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GoNintendo 'End of Day' thought - What do you look for in a review?

by rawmeatcowboy
18 November 2015
GN Version 5.0

Middle of the week already? Wow, where is the time going?! These weeks are absolutely flying by. Before I know it, 2015 will be over! Things have to slow down a tad so I can stop and smell the...dead leaves? Damn sleep, always stealing my hours! See you in a few, short hours.

Not a feature in line with our usual End of Day thought topics, but one I wanted to address with you guys. This all stems from two things. We happen to have a wonderful video review of Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash from Yoshiller to share tomorrow. I also had a very long conversation about game reviews earlier today with a friend. All this review chatter swirling around in my head had me thinking I should talk to you guys.

GoNintendo reviews haven't featured review scores for quite some time. That's the one area that I really refuse to budge on. I don't think scores serve any purpose. I think they are quite superficial and they give people a quick way to start feuds. If you want to argue about review scores, that's completely fine. I personally don't want any part of that. I also don't like the way publishers push review score averages on developers, as if they can just create a game that'll pull in an 8 out of 10 average like magic.

I'd rather foster a place where reviews have to be read to glean info. I'd like to think that if you really care about thoughts on a game, you'll be interested in reading a full review, rather than just picking out the score. I'm not knocking anyone that does that. It's just not something that feels right for me. I like to explain how a game makes me feel and where I'm coming from. Giving that feeling a numeric value always makes me feel truly awkward.

With that said, I'd love to hear what you guys and gals want from a review. What kind of content do you want to hear, aside from the usual graphics/gameplay/sound breakdown? How personal do you want the review experience to be? What other areas would you like to have touched on in a review? Would you like some kind of summary that you can quickly glance at? Leave a comment and let us know what you'd like!