Oh, the Dilemma; A Standard For Reviews?

Really, what makes for a good review these days? Is it one that puts the game's faults under a microscope, or is it one that applauds well made decisions. On one hand, it's a good thing to know that your game is at the very least, going to to be playable, however, it's quite a different thing to ignore one piece's merits just to bash a game.

There's also the other side of things where you have to wonder if a reviewer's bias one way or the other is going to sway you to something you won't like in the end. Should the reviewer have an in depth knowledge on what the game is and how it fits into it's particular subgenre, or should they go in with blind eyes and let the game itself sway them. There's a part of me that thinks the latter is the way to go, but then I got to remember that the niche game isn't going to appeal to the general audience. One such example I can think of is Baroque, which came out last year; Baroque was a game that was made strictly for fans of roguelikes but was marketed towards the average console RPG fan. This game made a lot of players angry due to having your levels and items reset after each death, but these two things are really the core of what makes a roguelike, along with the randomly generated dungeons. This thing was made out to be something it wasn't at all and gamer's despised it simply because it didn't have a real sense of progress in the way that say, a Shin Megami Tensei game might have.

Speaking of Megaten, how should the reviewer handle difficulty? Shin Megami Tensei games are known for being soul-crushingly difficult. That's all well and good, but when these games are being passed off as "Pokemon Games in hell", how should the average Pokemon player react? These games really aren't made for anyone other than a certain, select crowd within the console rpg faction.

There's also the angle that I see a lot of reviewers struggle with; What if they dislike the genre of the game they're reviewing? The biggest one in my recent memory was in Techtv's X-play's early days. Adam Sessler flat out doesn't like rpgs and for a while, he was covering them for the show. It isn't necessarily the reviewer's fault themselves, rather than it's the executive's for allowing bias to impact what's making them money. You really don't see much of this kind of thing these days, but every now and then, I find my self nodding in disgust when the problem rears it's ugly head.

How about the review scale then? Whether it's 1/5, 1/10 or a letter grade, gamer's often read too much into them and decide to only play the elite based solely off of the reviewer's decision. When gamer's discard a game for being only a 3 out 5 score, they discount one thing that can make or break the appeal; One's sense of taste. I think from personal experience, the way we view school grade's often has an impact on what we think merit's a worthy game based on score. I'll tell you right now, there are several games that have been rated low that I loved just because it hit that special place in my psyche. Gamer's just aren't taking their chances with their money, and while this is understandable, they seem to have completely forgotten the personality aspect of gaming.

At this point I'm just sort of rambling, but while I'm still in the mood to type, I'll just go ahead and end it with this; Should a review even have a score, or should it simply reflect on what makes the game what it is versus the strengths and weaknesses. I'm probably not making too much sense here, but know this, it sounds a whole lot more intelligent in my head.

As a short sidenote, although I took a potshot at X-play earlier, I think Sessler is one of the most honest and respectable reviewers out there today.