Then there are the different elements which make up a game such as story, graphics, and gameplay. Does the reviewer share similar tastes as you? Do they have similar criteria for what makes a game fun or not fun? Do they speak to your interests in their critique of the game or do they have a very different basis for what they think makes a game worthwhile? What's left is the meat of the review itself. How do we weight these criteria against one another? A game with mediocre writing and graphics may still prove to be very fun. Unlike grading papers, there's also the question of fun. You can dock points for grammatical errors and poor writing, but you also need to evaluate the work as a whole and in comparison to the work of others. Unlike a quiz where answers are either 'right' or 'wrong' reviewing a game is more like critiquing a paper. The point being, a score is a very rough estimate of a letter 'grade' based on experience and subjectivity more than anything. Why would this be? Maybe different criteria were at play, or different expectations, or some personal preferences that are largely born out of past experience with video games. A reviewer may give a game 8/10 that seems objectively worse than another game they gave 8/10 to. When it comes to things like 'objectivity' the calculus only gets trickier. (Then again, I only occasionally score games, preferring the Buy/Hold/Sell equation.) So my scores tend to be a bit high, often hovering between 7 and 9 and rarely dropping to a 6 or below. For instance, I tend to review games I want to play and play games that I think I will enjoy. Most games will fall somewhere on this 10-point scale, and most will cluster somewhere between 7 and 9, or 'C' to 'A' while fewer get above a nine or below a seven, indicating either a Very Good Game or a Very Mediocre Game. After all, how much difference is there between a 5 and a 3 or a 4 and a 1? This translates into 'Don't Buy' regardless. It's another 10-point scale buried within a 10-point scale, but the numbers 1 - 5.5 are all condensed into one failing grade. 5 decimal to imitate 'pluses' you get a scale that looks like this: Only truly awful games are given an 'F' while most games fall somewhere between a 7 and a 9. The same is true with video game reviews.

Or rather, most will fall between C and B. Only truly awful grades would get an 'F' even though F comprises 59% of the total scale. So on a 10-point scale, an '8' would translate into a B and an 8.5 would be a B+, and so on and so forth.

Video game reviews