ARE WE TOO GENEROUS WITH GAME REVIEWS?

It's the truth - they're not mutually exclusive statements so I'm not sure why you're pointing them out.

I am a bit of a softy*, but people feel they can push themselves to improve if they get lower scores. Speaking from experience, bud.



*To clarify, I have played literally thousands of games and a huge chunk of those are games like the ones hosted here. A fuckton of those have been shitty games, so when a decent game comes along it gets a decent score from me. BUT I do not give perfect scores very often, if ever. You just have to look at my reviews to see that I am generally a soft-scorer.

For example, my review on Elements of Mikoria was quite generous given the amount of issues within the game. I scored it based on the promise I could see for it to be a great little game, and pointed out a shit-ton of stuff that needed fixing, but I've seen games that were objectively better constructed get much harsher scores for lesser reasons.

Most of my reviews tend to fall between 3-4 on the star rating. Granted, that means that I consider most of the games I've reviewed to be at least average, if a little better than average, but some of the bugs and whatnot I encounter in games I don't hold against them, unless it makes it an unplayable mess. I have no issue giving tougher scores when warranted, but most of the time my scoring falls into the upper regions. I've only given one 5 star (with the promise of a 5-star to a particularly good demo once the game is completed - I don't rate demos with official star ratings, though I will put my own unofficial one in the review itself) but there's more than a couple 4.5 star reviews floating around with my name on them. Because I've never met a perfect game and for me 5-stars means it's pretty much perfect (that said, the one 5-star review I gave was me giving an extra half-star because I enjoyed the game so goddamn much.)



So, you know, while I appreciate /sarcasm your trying to use my own words against me in some weird passive-aggressively nonsensical way, you might want to consider that people mean what they say and that they make perfect sense given their experiences - else you come off looking a bit silly, ya know?

I hope this doesn't count as a necro because this topic recently came up for me.

My entire reason for giving a game a low score is in hopes that the dev will take the criticisms and do something good with them. Sometimes it works and other times giant flaming tornadoes of dung just go flying everywhere. But I think it's important to keep at it if it allows for better games and, rude as it may sound, the weeding out of people who really shouldn't be game developers. I wasted a chunk of my life on stuff that I had no business getting involved with. Even a crappy dev is still a person and I'd like them to be walking a better life path if possible. It's tough love and I've gotten requests here and elsewhere to ease off a little and forgive more things but that won't help the developer.

I start playing games with a score of 0, not 3. They work their way up from 0 as I play. While the score is heavily weighted towards things like gameplay, presentation and functionality there's also some room for more abstract things like promise, passion and heart.

I really wish that I could give more 4's and 5's. I'm looking forward to it. But RM games have a bad reputation for quality in other communities for a reason. There's a metric assload of crap just as Liberty says. But to me that only makes the gems shine brighter and the crap easier to spot.

Many times I've considered going back and altering some of my reviews (here but mainly elsewhere) just to fix up typos and articulate better but by then the dev has already seen it and reacted however they chose too. Though my biggest problem with reviewing right now is that if a game is complete crap I don't bother playing it. I'm also late to the party a lot, coming in long after the release so it feels awkward to post a review.

I do love how this site gives an average and shows how many reviews it has. 1 review at 4+ or -2 stars makes me want to try it myself.