isn't going to catch on unless the idea is made explicit to everyone.
Bottom line: No game is perfect. The perfect game would somehow have to encompass all genres in existence, so as to be perfect in respect to not neglecting any particular form of gameplay, all while using the best bits and pieces of every said genre and every said mechanic for said genre AND manage to include new things that people would find unexpected and wonderful now AND years down the road when they still are craving playing that game again. Essentially, a PERFECT 10/10 is a crack addiction that will ultimately kill someone because they'll never stop playing it and will eventually neglect themselves unto stinky starving death.
Hopefully, no such animal will ever come to rise.
When a check is sent :3
I have to strongly disagree with you on this one, sir. There are plenty of perfect games out there. The only point of disscussion is the term "perfect".
To me, Tetris for the original GameBoy is a perfect game on it's own rights. I wouldn't have added or left out anything at all. There are plenty more games: Soul Calibur, Doom, Civilization, M.U.L.E., Super Mario Brothers, (heck, even Pong) need I go on? (there are many more, trust me)
They are all just fine (or perfect if you will) the way they are, wouldn't you agree? You never get the feeling "oh, they should have done this differently".
I couldnt agree more
I know I'm going to totally butcher this idea, but... it's logically impossible for any man-made creation to be perfect, because our values and criteria by which we judge things by are imperfect.
I'm sure half of the people saying that Ikaruga didn't deserve a 10 are pointing to the fact that Topher pointed out an apparently large weakness in multiplayer, complained about it, but ultimately didn't alter his scoring. Ignoring multiplayer and enjoying the single-player experience might work for some, but it won't work for many of us.
I wasn't nitpicking in my comment about .2 points, either. I was simply saying that a complaint is a complaint, and that that should warrant SOME kind of point droppage.
But again, as you've clearly stated in this article. Anything above a 9 basically says "buy this, retard", and at that point it really doesn't matter what EXACT score it has.
If Topher didn't mind the multiplayer problems enough to drop the score, then he might want to tone down that area of his review, being that he basically says "don't play with anyone online." The harshness of his words is what's making people think the game was unjustly scored so high.
I love his writing and what he does here, btw. He's funny shit, and very informative.
If we're truly judging a package, it should be the sum of all parts and not just the parts we like while sweeping those parts we don't under the rug. If a portion of the package is broken (or even semi-broken) then it should affect the assesment of the package as a whole...period.
Although, I don't agree with what you said about downplaying or rewording negatives because then that leaves more questions than answers...Why shouldn't I play online? What's broken in multiplayer that causes him to say that?
@Eques-Ador
Huh? How did "I wouldn't recommend pairing up with anyone who doesn't have a lightning-fast internet connection" turn to "DONT PLAY ONLINE!!" ?
However 10s are still thrown around too much like candy lately. 10s should be attainable but excessively rare. There really should be a number that showcases just those games that you have to play or stop calling yourself a gamer. While looking back you may spot flaws in said games (as always is the case) it's gotta be an in the moment thing.
Meanwhile your 9s and 8s, should describe the awesome-sauce elite games that you ultimately recommend and people should definitely get. Once you start getting into 7,6,5 do you start to have games with flaws that detract noticeably from the game or are games that only appeal to the set audience they're for.
For the record my perfect-10 games would have to be:
Starcraft
Half-life (1)
Portal
Super Metriod (maybe I'm on the fence on this one, I don't have an specific reason why I'd give it a 9 but I can't see it as a 10 either).
It's a very short list that excludes some of my absolute favorite games but I exclude them due to things that may slightly detract from the game.
ICO *SPOILER* (Princess' AI sometimes, slightly reptitive combat, and I thought the princess not dieing detracted from the emotion of the game at the end).
Shadow of the Collosus(The game sometimes built up a little fustration on annoying to do fights, the help system would sometimes ruin things as I was trying to figure them out and other times remain silent when I was stuck).
Katamari Damacarcy/Sequels (Lackluster multiplayer).
Etc. So as you can see I think the list would be really short for perfect 10s really.
This is starting to become a disturbing trend. But I'm glad you guys stick up for yourselves, I just wish you weren't pushed to do so after almost ever review.
It's just opinions people, write your own reviews, that's what the blogs are for.
There are two sides to reviewing: behind-the-scenes and the finished product. What goes on behind-the-scenes is management. It's an EiC, or Managing Editor of some capacity, trying to delegate review assignments to the best man (or woman) for the job. At the end of the day, no one review -- no MULTIPLE reviewers -- can validate your video game purchases.
There are TONS of games out there that I idolize, but were panned by critics. Go read movie review. They are hardly as considerate as video game reviews. People outright slam and badmouth movies they think of as failures. They are honest to movie-goers. Yet, when game reporters try to follow their lead they are skinned alive.
Bottom line: if you think a score should denote perfection then you are out of your mind. How is a full anything-out-anything "perfection". I could see how a giving a game a percentage-based score would suggest this... But a 5/5, 10/10, or A+ hardly do. It just means the game has reached the pinnacle of the reviewers expectations. Halo is far from a perfect game. Yet, for many, it embodies the most ideal FPS circumstance at the moment. So, in that subjective sense, the game is "perfect".
Don't think of it as a "perfect" score. Think of it as the highest achievement for the site in question.
Bullshit, Nadia Comaneci was! D=
Kidding aside, I agree with what you're saying. I chuckle though, because on the Dtoid review banner above your article it says "10 = perfect" though. But regardless. And I still think the 10-point scale is just too superlative, because in the end it really tries to do just too much. I think a smaller scale that is more succinct is much better.
I think a lot of people forget the level of subjectivity involved in reviews. Some games just don't appeal to some people; and some games conveniently hit on all cylinders for another (for example, I don't like Devil May Cry, God of War, or Dynasty Warriors; but I love Viewtiful Joe and No More Heroes).
I also think people forget that these aren't necessarily reviews, but consumer reports. 1up's Shawn Elliot has a lot of very interesting points he makes.
And I just gotta throw this in there: the 4/10 for Twilight Princess is still as wrong today as it was in '06, Anthony. ^_~
Bad choice of words on my part. That's how.