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  • Does Genre Matter When Determining If A Game Is Great?

    29 Dec 2023 by in Editorials, Featured News, Gaming Headlines / 4 Comments

     
    2011 has been a banner year for great games; just the sheer number of 9.0+ review scores has been simply staggering. Uncharted 3 has been pulling in 10s across the board, Skyrim and Arkham City have been getting 9.5s, so on and so forth. 
     
    It occurred to me the other day that game ratings might be somewhat…vague, if you will. Yes, Skyrim got a 9.5 at certain websites. But then again, so did Forza Motorsport 4. IGN gave Infinity Blade 2 a perfect 10, which is what The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword got.
     

     
    Which led me to wonder: Are all perfect 10s, 9.5s, 8.0s, etc. created equal? Should genre matter when reviewing a game and giving out a score?
     
    Let me paint a picture for you: you hate racing games but love first person shooters. A website rates Modern Warfare 3 with a 9.5 but also gives Forza 4 a 9.5. How do you feel about that rating? Would you be able to accept that a racing game got the same coveted 9.0+ score as a worldwide megahit like MW3?
     
    How about a comparison between Portal 2 and Forza 4, or between Portal 2 and Mortal Kombat?? Can there be justification with giving a racing game or fighting game the same score as Portal 2?
     
    The reason why I ask these questions is because of a recent conversation I had with a friend of mine. I, as many of you may know, LOVE racing games, especially sim racers. My friend DESPISES them. He doesn’t feel that racing games are “real” video games; in fact, he categorizes them as casual games, the likes of an Aladdin Magic Racer for Wii or something along those lines.
     

     
    He feels that no racing game EVER should get above a 5.0 simply due to the fact that racing games are nothing but repetition and different iterations of the same franchise usually include the same cars and tracks with minimal new content (his words).
     
    On the flipside, he argues that pretty much any other game, be it an RPG or FPS, can offer varied gameplay, story, and more replay in the sense of competitive multiplayer, co-op, finding hidden items, different endings, etc. In his mind, a comparison between a racing game and any other type of game shouldn’t even be close; the racing game will always be inferior.
     
    So I ask again: Should genre matter when determining whether or not a game is great?

    Pages: 1 2

    • http://twitter.com/GregHorrorShow GregHorrorShow

      Great article. When I do my reviews I tend to use the review score as a mixture of mainly how highly I’d recommend the game and also a touch of how good it is.

      I think the main problem is that lots of sites use a 0-10 rating system (myself included) but that the definition of 0-10 is different everywhere (I do have a page on my site where people can see my reasoning behind the numbers).

      The problem with user reviews as you guys say is that they get skewed by fanboys. For some reason everyone feels the need to pick a side and shout about it. I much prefer Battlefield 3 to Modern Warfare 3 but they got the same score (9) on my site as I can appreciate a good game, even if it’s not completely to my tastes.

      I personally don’t think genre should be taken into account – a well made, fun, great game is worthy of a good score regardless of it’s genre.

      And at some stage your friend may even see a driving game getting 10′s across the board, give it a rent and love it… stranger things have happened!

    • Anonymous

      I don’t know if this makes me sound like an ass or not, but I can’t take user reviews seriously. You’re right, @AhBooILoveYou:disqus , too many little punks that give a game 0/10 because they didn’t like the color scheme or something. There are maybe 3 people that I trust to be unbiased when it comes to user scores, and I only trust them because they hold themselves to a set of criteria that they follow when writing a review, rather than bitching and moaning about anything and nothing.

      And yes, I don’t think any game deserves a 0 as well. Just by a game functioning (popping the disc in and it turns on) should get it at least a 1/10…lol. At my old site, I dealt with a couple of younger reviewers who wanted to give games like SOCOM 4 a 2/10 because “it sucked.”

    • http://www.gamingexaminer.com Taylor

      @suckerv:disqus Yea I don’t know if it’s a bit problem, it’s all opinion based, although some reviewers and scores are biased I think a good shopper would look around at multiple reviews and come up with a decision based on multiple opinions, I think reviews are better to look at then user scores because if someone doesn’t like a game often they will review it a 0/10 and i’ll be honest… no game I can think of is deserving of a zero, every game has some redeeming quality to it. I try not to be biased in my reviews, and try to bring out what shined in a game, because there’s always that nugget that if you find it, you’ll enjoy the game regardless. And I try to tell people what the best option is, to rent,skip or buy.

    • Anonymous

      @twitter-107766006:disqus Good point; yes, I do mean the scoring, which I do consider a pretty integral part of whether or not a game is great. It’s all opinion, but in the public eye, a game that scores a bunch 10/10s would be considered “great,” despite what the few naysayers have to say about it.

      So yes, a little of both (score and opinion), but I suppose I am mostly referring to overall score across different sites.

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