IGN Game Reviewers Love Everything

Dec 9, 2008 (Click to Rate!) Loading ...

Reading through the Kotaku “Frankenreview” series over the last year or so I’ve unscientifically noticed a trend… IGN seems to love most everything. I noticed with high profile titles more time than not IGN tends to love them and in polarizing titles they also tend to lean towards the upper-end of the scale. There are certainly some titles that don’t make the cut and have more average scores, but I’m declaring semi-shenanigans.

Consider:

Prince of Persia 93% – (metacritic: 87) – 6% Higher
Resistence 2 95% – (metacritic: 87) – 8% Higher
Metal Gear Solid 4 100% – (metacritic: 94) – 6% Higher
Fallout 3 96% – (metacritic: 91) – 5% Higher
Far Cry 2 87% – (metacritic: 85) – 3% Higher
Army of Two 74% (metacritic: 72) – 2% Higher
Skate It 85% (metacritic: 73) – 12% Higher
Valkyria Chronicles 90% (metacritic: 86) – 4% Higher
Kane & Lynch 70% (metacritic: 64) – 6% Higher

Thoughts? Coincidence? Overly-complimentary review staff… or advertiser money effecting review results?

Then again other high-profile games like the new Tomb Raider, Left 4 Dead and the stupid Need for Speed Undercover are all rated exactly on par with the norm… so who knows. Just thought it was interesting.

Maybe IGN is such a cool place to work everyone over there is always in a good mood?

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This post was written by:

Riyad Kalla - who has written 1727 posts on The “Break it Down” Blog.

"Ultimately I just want to provide a resource that folks find useful."

5 Comments For This Post

Jigsaw hc Says:
December 9th, 2008 at 2:23 pm

Yeah, I stopped reading IGN about a year ago because they tend to only point out the good features of games and ignore the bad parts. It gets frustrating when they recommend a game and then you try it and there are huge glaring flaws.

Riyad Kalla Says:
December 9th, 2008 at 3:16 pm

It sure seems like it… I like 1up’s policy of usually having a main review, then another reviewer’s note tacked on just incase the other person had a different take on the game.

But ultimately BIDBs are the best

Daniel Corban Says:
December 9th, 2008 at 4:43 pm

I dunno. Ranking games based on your own proprietary and arbitrary rating system is shaky enough. Comparing a bunch of people’s proprietary and arbitrary rating systems is madness. How can you accurately translate “enjoyment” and “value” into a single number? How could you expect different people to not only come up with the same conclusions, but also use the same scale to express them? The whole idea of summing up a game into a single number is so ridiculous, I can’t believe there are sites devoted to comparing these numbers.

Riyad Kalla Says:
December 9th, 2008 at 9:18 pm

Daniel,

Yea it’s sort of a compromise between (a) the reviewers and (b) the readers. I know we use a number system to give people a hook and they can either keep reading (at which point we expound on the “why” of the review) or they can just say “oh nevermind, I’ll skip that game”

We don’t intend the number to signify the absolute entirety of the game distilled down into a number between 1 and 10… we try and provide it as a “general indicator” if the game sucked or not.

Not everyone has time to read insanely long reviews… actually almost no one did — so we’ve moved to a more summarized format recently.. it follows something like:

1. SCORE – Give the person a reason to either stop reading or keep reading.

2. SUMMARY – Give a bit more detail than the score, again, helping them decide if they want to read or stop reading.

3. PRO/CON LIST – Break down the exact data points for them

4. CONCLUSION – If they haven’t made up their mind by here, try and provide some “umph” or guidance in a direction that wasn’t covered above to help them decide.

Ultimately this was designed because of exactly what you said — the shortcomings with a *single* number… but at the same time we can’t get rid of it, busy people aren’t going to have the time to read the entire reviews and most want some sort of indicator up-front if they should keep reading or not.

Out of curiosity, what is your preference?

Daniel Corban Says:
December 9th, 2008 at 9:24 pm

I do use metacritic just to give me a general idea of the “good” games. I have done this several times in the past couple years as I got into old systems I never owned before (PS1, Gamecube, GBA). Other than that, I pretty much ignore the numbers and read the reviews looking for particular pluses or negatives the reviewer points out.

Jigsaw hc Says:
December 9th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Yeah, I stopped reading IGN about a year ago because they tend to only point out the good features of games and ignore the bad parts. It gets frustrating when they recommend a game and then you try it and there are huge glaring flaws.
Riyad Kalla Says:
December 9th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
It sure seems like it… I like 1up’s policy of usually having a main review, then another reviewer’s note tacked on just incase the other person had a different take on the game.

But ultimately BIDBs are the best
Daniel Corban Says:
December 9th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
I dunno. Ranking games based on your own proprietary and arbitrary rating system is shaky enough. Comparing a bunch of people’s proprietary and arbitrary rating systems is madness. How can you accurately translate “enjoyment” and “value” into a single number? How could you expect different people to not only come up with the same conclusions, but also use the same scale to express them? The whole idea of summing up a game into a single number is so ridiculous, I can’t believe there are sites devoted to comparing these numbers.
Riyad Kalla Says:
December 9th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
Daniel,

Yea it’s sort of a compromise between (a) the reviewers and (b) the readers. I know we use a number system to give people a hook and they can either keep reading (at which point we expound on the “why” of the review) or they can just say “oh nevermind, I’ll skip that game”

We don’t intend the number to signify the absolute entirety of the game distilled down into a number between 1 and 10… we try and provide it as a “general indicator” if the game sucked or not.

Not everyone has time to read insanely long reviews… actually almost no one did — so we’ve moved to a more summarized format recently.. it follows something like:

1. SCORE – Give the person a reason to either stop reading or keep reading.

2. SUMMARY – Give a bit more detail than the score, again, helping them decide if they want to read or stop reading.

3. PRO/CON LIST – Break down the exact data points for them

4. CONCLUSION – If they haven’t made up their mind by here, try and provide some “umph” or guidance in a direction that wasn’t covered above to help them decide.

Ultimately this was designed because of exactly what you said — the shortcomings with a *single* number… but at the same time we can’t get rid of it, busy people aren’t going to have the time to read the entire reviews and most want some sort of indicator up-front if they should keep reading or not.

Out of curiosity, what is your preference?
Daniel Corban Says:
December 9th, 2008 at 9:24 pm
I do use metacritic just to give me a general idea of the “good” games. I have done this several times in the past couple years as I got into old systems I never owned before (PS1, Gamecube, GBA). Other than that, I pretty much ignore the numbers and read the reviews looking for particular pluses or negatives the reviewer points out.

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