Don't ever rate anything out of 5!!!!!!!!!!

[samsonlonghair]

Rating the quality of a video game (or movie, book, et cetera) on any numerical scale is inherently flawed. No matter which numbers you use, a simple numerical rank gives you no real useful information. The "meat and potatoes" of a review is the verbal description of the qualities and shortcomings of the video game (or movie, book, et cetera). The numerical ranking at the end of the review is just the "dessert" for dimwits who expect all relevant information to be compressed into a soundbite and spoon-fed to them.

[skyknight]

Rating the quality of a video game (or movie, book, et cetera) on any numerical scale is inherently flawed. No matter which numbers you use, a simple numerical rank gives you no real useful information. The "meat and potatoes" of a review is the verbal description of the qualities and shortcomings of the video game (or movie, book, et cetera). The numerical ranking at the end of the review is just the "dessert" for dimwits who expect all relevant information to be compressed into a soundbite and spoon-fed to them.

True to that, numbers don't tell the whole story of anything, what really matters is your own opinion of what you experience first-hand. And share that with others that have the same interests. A 5-out-of-5 is the same as a perfect 10, but where does 9.5 stand? Rather than looking at the score, I would rather read through what a game reviewer has to offer.

[TehOctoNinja]

I personally rate things out of 17. Becuase I can.

[d123456]

Chuck Norris does not rate. whatever he dislikes disappears after he round-house kicks it into oblivion.

Seriously, the 1-10 rating system is the best.
A-F
1-5
are indeed dumb. I can understand if you were raised with these rating systems, but they are indeed very inaccurate.
Here in Germany the do something even worse.
When you make no errors in a test you get a 1.
In the Netherland where I was raised a 1 means you did really really bad.
Here a 1 is good
and it goes from 1-6, go figure!
What were we talking ´bout? right. Use 1-10 for ratings or kittens will die
That and
Chuck will ......, well by now you know the drill.

[Limewater]

Let's put this into proportion

There are great games, there are terrible games. Now, for every great/terrible game, there's several mediocre games. It's not a 3 (2,3,4) to 2 (1,5) ratio.

If you rate 100 games, you don't have to have the same number of games in each rating bin. If you're rating out of 5, and have a sufficiently large sample of games, you SHOULD have a lot more 3's than 5's or 1's.

Normal distributions come up all the time in real life.

[weasels]

just because i can (and i know it pisses you off ) I give this thread a 5 out of 5!

[the7k]

I grade my games A-B-C-D-F, so it's basically a 1-5 scale.

This is the way I look at it:
A - Highly recommended, regardless of taste
B - Highly recommended to genre fans, others might enjoy it as well.
C - Genre fans will enjoy it, everyone else will find it middling.
D - Genre fans might check it out, but you certainly won't miss out by not playing it
F - An abomination. No amount of being a fan of the genre can save this game. Gutter trash.

Really, the score/grade you give a game means little to nothing. They're just instant gratification. If you want a review to mean anything, you have to read the review.

If game magazines were like Playboys, scores would be the nekkid women and the actual reviews would be the thought-provoking articles. The articles/reviews are what you want them to read, but you know well enough that they won't even consider buying your magazine unless you have nekkid women/scores.

[noiseredux]

I personally rate things out of 17. Becuase I can.

my guess is that you do it because 17 is the most common random number.

[saturnfan]

In the spirit of keeping this topic somewhat serious, I always enjoyed a rating scale out of 10 with .25 increments such as 10, 9.75, 9.5, 9.25 and so on all the way down to 0. I like this system because it is the most analogous with a school rating system:

10 - perfect
9 - A
8 - B
7 - C
6 - D
5 and below - various degrees of failure.

Now at the end of the day, the quality of the review is in the content and not the prescribed number affixed to its conclusion. The numerical rating should be used as a guide or a reference point to how the game stacks up against the competition, not necessarily the selling point on whether or not you make the purchase. You need to asses the written portion to understand its strengths and weakness, and more importantly play a demo or get a rental if you are really unsure.

[noiseredux]

In the spirit of keeping this topic somewhat serious, I always enjoyed a rating scale out of 10 with .25 increments such as 10, 9.75, 9.5, 9.25 and so on all the way down to 0. I like this system because it is the most analogous with a school rating system:

10 - perfect
9 - A
8 - B
7 - C
6 - D
5 and below - various degrees of failure.

see that makes no sense to me. 5 is in the middle of 10 and 1. It should be considered "average".