More than Belief and Betrayal, anyway.
I chose... Rapture!
Oh shut up, it's only ten months late. Leave me be.
I was thinking, whilst on the toilet earlier, about the bizarre trend of percentage scores in games journalism. It seems to have died down a bit now, thankfully, particularly with the new load of mags and websites, but it's still something that grates. How on earth is it possible to objectively distinguish between consecutive marks out of a hundred? What is it that makes us games writers feel it necessary to evaluate the medium in such a way?
Thing is, it's fun, isn't it? Will this new game get 92 or 93 per cent? Will it get, goodness me, the rare and enviable 95 or, Christ, even 96? It's a bit of a laugh from our side too, deciding where abouts to place this particular game.
But it really is useless as an analytical tool. A ten point scale is brilliantly sufficient in separating games into a good number of categories, with a 10 representing the finest few and a 1 representing what I did while I was having this thought. In the end, does it matter whether Deus Ex is better than Half-Life, or whatever? (It is, of course, but shut up.) It's even more apparent at the low end of the scale. I could probably just about explain what's the difference between a 94 and a 95. But a 37 and a 38 - or, realistically, even a 48? Not a chance.
It's all for personal satisfaction. Plus, we're all geeks and like to be able to order things nicely, and a collection of faceless 8s doesn't do that job half as nicely as the percentage scale. Bah. It's a good laugh but it's stupid and pointless.
Plus, speaking as a reviewer, I'd sometimes rather skip the score altogether. Just read the fucking review. I spent, like, hours on it...
EmP Staff Jun 12, 2008
I'd say yes, because had you not then affirmed Deus Ex's superiority (and lake of bloody monorails), you'd have been reviewing Tetris clones from now to Xmas.
Back in the day (bold to ensure all that remember said time feel nearly as old as OD looks) we used a decimal system here, but Jason scrapped it after some of us started to abuse it to publish awesome scores like X, .007 and ?. No one really noticed the loss of throwing a .3 at the end of the review, but I like to tell the story now and again to cast Venter in a bad light.
Every now and then someone comes along with an idea to 'revolutionise' the scoring system most reviewers use, be it letter grades of complex advanced math totalling up sub-clauses. As for me, I think the number at the end of the piece is the least important thing I include. It’s there because it needs to be; the bit I want you to take heed of are all the words above it.
bluberry Jun 12, 2008
I guess what I'm saying is that I'd be fine with it if we could pull the complex plane into things and I could start scoring games on an a + b(i) format.
Lewis Blogger Jun 12, 2008
As everyone's said, the score's the least important bit, but it's so essentially to a gaming public that, largely, will look at that and little else. Sod it. I'm going to start scoring games by just writing a big, irrelevant word at the bottom.
BioShock gets 'encompassing' out of ten.
Halon Jun 12, 2008
Lewis Blogger Jun 13, 2008
I think the main reason I was disappointed initially was that I was expecting something more traditional from Looking Glass. I expected some of Rapture's inhabitants to be still alive and well, and I expected to get the chance to speak to them. I didn't expect to be shooting as many things as I was. I didn't expect it to be as linear as it was. But it is. And that's the game it's trying to be. It isn't Deus Ex and that was never the plan.
There are two things I forgot to mention in the review. The first is how the atmosphere is rocketed skyward by the sound design - Rapture is never quiet. There's always a bloodcurdling scream, or someone crying, or a Splicer talking absolute nonsense in the creepiest way possible. It's really breathtaking and it always makes you wonder what's round the next corner.
The second is the fun you can have creatively mixing your use of weapons and plasmids. Stick load of bombs to a box then hurl it at a group of enemies using your telekenesis plasmid (essentially HL2's gravity gun). It's right proper fun, it is!