About damn time -- hopefully it lasts unlike the star system that CGW (GFW) tried for a bit.

I wonder how that will track in metacritic.

They will turn the letters into numbers on those other sites like every other letter site.

They just need to do red, yellow, and green. All sites should do this.

I can dig it

I knew that a 5 out of 10 was average. Jeff Green talked about it for like 20 minutes on a GFW podcast.

"...it'll more accurately convey how we feel about a game. I mean, we knew a 5 out of 10 meant 'average' to us, but no one else seemed to get the clue."

Err...if you say so.

Good news. Didn't mind the number system much, but if this will be better for most readers, so be it.

it almost feels like school grades.

They can say 5 out of 10 meant average to them all they want. If all the other sites in the world, including metacritic and gamerankings don't see it that way. Then it has no wait.

OMFG Zelda 10 got a B+ and not an A- ... LYNCH EM!

No! I got that 5 meant average. It was great system because it meant that 1-5 were bad and 5-10 were good, not 1-7 were bad. I get it, You don't need to tell me how much a game blows based on 7 levels of suck.
For that we have Seanbaby.

So every game will be better than my high school career

That makes sense. They are right after all, people still don't understand they used the 1-10 scale and not the 7-10 scale.

Well... this is pointless for me but whatever they need to help convey whether a game is "must buy" "great" "average" (which in gamer terms really man bad), and "awful run away if you see this game near you".

Personally I always have considered:
9.0 - 10.0 - A
8.9 - 8.0 - B
7.9 - 7.0 - C

You get the idea.

@Justcrim:
metacritic shouldn't exist. But I love this new policy. 1up is my favorite review site, simply because they rarely gave scores that didn't end in a 0 or a .5, and they seem to get reviews up pretty fast, but they have news up WAAAAYYY before ign or that other piece of shit that is slowly sinking and, quite frankly, desrves it. I'll still visit ign from time to time, but not for reviews anymore.

@Mikazukinoyaiba: Man you are SO indoctrinated.

Awesome.

@dexterr:

Well, considering the maturity level of some opinions...

@EnigmaNemesis:

weight*

lawl

While I do think the letters are a better step, it still doesn't remove the numerical value! That the ranking sites will apply sadly.

If it aint broke....

This is a bold move for reviewers everywhere.

This is really great news, and I PRAY that the rest of the industry follows suit.

Easiest solution possible: buy it, rent it, don't buy it. Screw this scoring crap.

@smitty1123: How do you rent PC games? How would GFW Magazine operate?

Now if only they made accurate reviews...

I'm liking this move. Here's hoping it all pans out.

This is the same thing. Can't they see that? The main problem with videogame reviews these days is that reviewers are out of touch with society. There are a lot more people than socially inept nerds playing videogames these days.

Red (Rent or Stay Away)

Yellow (Rent or Fans Buy)

Green (Rent or Must Buy)

@gamadaya: I love gamerankings (which I hear is the same as metacritic) - I almost never read single review scores any more if it is a game I don't know anything about. What's wrong with that?

@Sintariot: Ditto.

@dynendal:

Other sites have already been doing this.

@Sintariot: That's why most Wii games get average scores: averages scores for average people.

@ShirtGuyDom: Good demos.

@smitty1123:
That's kind of a waste of money. I think the easiest solution is to adopt the 1-5 star system. No decimals, because that's bullshit. But, honestly, I've never actaully cared about the score that much. The way I look at reviews is I read the articles on a couple sites, watch some videos, and then decide if I want to buy it.

@blackadvent: Demos are too rare. Then again, so are PC gamers, apparently.

I STILL PLAY BF2!!!

@ShirtGuyDom: That's even easier: buy, don't buy. Seriously, it all comes down to this: is this game worth your money? Scoring a game in any way beyond that is just an academic hand job.

Meh I don't think switching to letters will be any different. Really I don't think there is anything wrong with the current system and Metacritic seems to work just fine. Never bought a game I didn't end up liking and I'm pretty picky. I don't see why some people want it so simplified like

"Red (Rent or Stay Away)

Yellow (Rent or Fans Buy)

Green (Rent or Must Buy)"

That's way to simplified to be valuable. Read a few reviews and then make up your mind.

@smitty1123: Worth who's money? A hardcore fan of the series or genre or someone who's getting into it for the first time. Game reviews can't be simple because the breadth of people who play games isn't simple.

Even if 5 is average, that doesn't mean people want to settle for average games. People want to throw their money down on the best games on the market, to make sure they have the most fun possible with the games.

That's why people blow off games that get 'average' ratings. Why get the average games when you can get the above average games?

This just means C is the new average (I'm assuming) and everyone will blow off the C's as average games that aren't worth their time.

It sounds like a good idea on paper, but then, so does the infamous "1-10 scale." I'm afraid that pretty soon we'll see a bastardization of the A-F scale, when GOTY material gets "A+" or "AAA" ratings, and pretty soon the "C" grade will be the equivalent of the old "7.0" No matter the grading system you choose, it might or not might work depending on how it's used. It's a shame that such a simple system as 1-10 became so broken, and I hope we don't see that happening here. That said, it's a good idea, and it was certainly time for a change. Major props for rewriting scores, too. That can't be easy.

For a game to technically be "average" that means roughly half the games out there are better and half are worse. Good luck trying that type of system out...

I vote for a multi-writer reviews with a final count of thumbs up and thumbs down. Now where have I heard this one... >.>

@wild_world_girl:
That's a lot better than just looking at one site's score, but just reading one site's review is often better than looking at a 20 site average on metacritic. It seems to me like metacritic just validates a lot of the bullshit 7-10 sites. More people would get a better idea about how the reviewer felt about the game if they would just read the review. I also don't think anybody should score games with a number, but that won't happen, so I'm happy with a F to A system (hope it doesn't have - or +). Actually, I do like Enigmanemes's system.

I don't have a problem with the numerical system, as long as it goes in 0.5 increments (seriously, how the hell can you rate something a 9.2?). I also think a 5 is a good score for a total mediocre,average game. It's not their fault people are morons and like to inflate scores and consider anything under like a 7 to be total garbage.

I can't say how much I like this. Really, we need a system that is applicable to gaming consumers so we can easily judge a review at face value. Don't you? About time.

Seems like a good idea.

No one knew that 5-out-of-10 meant average...

Yeah. Cause we're that kind of dumb.

And how is it not going to be exactly the same, but with a different meaningless symbol representing what the numbers did? And they don't realize that a school letter grading system IS in fact based on numbers? Or that one letter grade can be just as wide a range of numbers as the actual number rating system, and thus requires numbers to even explain what the letter represents?

Yeah. Smart move, or completely trivial one?

I think its better if a game is reviewed with a bunch of peers like here. Impressions of a game from an editor and then it is broken down from a bunch of commentators. That's why i like to come here because everybody is different so I get different perspectives. Also ask friends as well.

I'd prefer to base the quality of the game by reading the review, gets in my monthly (per issue) reading quota :)

But then again, all reviews are OPINIONS by People with different views.

@homernoy: I don't think that changing the system means building trust in a gamesite's review score. I think it's more of the gamesite building trust in their readers with their work. Regardless of what scoring system they actually use, it works fine as long as the reader in question knows what the final score really means.

A+ through F, eh? Let's see, assuming F doesn't get a minus but all other have both a + and a - that means they'll be scaling everything from one to thirteen.

This helps how exactly? It's still an arbitrary ranking that can be scaled back into a percentage for gamerankings or metacritic. You may as well ten versions of a gamer's interest for all the difference it makes.

Ah well, at least it got them some free advertising on video game blogs.

Honestly, if you judge a game soley by any arbitrary numerical score, you are a moron anyway. You should actually read several reviews to get a feel for how the game is and then decide if it appeals to you.

For evidence the sole numerical scores are bullshit, look at a game like Mass Effect. It has a million little problems, and I couldn't honestly give it over like an 8,but it some ways it's the best game I've ever played.

Also, look at paintings. There is a reason no one compares a Van Gogh to a Dali and gives them a score-it just doesn't work right.

@ftgf: It's actually not all that bad if you give a reason for those outcomes. I tend to do similar on my meager gaming blog (shameless self promotion!). I tend to rank out reasons why to rent/play/buy the game, and reasons to avoid it. If you agree with certain statements over others, you might want to check it out. Likewise, if you don't really find the reasons to check it out all that grand, you might save yourself time and money and skip it.

@ShirtGuyDom: Worth the reader's money. If you are going to take personal tastes into consideration, then any sort of scoring/recommendation system is useless anyway. Afterall, does that A- score apply to hardcore fans, casual fans, little Jimmy from down the street who has never tried the series before?

@bnpederson:
Wait they're doing + and -? What the fuck, that's the same thing as they do now. Pretty much all their reviews are .0 or .5.

@Mikazukinoyaiba:

That's the absolute wrong way of looking at the scores. THat is why gaming sites stay within the 5-10 range in a 1-10 scale. 9-10 is not A and 8-9 is not B. Grades do not correlate to those numbers. But I guess if you want to think about how the NEW grading system will work based off the old numbers I would guess something like this:

A: 8.5 - 10
B: 6.5 - 8.4
C: 4.5 - 6.4
D: 2.5 - 4.4
F: 0.0 - 2.4

Same shit. Ban the numbers. Or name the A+ games so we can "compare"

speaking of which, with grade do you guys give to old stuff? Like Tetris, Mario, Pac-Man, and Mona Lisa?

Maybe Van Gogh deserves a ... B- right? Or maybe scoring stuff doesn´t makes much sense after a few years.

*sigh* Here we go again. More debate on scores.

I admit, I use number scores and number sites like Metacritic and Gamerankings. But I use them to see what I've missed. When I finally bought an Xbox I went and searched for all Xbox games that were 90% or better, and went from there. Since I like RPGs, I searched for RPGs over 75%.

I also use individual reviews to assist me in my buying habits. But I use sites I trust, like Kotaku. I wouldn't have bought Zack and Wiki without Crecente and Plunkett's good words. I wouldn't have tried Monster Hunter 2 on the PSP without PapaBear and Witz's enthusiasm. And Puzzle Quest? I would've dismissed it as Bejeweled until I heard people devoting entire days to playing it.

Trust people, not numbers.

@NeoAkira:

whoa whoa, if they aren´t correlated to numbers they are correlated to words then?

B+, A, A-, A+ = good
as in 7,8,9,10 = good

what´s the misterious difference between numbers and letters in order to score something, then?