A Note On Paste‘s Game Review Scores

Videogame review scores are a contentious subject. For whatever reason, the number assigned to a game review seems to hold a lot more importance to fans of the medium than, say, the number of stars assigned to a film or the grade given to an album. What’s more, over the past 10 years, game review scores have become inflated to a hideous, almost irreversible degree.

From the critic’s perspective, review scores are a fundamentally tricky proposition. It’s very easy to fall into the “9 is great, 8 is good, 7 is not good” mentality, and easier still for score-creep to begin to occur (e.g. “I gave Modern Warfare a 9.5, and I like Mass Effect 2 even more than I liked Modern Warfare.Ergo…”). From time to time, it’s happened here at Paste just like anywhere else.

Of course, the substance of a review will always be found in the written critique, not in the score assigned to the game. But all the same, a numerical rating system can provide useful context for a review. Since I took over as games editor in December, we’ve run a good number of reviews, and I’ve been keeping an eye on how we assign scores to the games we write about. I thought it would be a good idea to take a moment to clearly articulate our scoring policy, as well as to cleanse our palate going forward.