Rating Breakdown

So it may not be clear, but my rating system can be a bit confusing. My systematic encompassing method tends to leave games with an overall score that is lower than average. This does not represent a poor game necessarily. In this blog post I will label what quality each TSA rating would correspond to with respect to my reviews, as just the numbers alone make it seem like I hate every game, which I don't.

I have also added a page to my Review Database (Linked at bottom) in order to explain my reasoning for ratings out of 10 for each category, but I feel that may just constrain me into a place where reviewing does not become fun anymore, so it is abandoned.

Without further adieu:

0.5/5 - No way I'd play and review a game like this. These games would be impossible to beat and horribly ugly and buggy. I do at least a little research before playing games ;)

1/5 - Similar to the above, these games are basically unplayable and fail across the board. Maybe they look a little nicer than their 0.5/5 counterpart, but still very, very poor games.

1.5/5 - See 1/5 except with an okay score in one category ie it sounds decent enough.

2/5 - This game is passing in some aspects, but it may looks like garbage and be no fun.

2.5/5 - Either the game is really short and has no content, but overall is playable, or it is playable, but a bit of a chore to get through. Can excel in one category or be fairly competent in 3 or more.

3/5 - Any game with a 3 rating or higher I enjoyed and would recommend. These are overall good games. Even though a 60% score doesn't seem like it, these games might just have one or two categories bringing down their average, but may still be fun to play and designed fairly well. Worth playing if you like the genre; sometimes worth it anyways.

3.5/5 - Now we're getting somewhere. These games will have at least 3 categories scoring very highly (an 8/10 is really good on my current scale). This almost always would guarantee a fun game, because it's unlikely I would rate a buggy, unplayable game very high on graphics, sounds, and achievements, since the developer probably wouldn't put the time into those if the main mechanic is failing to work well and be fun.

4/5 - At the time of this post, only Braid and Super Meat Boy have a 4/5 rating, and those are new-age indie classics. These games may only be lacking in a single category, but not by much. Both Braid and SMB have two categories above 9/10 and most other categories above 7 which is not easy to do when making a game. You should definitely play these; they are worth a try for sure.

4.5/5 and 5/5 - These games are essentially perfect. I doubt these games would have any category below 8/10, as I very rarely give out a perfect ten for any category. Not much I can say, since I've reviewed some of my personal favorites and they've only gotten 3.5/5 or so ratings. Not that bias gets in the way of my reviews thankfully. A game like this will be rare to come across, which is sort of the point of this blog post. 3 Stars is definitely not a bad score from me. Even though I may dislike one aspect of the game very much, does not mean the overall experience was bad.

Thanks for reading :)

Review Score Database: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1K3V8jw2v3ZA8tg3Insmj...