To the tune of “When The Saints Come Marching In”
Oh when the 10’s come rolling in,
Oh when the 10’s come rolling in.
How I’d love to jack Rockstar’s wallet (you get the irony, right?)
When the 10’s come rolling in.
We’re still a couple weeks from the release of GTA IV and the review embargo is in full effect. That doesn’t stop a few folks from trying to scoop the first print reviews though. What better way to avoid the full wrath of Rockstar’s team of lawyers than reviewing the game with a score of 10 out of 10? Two groups have both claimed “first print review” and both have given the game the highest possible review score. Here we go again folks…
I’m not going to let this editorial spiral into another “review scores are subjective, or meaningless” debate, but I will stop to point out that I personally consider a “perfect” score to represent the absolute pinnacle of gaming experiences. A game can still be “really frickin’ awesome” and not get a perfect review score. Now that I’ve said that, let’s continue.
Who are the guilty parties? UK’s Official Playstation Magazine gave GTA IV a 10/10 as well as the Official Xbox Magazine UK. What’s that smell? Did someone open a can of tuna? Incidentally, I found out about these review scores from N4G.com. I wonder where they get their money? Oh well… I’m sure it’s completely a coincidence that all these trails lead back to Future Publishing. I also noticed that CGReviews.com (ok, all together now… who?!?!) posted, then retracted a review as well. Their review wasn’t quite so shiny and “full-of-tens” as the others, but it still remains to be seen if it was even legit or not. Some folks will do just about anything for a spike in page views…
1UP has a confusing as hell PS3/360/Unknown preview up on their site describing some interesting “imperfections” in the game they played. Is that a precursor to them not falling in line and giving GTA IV a 10 or is that simply their attempt to grab a spike in page views (it’s working, if that’s the case.)
While I prefer to go more by the descriptions in reviews, written by people I’m familiar with, I’m betting we’re going to see a whole lot of sites/magazines/media outlets dish out 10’s for this game (along with a political candidate, or two, taking some stand against it.)
As for me? I’m going the Spinal Tap route… I’m just going to assume all 10-point scales really go to 11. I can’t quite explain why, but it makes everything seem more… reasonable. Now, on to that pesky world peace problem!
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
6 responses so far ↓
1 Arthur Mitchell // Apr 17, 2008 at 10:43 am
The trouble with a scale where there are only 10 points is that it becomes difficult to differenciate between different games. Maybe it isn’t perfect (what game is), so it isn’t deserving of a 10, but it’s probably a damn sight better than some games that gets a 9.
2 Sean "Rothbart" Workman // Apr 17, 2008 at 11:27 am
@Arthur Mitchell: That’s always going to be the case… sadly, the gaming community seems full of polar people. Things either totally rock or totally suck. There’s no “totally good” or “totally okay” to speak of… so while crappy games for some reason don’t get lumped into 0’s and 1’s (they get the 3-5 scores), it seems most games that are really good get either a 9.5 or 10, leaving very little room to distinguish any possibility of relative differences in quality.
The best we can hope for is widespread knowledge of this since it seems unlikely we’ll ever “fix” it. That said, I’m still waiting for the nauseating “Wave of 10’s” to start rolling in as soon as the embargo lifts. More interesting than the 10’s (to me) will be the ones that buck the trend and _don’t_ give 10’s. I’ll likely read more non-10 reviews than perfect scoring ones.
3 balaamsafe // Apr 17, 2008 at 12:24 pm
i know what you mean when 10/10 reviews come out i don’t trust them
by definition they should be perfect games, and a perfect game doesn’t exist. I personaly prefer percentage scores, becasue they can differentiate between brilliant games rather than give them the highly suspiscious 10/10
on another note, i personaly trust the officail playstation magazine quite a lot. I know the name suggests a strong connection with sony and obviously this brings into question their motives when reviewing games. But in general, their reviews are pretty honest and even harsh on sony games. For instance they gave 7/10 to resistance and they openley criticise SCEE’s lack of organisation. Sorry for the rediculously long post, but i just got my account working again thanks to capitain DDL
4 Joshthegreat // Apr 17, 2008 at 4:10 pm
The UK’s Official Playstation Magazine is generally VERY reliable. I mean, they hyped Driv3r into oblivion, but never felt the need to give it a good score in the end (I think it got a 4 or 5). When OPM give’s a game a 10, it’ll deserve it, and they won’t award a 10 to a game purely because it’s the trend. Hell, they gave Resistance a 7 after calling it the most promising shooter in years in previous issues. That said, however, they DO like GTA games seemingly unconditionally. VC, SA, and now IV have all recieved 10s.
5 sifer2400 // Apr 17, 2008 at 5:32 pm
no way its a 10 ill wait for some real reviews not these hyped up ones that just want page veiws and such
6 BAZ // Apr 18, 2008 at 7:18 am
11/10 would the perfect game.
10/10 to me just means very good game
Leave a Comment