A framework for reviewing games

March 13, 2024

I started writing a review of Helldivers 2, then later came back and started over after some patches, then realized I was struggling to organize my thoughts. I determined that going completely free-form might seem natural but was unlikely to give me the best results, being new to this craft. I determined that I’d need some sort of system for rating/classifying games.

However, I despise 10-point rating systems, especially when they’re actually 20- or 100-point systems in disguise (eg. giving a 7.2/10 is identical to 72/100). They are almost always extremely arbitrary, and even if they aren’t, it’s extremely difficult to take anything useful away from them as a prospective player. Ultimately the decision a player will make is essentially binary: to buy or not to buy. In this way I think Steam’s yes/no rating system is pretty good, but I think it’s not the most useful way for me to express my thoughts as an individual. (For reference, I “do not recommend” Helldivers 2 on Steam even though I enjoy it very much; it has too many flaws at too many levels for me to recommend it in good faith).

How I will rate games

My grading rubric for games is the follow numerical system for several categories:

Aesthetics

• 0: This is an ugly game, doing only enough to get the job done.
• 1: The music and visuals are fine, but the style is uninspired - or, there’s style but the overall package is bland.
• 2: This game may have highly unique style or some exceptional pieces of art.
• 3: There are truly memorable high points across multiple forms of visual and auditory aesthetics.

Technical

• 0: This game is a mess and it’s frustrating.
• 1: There are noticeable bugs (including poor optimization), but they won’t cause me to drop the game.
• 2: This is a really clean game; bugs are rare and can be handled with ease.
• 3: Somehow this game is flawless and well optimized.

(Bonus: -1 point for bad DRM or requiring an additional launcher)

Gameplay

• 0: The gameplay is not very engaging at all.
• 1: Gameplay is fun, but might not have staying power
• 2: This game is really fun to play; I can easily get lost in a flow state.
• 3: This feels good. Playing feels as natural as breathing (or moreso during allergy season).

Design

• 0: Core mechanics are poorly thought out and/or baffling choices make the game unenjoyable
• 1: This game may have a solid core design with some very frustrating choices, or it’s too narrowly focused
• 2: There are highly innovative mechanics, or many mechanics are beautifully integrated; there’s a lot to do.
• 3: This game can likely be considered a watershed moment in gaming.

Progression

• 0: There’s no meaningful sense of growth in this game.
• 1: Progression is acknowledged as a mechanic, but most choices are bad or pointless.
• 2: This game encourages player growth through important choices and/or powerful tools.
• 3: I’m still learning new techniques after hundreds of hours.

Creativity

• 0: This game offers vanishingly few if any outlets for creative expression.
• 1: There are some fun customization or other options, but they’re side features.
• 2: Good customization or art creation tools are first-class in this game.
• 3: This program is arguably more artistic software than a game.

The maximum score is therefore 18, but I don’t expect that game does or ever can exist. If I take a moment to imagine what it might look like… it would probably be Spore. I mean, not the actual game, but what it dreamt of being. What was promised to young Curvise.

Examples

Without writing full reviews (those will come soon!), here are scores for a few games I’ve played heavily:

Deep Rock Galactic

Aesthetics: 2. DRG has great music, The graphics are nothing special but the visual style is charming.

Technical: 2. My friend group has run into a handful of issues with crashes and data loss, but they’ve been recoverable and the game is otherwise smooth as butter.

Gameplay: 3. I’ve literally had numerous dreams of web-slinging through murky caverns with my friends.

Design: 1. Unfortunately, while it’s got an extremely solid core gameplay loop, this game is hobbled by poor design choices seemingly made for simplicity which inhibit skilled, emergent gameplay.

Progression: 2. Weapon overclocks can add a lot, but unlocking them is artificially slow/frustrating.

Creativity: 2. Not only character customization, but terrain modification tools can feel highly creative inside missions!

Total: 12/18. This might seem like a bad score at first blush, but remember I’m not a commercial review outlet beholden to the norms of game reviews. The total number, in my opinion, is not actually very important! There are aspects of this game I absolutely love, and there’s nothing about it so bad I can’t stand playing it.

Bloodborne

Aesthetics: 3. Amazing sound design, visual style, graphics, and music.

Technical: 2. I don’t think I’ve ever run into a noticeable bug in this game, and the performance is solid except in rare cases. But it plays at 30fps.

Gameplay: 3. In my opinion this game has some of the best-feeling combat of any game in its genre, up there with Sekiro. The controller feels like part of my body when I’m in a tense fight.

Design: 3. What can I say? The interconnected world is brilliant, the weapons are super creative, the way the haunted world unfolds throughout the game is legendary. Furthermore, almost every single aspect of the game mechanics feels tightly coiled within its lore.

Progression: 3. Even if you only play through the game a single time, progression is pretty well handled, but there are definitely some big missed opportunities with Caryll runes, and some of the coolest weapons come late in the game. But I would never recommend somebody only play Bloodborne once. It is the only game I’ve ever gotten 100% achievements on.

Creativity: 1. I actually struggled with this because the fashion is excellent, but it’s fairly limited compared to Dark Souls games and Elden Ring. In addition, there’s nothing outside of character creation and fashion to customize.

Total: 15/18. That sounds right to me! Although it’s one of my favorite games ever, Bloodborne is not perfect. We should not expect a game to ever be perfect. Yes, I think I’m actually quite happy with this rating system.

Skyrim

Aesthetics: 2. Skyrim was actually a nice improvement over Oblivion in a number of ways visually. The style of everything felt a lot more polished and less generic, the landscapes were lovingly crafted, and the actual graphics were great for their time. The music hits the right notes for a TES game but doesn’t have the same punch as Morrowind did, in my opinion. This would get a 3, but the full voice acting and the bland UI were significant enough missteps that I can’t justify that.

Technical: 2. I did have to give this some thought, because Bethesda is notorious for their buggy games, but Skyrim performed really well and I don’t remember there being any game-breaking bugs. As is typical of Bethesda games, many of the bugs also just appeared downright goofy and were fun.

Gameplay: 1. If I have readers, hopefully they’re the sort who already agree with me on this. Skyrim was a really bad RPG (and I will die on this hill if I have to). There was basically no role-playing to be had or meaningful decisions to make. The combat was floaty and boring. It was just not particularly fun to play except that there was so much cool stuff to explore.

Design: 1. Quest design was rough, built entirely around hand-holding the player with their compass, map, and glowing trail telling them exactly where to go. The quests themselves were mostly not very interesting either. Character choices and combat options were lackluster, and non-combat skills were gimmicky.

Progression: 1. This is an easy one for me, as I’ve talked and written about how bad character progression is in Skyrim extensively. It does exist, yes, but it’s super linear and doesn’t force or in some cases even allow the player to make any difficult (= rewarding) choices. There’s a reason the stealth archer meme came out of this game.

Creativity: 1. This might be controversial among Skyrim fans, but I don’t feel there’s particularly much to customize after character creation, and even that feature isn’t exactly world-class.

Total: 8/18. I think that’s fair! I’ll never stop being annoyed that Skyrim scored 100/100 at multiple sites and was literally called “the best RPG of all time,” but it wasn’t terrible. Considering how my favorite games scored, I think this accurately reflects my feelings on Skyrim. This shouldn’t be seen as a “failing grade” or “worse than a 5/10” because my scoring system isn’t meant to be comparable to those other arbitrary systems at all. It’s a game that was intentionally dumbed down, poorly written, and centered around bad fights - but still beautiful and worth playing at the time.

Spore

Aesthetics: 1. Spore has a goofy, classic Maxis look without doing anything particularly innovative, and the UI was obtuse at times.

Technical: 0 - 1 = -1. At launch, Spore had game-breaking bugs that made it unplayable without reinstalling… and it also came with abominable DRM that limited the number of installs available per product key. Although there were fixes after the fact and it eventually ran pretty cleanly, I’m rating this based on the game I bought, not what I can install today.

Gameplay: 1. I’m actually on the fence with this, because in some stages it’s more of a 0, but Creature Stage and Space Stage did have some entertainment value - it just didn’t have staying power. However, most of the enjoyability is derived from creative aspects.

Design: 0. Stitching together 5 different gameplay loops without making any of them good is… a choice. Spore is one of the games of all time, for sure.

Progression: 1. Sadly, the whole idea of Spore is progression, and it’s just lacking. I mean, yes, you keep getting new tools, but you can’t really do anything very interesting with any of them. The most engaging part of progression is unlocking new creature/vehicle/building creators.

Creativity: 2. Gosh, there was just so much you could make in this game. I think I loved the building creator the most, actually. But the creature creator fell flat by failing to imitate anything close to actual animal life as we know it.

Total: 4/18. I almost forgot to even review Spore. This feels like a very harsh score, but, honestly, I think it’s appropriate. Spore is known as one of the biggest disappointments in gaming in my generation, even though it was sort-of revolutionary and it had fun creation engines. Without even factoring in the dissonnance of expectation vs reality, this score reflects that Spore was… not a very good game! Yet if you’re really looking for something that lets you go pretty wild with custom creatures, vehicles, and buildings (even if you can’t do much with them), you can find that here.

Conclusion

I’m fairly happy with this system which I think rates the actual qualities of a game. I don’t expect to give out many 0s since I don’t play every game I come across and can be picky. I may find it’s not actually setting apart my favorites enough but I think it will work if I’m careful not to overindulge in 3s.

I’ll be using this system to review Helldivers 2 in my next post and see how it holds up in a more thorough format.

Finally, I’m aware that other review sites might already use systems like this without me knowing. I gave up on paying attention to professional game review scores long ago, except in the aggregate. I know many good reviewers will call out specific aspects that are good or bad in their actual text, but I wanted a way to also categorize games by their qualities, so I undertook this exercise in creation.

tags: game-review system-design