Hey, Internet. Sorry it’s been a while since I’ve written anything; I got laid off, and was unemployed, and went home to Ottawa for a week, where I had precious little web time, then started a new job back in Montreal. In spite of this I spent a lot of time thinking about a few things that’ll hopefully become articles in the near future.

I, and many others, hate the state of review scores. 1UP was probably the best because it was completely arbitrary and subjective, and it wore that on its sleeve. They write their gut reactions, which I really appreciate. It’s not about graphics and sound and gameplay as completely stupid separate categories coming into a terribly useless aggregate. Many other sites and publications have taken this sort of review to heart, but I still think there’s something to the idea of breaking down the score and building your ultimate reaction from the sum of its parts.

To do this, I’ve invented a crackpot four-point review rubric. I can’t say I thought about it that much; actually, while on the brink of sleep it came to mind and I texted the idea to my friend Angus and promptly fell asleep. And forgot about it. I may have already been unconscious. Hey, don’t let that discount the idea though: at least one person thinks the lucid space between regular consciousness and batshit insanity is where the best ideas come from. I just use sleep because LSD is kinda illegal. I’ve given these four categories adorable disorder-based names that poke fun at things gamers are accused of having. Feel free to change them to less potentially offensive names if you’re interested.

THE SYSTEM

ADD x/5

The ADD measure is indicative of how immediately engaging the game is at all (or at least many) times. There are a lot of games I can think of that I simply didn’t like as much as others due to this. A great example would be Fable II; there were far too many times where I found myself bored just because it would take so long for something interesting to happen. What counts as interesting can vary, as can what takes too long; getting from point a to point b might take twice as long in one game, but if the journey is intriguing enough, it doesn’t matter. Now, don’t get me wrong: a game can definitely have parts that are tedious and still get a five. The question is, how often is the tedium broken up? How much of the game’s time does it dominate? Is the tedium rewarding? When it comes to Fable II, the answers to these questions were simply unsatisfactory.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, I’ll use a game like N+ to illustrate my point. You go into your Xbox 360’s Game Library. You select N+. Once the game goes through its two (very quick, as these things go) company logo interstitials. A bad-ass BZHOOOOO sound happens and the menu drops in. You pick the menu, you pick a level, and you’re in the middle of the action. It takes less time to get into the action than it takes most disc titles to spin up. The difficulty ranges from enjoyably casual-yet-challenging to downright diabolical, but it stays fun as hell.

OCD x/5

If you are poring over GameFAQs looking for more information you already have the ability to beat, you’re probably playing a game with a 5/5 OCD score. This is a meter of a game’s technical immersion. Droves of games come to mind as high scorers: Street Fighter II and III, Super Mario Kart games, Final Fantasy Tactics, Tetris, earlier Armored Core games… I could go on. The ability to get lost in the intricacies of a game’s play and the urge to do so mean an easy high score, but it doesn’t need to be complex– sometimes it just simply has to be incredibly satisfying. There are certainly amazing games out there that wouldn’t score well in this respect; for example, while playing Ico, I found it technically somewhat tedious and unfulfilling but I continued because I liked everything else so much. But, as such, I could hardly call it a “perfect” game, and it’d be punished in this category.

Escapism x/5

If OCD relays the game’s technical immersion, escapism relays its emotional immersion. How much are you affected by the story, the characters, the world? If it’s something you want to get lost in, and every time you play you forget about your bills and your shitty job and you just want to marry the main squeeze and you wonder what happens in the world once the game ends, it’s a high scorer. Final Fantasy Tactics somehow achieved this. For me, Vice City did not achieve this at all; once I was done playing it, I didn’t think about it again– let alone feel any urge to visit it again. If it made you cry, it’s probably a 5/5. If you tried to skip as many cutscenes as were possible, it was probably closer to a one. There’s not much more to say about this.

Histrionics x/5

This is almost certainly the most controversial of the four categories, but I’ll try to justify it.  Basically, this is a marker of how relevant the game is or should be. Many games will get 5/5 before I even play them: Grand Theft Auto 4 and Braid would start with a minimum of five in this category simply because they’re something anyone who talks about games needs to play. They could have both been humongous pieces of garbage (which, thankfully, they weren’t), but they deserve to be played and talked about due to that hype. However, this is also a category where games that deserve that kind of conversation are highly rated; the “overlooked” gems like Team Ico’s releases that innovate and create fantastic new worlds are pretty important in their own way. Games that are far from perfect but invent a new mechanic that future games will exploit to become amazing are also high scorers in this category. I’m looking at you, Assassin’s Creed.

Some people would argue that a game’s hype should have no bearing on its score (and I don’t mean to sound like I care about material things, LIKE MY SOCIAL STATSSSSS), but here are three reasons I believe this is a valid category:

1. It means that you can easily justify not attaching it to the other categories, and get a more pure review score.
2. It’s honest. I mean, if GTA4 has an all-time Metacritic rating of 98, how can you say that it doesn’t factor into the score already? It’s not like it’s the best game of the decade like that MC rating would imply.
3. If you disagree with the hype, you can easily change this score in your head to something else and get what you consider a more “realistic” review score.

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Each is marked on a scale of one to five. One is deplorable, three is honorable, and five is spectacular. The final percentile score is (a-1) * 6.25+ (b-1) * 6.25+ (c-1) * 6.25 + (d-1) * 6.25. Or, more simply, each score adds either 0%, 6.25%, 12.50%, 18.75% or 25% to the final score. The worst score is 0%, the best is 100%, and the exact middle is 50%. However, I would very occasionally consider giving a game a rating higher than 5/5 in a category; if it sets an utterly mind-blowing new standard in any of these departments (at least, for me), I’d give it a six. I would’ve given Football Manager 2008 an OCD 6/5, for example, because it dominated my life for months last year with its intricacies. I’d also give World of Warcraft a 6/5 in histrionics or escapism, because it was such an utterly new experience for me: for a year, I had dozens of best friends all over the US and Canada. Needless to say, a 6/5 would be incredibly rare. Like, possibly less-than-once-a-year rare.

However, on top of all of this, I’d still give a game an entirely separate score: it’s a three-point scale. One is “don’t bother,” two is “play it if you have the time and the money to do so and nothing better is available,” and three is “make this a priority.” A scale like that is just as important, if you ask me. Even if Ico scored low in one category and not perfect in others, it’s still a solid 3 in this entirely other system. You just need to give it a spin.

Anyway, that’s the system. I’m toying with the idea of using this rubric for all future reviews of games I write. What do you think?