Reviews are good for reading the actual contents of the review in my opinion, which is far better than just looking at the scores only(not saying you specifically do that, but a lot of people make that mistake). Often the reviewer says something like, "X aspect of this game is very bad and draws away from the experience", and then grades accordingly. But to someone who doesn't really care about X or doesn't think it's a big deal, he could make the judgement accordingly for how that would impact his potential enjoyment of the game. Reviews aren't mean to be an opinion on a plate you're supposed to swallow and accept completely, it's just telling you what their opinion is and it's up to you entirely whether your opinion matches theirs and for you to figure out for you to account for your and the reviewer's differences.
Woops, got into a bit of a rant there...it isn't targeted at anyone specifically but I felt like saying it..
I'm going to say ^This, but also goign to bring my own view of it, I NEVER EVER EVER consider nor assign any score to any games.
The reasons is simple, it's jsut a number. It's not even based on standard, someone could say something worht 5/10 while someone would have the exact same points on his review and think it worth 4/10, it's just not consistent and in the end, quite confusing.
If I was trying to put numbers, it will feel a heck lot harder than someone can imagine. They would only be relative based because consistency, it's hard and it's harder than just pointing with text (letters) what is good / bad about a game (or I'll say any media for that matter, I would feel the same for reviewing vgm, there;s just so much that distinguish themselves in different ways, it's not worth to have a score).
So, this means that to use numbers, I CANNOT not put TTYD 10/10 simply because it is subjectively the best I played, but this number is only meaningfull to me.....if you don't like the artstyle, it means absolutely nothing to you, but if I tell you "I love the artstyle":, this is when you get that my review disagrees with you for other reasons.
The opposite happens to, I hate random encounter system, this was apparent when I played golden sun. If I put a score, it'll be like 3/10 or something (very approximate), but for someone who don't care, the score will never matter.
And the score will never solve the problem of you agreeing with everything of what I said, but would put a different number. Chaning the number changes nothing btw, changing the points, that do changes the review.
I stopped to care for reviews of video game site like ign since years because what I realised is that a gamer opinion that i would watch on youtube felt more honest and close to what i could understand. ign is no exception especially with the comments I get lately on this thread for example.
Basically, I hate assigning scores, I better jsut write about itand you judge after how it weights, but score oversimplify the process.....