After much deliberation the all new buttonBandits.com review scoring system is now ready to be announced. In the end we decided to stick with the industry standard 10/10 system but with a new slant. First off, all games will be reviewed out of three in three different categories. 1 star is poor, 2 stars is good and three stars mean excellent. The end result is that most games will receive lower review scores than you would normally expect from other sites. The three categories are:
Presentation:
The presentation score encompasses Graphics, sound and story. The general atmosphere of the game and the way this is put across to the player is also considered. Story is grouped into here rather than having its own category as not all games actually have a story. e.g a game like Geometry Wars looks good but doesn’t have a story as it’s not needed for that type of game so not having a story does not harm it’s presentation score. Similarly, a game like Bioshock where the story is central to the presentation of the game, having a bad storyline or bad acting harms it’s presentation and so if the story or voice acting was not up to scratch then it’s score would suffer because of this.
Gameplay:
The gameplay score is basically if the game is fun and enjoyable to play. The mechanics of the game need to be sound and the tasks and objectives on offer need to hold interest and offer a decent amount of variety to stave off boredom. There’s not really much else to say on this category. Is the game enjoyable and interesting to play is the key thing here.
Lastability:
This section of the review is scored on how much time you should expect to get out of the game. In order to score well, a game doesn’t necessarily have to have a multiplayer component although it obviously significantly helps. e.g a game such as Championship Manager could score highly for lastability on single player alone. Alternatively a game such as Halo 3 having no multiplayer modes would see it get a poor score here as the single player game is short and repetitive. Another example could be Geometry Wars, where the challenge of getting a high score on the online leaderboards adds to the games score in this category.
As you may have noticed, this only gives a score out of 9. Well that’s where the special fourth category comes in which is rated out of one:
Gold Star award:
The Gold Star award is a point reserved for games that deserve special attention. A game can attain this award if it offers something in the three categories above that means it deserves an extra mark. A game would generally be a genre defining title in order to achieve this or offer a ground breaking new feature which sets it apart from it’s competitors in the same genre. An example of this would be call of Duty 4’s multiplayer component with its rewards system and massive lastability online. Alternatively GTA IV would receive this award for it’s presentation and fine details that make up the game world. When a game gets this extra point added it’s effectively being given four out of three in one of the three score areas. Very few games will ever get this additional point.
So there you have it, our all new and unique review scoring system. Games will receive a minimum score of 3 and a maximum of 10. The end result will be very very few if any 10/10 games. A score of 6 should be considered a good game with anything higher being especially good. Review scores should not be compared to other websites as the scoring systems are different. Our old reviews carried out before this system was implemented should be considered to be test reviews, as these were carried out in the first couple of months of the site going live before any kind of definitive scoring policy was in place that reviewers had to abide by.
