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So I got and XBOX. Now what?

Yup. I think their 10 is starting to be less meaningful nowadays... unless games have suddenly just gotten that good.
 
Edge went crazy with the 10s last year. I think it was Halo 3, Super Mario Galaxy and Orange Box.

Yes, one a month for three months. They've since give GTAIV a 10 too.
Honestly, out of all those games, I don't think any deserve a 10/10... Orange Box was great, but it wasn't perfect, GTA IV definitely has it's problems. Halo 3 isn't even worthy of a 9, in my opinion. Super Mario Galaxy, while an improvement over Sunshine, isn't a fantastic game, it's very repetitive, and besides the fact it plays with gravity, it's the same old game play.
 
^I'm not disputing that it's subjective, all reviews are. It did surprise me that they dished out three in as many months.

The games they've given them to are:

Super Mario 64 (Nintendo 64)
Gran Turismo (Playstation)
The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time (Nintendo 64)
Halo: Combat Evolved (Xbox)
Half-Life 2 (Windows PC)
Halo 3 (Xbox 360)
The Orange Box (Windows PC, Xbox 360, Playstation 3)
Super Mario Galaxy (Wii)
Grand Theft Auto IV (Playstation 3, Xbox 360)

They also said that the following would get 10's if they had been around:

Super Mario Bros. (NES)
Elite (Erm, everything!)
Exile (Acorn Electron)

As I said, I can only object to Halo and Halo 3 being on that list. Half-Life 2 is the best game I've ever played. I personally would have put Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (Playstation 2) and Sensible World of Soccer (Amiga) on the list. I am also of the opinion that if the series hadn't been so diluted by different versions where one character's fireball is a different colour, one version or another of Street Fighter II should be on there.
 
10/10 should be reserved for a once in a console generation game that revolutionizes a genre. While any artistic effort has some flows, a 10/10 game should do nothing poorly and complaints should be limited to minor details and individual preferences that don't impact game play. Hardware limitations should be taken into account of course, but then again a great designer works around those limitations, not against them. Anything less than all that deserves a 9.x at best, IMO.

The controls of MGS4 alone should limit that game from getting anything higher than a 9.5-9.9. Japanese designers just don't seem to "get" the 1st/3rd person shooter. And GTA4 was great, but it was basically GT3 with prettier graphics and a totally overrated story. Evolution, not revolution and in my book that means a 9.9.

Seriously, the people who rave about how "fucking awesome and Oscar worthy and Godfather-like" GTA4's story was need to actually WATCH the Godfather again, and maybe read a fucking book. It's good for a video game, but that's not saying much.

I like HL2 and the sequels, and they're very well made, but I wish they were a bit harder and I wish the enemy AI was a bit better. Even on the hardest difficulty it's usually pretty easy to sit back and let the enemies come to you and make stupid mistakes. Headshot-headshot-headshot. And there are so many tight corridors and so many enemies that seem to come from one place that it's easy to just line them up and mow them down without having to deal with many at a time. A single exploding barrel fired from the gravity gun often takes out 4-5 enemies, the only 4-5 enemies you'll have to face for the next three minutes. They may very well have one of the best stories and some of the best, least-grating dialogue and voice acting as well, but the action sometimes leaves a bit to be desired. More open environments and more viscious enemies would be a welcome addition to HL2:3.

That said I bought the Orange Box and HL2:ep3 is definitely on my "to buy" list, I do consider it one of the finest FPSs out there.

I would have paid $30 just to have Portal, that game is the shit. It's only fault is that it's too short, but for what it is, it's close to a perfect game. A 9.9 or maybe even a 10/10 is honestly deserved in that case. I'm not sure the Orange Box would deserve a 10/10 if it wasn't for that game, unless one is talking about value/$$$.
 
Maximum score should mean perfect thats why it called a fucking maximum score. No game is ever perfect nor it it be cause something can always be better, that the whole point...
 
Maximum score should mean perfect thats why it called a fucking maximum score. No game is ever perfect nor it it be cause something can always be better, that the whole point...

I don't necessarily agree with that. A ten out of ten should be the maximum score any game of a genre has ever deserved, the new benchmark by which all future games should be measured. Perfect is a strong word and it should be used sparingly, and I think that, for the most part, it has over the years. That list above is very small compared to the thousands of games that have been released in the past 15 years. I don't agree with all of their choices but I don't think they're "abusing" it just yet.

Otherwise, no game would ever received a ten out of ten, and the entire scale would be broken. Might as well make it a scale out of nine.

To be honest, the "5/10 is the worst game I've ever played and an 8/10 is average" issue is a much bigger problem for me, to the point where game scores no longer have much meaning. It's not a grade in high school where a 60% is an F, a critic's rating scale should be 1-10 or 1-5 stars, not 5-10 or 3-5 stars.
 
Otherwise, no game would ever received a ten out of ten

Nothing bad about that because it at leasts stop the fanboy reviews, I mean these are real companies who get paid to do reviews so they should be more mature than to give a over the excited fanboy review.
 
That's the reason 1up went to letter grades, because they treated 5 as average when most people used 7 as average.

I'm not sure how I stand on the whole thing. PC Gamer US doesn't, and well never, give out a 100%. I think the closest they've been is 98... whatever 98 might mean.
OXM, however, gives a 10 very often, and justify it by saying that the max score they give is 11, which no game will ever, ever receive.

Still, the scores don't necessarily justify the rhetoric used by these reviewers anyway. Every game that comes along seems to be the greatest thing ever. I'm sure Gears 2 will be the next game to receive that kind of hyperbolic "greatest game" ever stuff in the reviews.
 
I'm 99% sure that SDF is just a joke blog. Basically, every 360 exclusive gets 0 and every PS3 exclusive gets a 10... it's good for a laugh.

It should be amusing to see how they spin Bioshock PS3. A revised grade of 10 for fully utilizing the powers of the cell processor.
 
Super Mario 64 (Nintendo 64)
Gran Turismo (Playstation)
The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time (Nintendo 64)
Half-Life 2 (Windows PC)


Those the only ones i can say without a doubt deserve that 10 rating. KOTOR is a 10 for me too, but I'm biased now for loving it for so long.

Other games that would be close for me are

Devil May Cry (original)
Final Fantasy 7

And while not 10s, I'd say 9.9s

Max Payne
Viewtiful Joe
Metroid Prime

But those three are really my opinion at this point since I've been playing them for so long.
 
Personally I don't think there's such a thing as a perfect game, possibly a perfect experience, but that's different. It's why scoring games is subjective and there's no mathematical formula for coming up with a score.
 
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