Brutal Reviews: An Introduction

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March 15th, 2008 posted by CirclMastr in Reviews

We’ve all seen other reviews on other sites before. Sites that plow through an early review copy of a game in order to get something published on release day. Sites that have a 10-point scale but never seem to give lower than a 7. Sites that buy into hype and give high scores to games that don’t deserve them. That’s where I come in.

I’m here to cut through the bull and the hype surrounding games and give a brutal rundown of what works and what doesn’t. Don’t be misled by the title; “brutal” doesn’t mean “intentionally bad.” I’m not here to tear down decent games just because I can (that’s what rants are for), I’m here to deliver brutally honest feedback from a gamer’s perspective. So, in the interest of full disclosure, here’s what will go into each review:

Points! Unlike other sites, I’ll be using a 10-point-plus-decimal scale that makes sense, meaning not every score ends in either “.0″ or “.5″  It’s a lot like a 100-point scale, except it has a decimal point to look professional.

Scale! Who decided that 7.0 is “average”? Last I checked, the average of 10.0 and 0 is 5.0. This doesn’t mean that every game will get a score of 5.0; I expect games to impress me, and there’s a lot of room to be impressed on this scale. (Unlike other scales, where you already get a 7 out of 10 just for the thing working out of the box, leaving just a 3-point scale of “good.”)

Completion! It’s not guaranteed! I’ll wait while the gasps of horror die down… Better now? Alright. Let’s face it, not every gamer completes every game they own. Not every game has its strengths lie in its single-player campaign. Hell, not every game is good enough for me to sit through to the end. This doesn’t mean I’ll write an entire review based on five minutes of gameplay (unless it was REALLY bad), it just means I’m not giving Super Smash Bros. Brawl a 5.6 because that stupid adventure mode was stupid.

Objectivity! When was the last time you heard a fair and balanced assessment of Final Fantasy 7? Or Raiden from Metal Gear Solid 2? Believe me, the correct answer is “never.” I can’t promise to remove all emotion from the process, but I’m going to damn well try. Hell, I might even review older games like FF7 and MGS2, just to try to give an objective assessment with the benefits of hindsight. Call it Brutal Classics.

Hopefully by now you’ve got an idea of where I’m coming from, and what to expect from my reviews: blunt honesty.