Current Events > Nobody rates 7/10 BECAUSE the thing was average.

(+) Yeah! (+)

7/10 means it did a lot of things well and was generally enjoyable but was not a particular standout. If that's the average rating I assign to stuff, it's descriptive, not prescriptive, meaning that that's simply the level of quality most published works attain.

A 5/10 is a work where the good and bad are of equal magnitude. For example, I'm alternating between a grimace and a grin with 50% duty cycle, or it just did nothing particularly well OR particularly poorly.

The reason why ratings on the lower half of the scale are uncommon is, well, because it's really pretty hard to actually do so much so poorly. Like, if you're trending toward a 3 or so, somebody somewhere should be raising the alarm and you should be canceling or doing massive overhauls. Because really, a 3/10 is like, a good concept that you just effed up every step of the way, or like a bad concept that you somehow managed to put an interesting twist on like two or three times.

It's the people who deem 7/10 a bad rating not the reviewers.

It's dumb when something with an enjoyable story gets high scores across the board even if gameplay is extremely generic. That's exactly the type of game that should get a 7, a mediocre game saved by interesting plot.

Sufferedphoenix posted...

It's the people who deem 7/10 a bad rating not the reviewers

The culture of game rags, at least back in the day, made it as such. A lot of big, but shitty, AAA games kept getting scores in the 7-9, which made anything even worse than those games seem downright unplayable. Hence, 7 being the lowest perceived end of anything worthwhile.

7/10 is a C

A 70 on a test

5/10 is an F

A Failing test a 50

I think it's because game reviews just naturally filter out games that would be lower than a six or a seven. Once you get down to the five and lower scores, you get shovelware that no one's going to bother reviewing.

The topic title is obviously wrong lol. Like just ask people.

Didn't Twilight princess get an 8.8 and that caused a GameFAQs/internet meltdown?

pegusus123456 posted...

I think it's because game reviews just naturally filter out games that would be lower than a six or a seven. Once you get down to the five and lower scores, you get shovelware that no one's going to bother reviewing.

I've seen it in game informer. It wasn't common though. I saw one I hated. Dude right out the gate said "I typically don't like this genre" making you think there was gonna be a but... but no he went on to tear the game apart in his review.