Before I get started, I want this to be clear – I am not “calling out” anyone here. Other reviewers who opt to do things differently than me have every right to do so. Why shouldn’t they run things the way they prefer to, the way they feel comfortable and happy with? I ain’t tellin’ anyone else how to run their website, YouTube channel, or publication, nor criticizing them for how they choose to do so. If you’re a reviewer who completely disagrees with me on all points, my message to you is this: You do you, and keep doing the good work you do, however you choose to do it.

Okay, now that that bit is over, I’m writing this because a reviewer I respect and enjoy watching, YouTuber Arlo, has announced that he will stop putting review scores in games. This is not the first reviewer to do so, and in fact in Arlo’s video on the topic he even mentions another critic I like, Jim Sterling, who long ago opted to do the same.

Arlo’s reasons for doing so are multiple, and for the most part I think those reasons are all valid. He says that often reviews are based on purely subjective opinions, and others aren’t wrong to criticize low opinions of a game when they don’t share those subjective views. He says that people see it not as a commentary on the game, but as an award that a game “deserves” or not based on their own personal feelings about that game. He says that the review score is often something he’s had to agonize over, when the text of the review itself is far more detailed and explains his feelings on the game far better than a number can. He says that review outlets who use a ten-scale feel pressure to only use a small potion of that scale because of how the ten-scale is perceived. He said that viewers who cared primarily about the review score were more likely to skip the rest of the review and only look at the score, which for a YouTuber really messes with their algorithm (I’m not a YouTuber, but I can absolutely sympathize with the frustration of providing your viewers with something that takes time and effort but may very well be taking dollars out of your income). He says that he felt that the review score didn’t seem to add anything of value to the review. And perhaps most importantly, he said that he simply didn’t want to do them anymore, and really, as far as the “why” argument goes, this is by far the best reason not to do something – as I said before, it’s his channel, and he should be able to run it the way he wants to.

I do use a grading system, and while I completely sympathize with many of these points (and feel in pretty strong agreement to many of them), I have no intention to change this, and I felt like I may as well take this as an opportunity to say why.

Firstly, let me address the ten-scale, which I do not use. Like Arlo says, it’s a dumb system because the way it’s perceived by readers/viewers means that anything 6 or under (sometimes 7 or under) gets viewed by people as akin to “trash” or “not worth it”, and if your system does that, what’s even the point of having a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and a 6? I mean, when the average reader sees all of those numbers as meaning the exact same thing as far as they’re concerned, making that distinction seems pretty pointless. Likewise, adding decimals seems equally pointless. What’s the difference between an 8.3 and an 8.4?

Why do people look at scores this way, anyway, even when the reviewer repeats over and over and over “Five is average! Five doesn’t mean it’s bad”? Well, because for most people, their strongest connection to grading is the grades they received in school, and in school, if you got a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 out of 10, all of those were failing grades. And it doesn’t matter if you fail a little or fail hard, a fail is a fail when you’re in school, at least as far as perception is concerned.

For this reason, I cut out the middleman and just use a letter grade system. If a game gets a failing grade from me, it gets an F. If it’s about average, it gets a C. Pretty straightforward, I think. Yes, I know, in some other, non-American territories, they use different grading systems, but I don’t think any solution is going to be perfect, and since I’m American and review mostly American releases, this is what I’m going with.

However, even then, I don’t quite follow the same pattern as others. Because of course, in addition to the letter grade, I also use a plus and minus, and for the very best, tippy-top games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, I give that game an A++.

Why do I do this? Well, a few reasons. Firstly, I don’t like the idea of people trying to translate my grades back into a number, where it can be compared against those number scores that see 5 as “average”, resulting in an “apples and oranges” comparison. But also, I do feel that a select few games really do transcend above the rest to become both genre- and generation-defining, and truly deserve that extra little bit of recognition.

For those who want a breakdown of what each of the grades means in actual terms, I have broken it down in the eShopperReviews FAQs Page:

These are rough, and with each game it depends on the situation, but here’s a general idea:

A++ – This is a must-have game on the Switch. It’s a game that is either definitively the best game of its kind, or it pushes videogames into new territory. It’s fairly accessible, has a good amount of variety, and is consistently enjoyable throughout the game. That’s not to say it’s perfect (because there’s nothing that can’t be improved), but it’s still one of the best games ever made for any platform, ever.

A+ – This is a must-have game on the Switch. It’s a shining example of what this sort of game can and should be, is fairly accessible, has a good amount of variety, and is consistently enjoyable throughout the game.

A – This is a fantastic game, one of the best on the Switch. It may have one or two issues keeping it from being truly spectacular, but it’s still tons of fun to play, and has a good amount of variety.

A- – This is a fantastic game, one of the best on the Switch, although it does have one or two issues that are frustrating and make it less enjoyable than it could be. Still, it’s tons of fun to play and has a good amount of variety.

B+ – This is a solid game with a lot of good stuff going for it. While it may not shine as a truly exceptional game, it’s overall pretty good, and even does a few things above and beyond that set it apart.

B – This is a solid game with a lot of good stuff going for it. While it may not shine as a truly exceptional game, it’s overall pretty good.

B- – This is a solid game with a lot of good stuff going for it. While it may not shine as a truly exceptional game, it’s overall pretty good, although it does have some bothersome flaws.

C+ – This is an average game. It’s not bad, it’s not great, it’s just okay. However, it does at least do some stuff that’s interesting and may make it worth a look.

C – This is an average game. It’s not bad, it’s not great, it’s just okay.

C- – This is an average game. It’s not bad, it’s not great, it’s just okay, although some issues with the game drag it down a bit.

D+ – This is a bad game. To its credit, it does a few things that had potential or make it a bit interesting, but that doesn’t stop it from being a bad game.

D – This is a bad game.

D- – This is a terrible game, extremely flawed and highly unenjoyable.

F – This game is broken in some way that makes it unplayable. It doesn’t work right, or it causes problems that go beyond being simply bad, but arguably unfinished upon release or ill-conceived from the very start. You should absolutely not get this game.

Okay, so that maybe explains why I use the grading system I do, but why use a grading system at all?

Well, it has to do with why I first started writing these reviews to begin with. I look at the eShop and I see an absolutely massive number of games, and I know that a lot of people have difficulty separating the wheat from the chaff, the signal from the noise, the cream from the crop, the… you get the idea. There are so very many games to choose from, and many of them simply don’t have reviews at all, or not many, and for some even when they do have reviews you have to pull them from numerous sources that may all have wildly differing opinions. Heck, even within the same site, you may have writers with wildly differing opinions.

Looking at this situation, I wanted there to be a place I could go to just hear in one clear voice “this game is worth trying”, “that game needs a bit of work”, “this is one of the best games I’ve ever played” and “this game is terrible, don’t bother with it”, and not finding what I wanted, I decided I would try to make that happen myself.

Granted, I don’t think anyone could do this for the entire game library of even one console, and the Nintendo Switch currently has about 5100 games… but it would be nice to see even a sizable fraction of these games get even the briefest of reviews from the same reviewer with consistent opinions. And so far, I’ve made some good progress. Just earlier this week I wrote my 1000th Nintendo Switch game review, and while I make it no secret that I do not play games to completion before reviewing them, I do feel that I am putting out something that others may value, something that, were I a reader looking at this subreddit, that I would value.

But 1000 reviews is a lot to parse through. Imagine being on a website with 1000 reviews and being told, “no, I don’t feel like giving you an actual review score, you should read the full text of each and every review to get the full opinion of what I have to say about these games”. I mean, who the heck has time for that? Maybe I’m full of myself and like to read my own writing, but I’m sure that for many, the question of which game to get isn’t the sort of thing that you want to read a library of words to figure out.

I know many reviewers feel insulted that people gloss over their reviews just to look at the score. They worked hard and spent time on that review, that review has so much more nuance and depth than a simple score, and these Philistines just want it boiled down to a simple number? The nerve!

But for me… I know that sometimes people just want to cut through all of the yakkety yak and get down to brass tacks. Your time is important, and I kinda’ feel like I would be insulting you if I told you that you had to read every word I wrote to know what I think of a game when I could just… you know, simply tell you in as few words as I can.

So… that’s what I do. I give you a grade so you can easily see what I think of a game without having to parse it through my paragraphs. If you want to see a very brief breakdown of what a game is about and what its strengths and weaknesses are, you can look at the “tl;dr” I include. And if you want to see a more full rundown of all of the points regarding a game, you can look at the full review. But I entrust you, the reader, to make that choice for yourselves, I am not going to do it for you and demand that you give up your time to read my reviews the way I want you to read them.

Is this going to cause some occasional problems? Heck yeah it is!

Firstly, my opinion changes over time. Sometimes, it changes so much that I feel the need to re-review a game. Heck, sometimes through patches or add-on content the game itself changes, thus necessitating a new review. Often in these cases, I’ll simply do that – re-review the game.

When I wrote out my Top 100 List for the 1000th Review Celebration, I had a bit of a problem. Slay the Spire. Looking back at my review of the game, I didn’t see anything in that review where my opinion had changed, and I felt that my review score of A- still felt about right – it’s a truly great game, but the random Roguelike elements do make for wasted runs that can be frustrating. So, thus, A-. Fine, right. Except even though I agreed with this, I couldn’t shake that I still strongly felt that this game placed higher in my list than many games I had given an A grade to. I absolutely love Slay the Spire, and while I definitely feel that it is a flawed game, a large part of me just doesn’t care about those flaws, because the good stuff in that game is just so damn good.

So what do I do? Re-review the game to say exactly the same thing but raise the letter grade a notch? Force the game down the list to be in line with all of the other games I gave an A-? In the end, I simply outlined the Top 100 list by saying that my review score wasn’t what determined the place in the list, and trusted readers to understand that these review scores aren’t written in stone.

Oh, that’s another thing – I can’t tell you the number of times a review score wavered on the edge between a B+ and an A-, an A- or an A, even a C- or a D+. What’s the difference between a really great game with major flaws, or a pretty good game with some really great stuff in it? Sometimes not very much. Perhaps in these cases the old decimal system might’ve made some sense, but I feel like it’s better to bite the bullet, pick one or the other, and move on.

And much as Arlo struggled with the review for The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, I also felt like the review for Super Mario 3D All-Stars would ultimately have to be subjective. As I noted in the review, how the heck do you review a game that contains within it three games, one of which is one of the greatest games of all time, one that’s one of the most important games of all time (but that has aged poorly), and one that’s somewhere between the two… but all are in a collection that’s bare-bones, overpriced, and given a highly consumer-unfriendly release? In the end, I simply gave my reasoning for giving the game the grade I did (A-) and trusted readers to understand that while they may judge the collection by a different criteria than I did, there’s no way I can review a game the same way every single individual might.

And that leads to another thing – personal bias. I have an opinion, you have an opinion, everyone has an opinion. My opinion is no more or less valid than yours, save for perhaps that I may have more experience than you and as such have a greater frame of reference (though for some, even this won’t be true, I’m sure), and that I may perhaps be better able to articulate this opinion (though again, this may not be true for everyone). In the end, this is all just one person’s thoughts on all of these games, for whatever that’s worth. Some will undoubtedly see what I have to say and decide not to value my thoughts too highly – I know at least a few have decided my opinions are worthless because I gave this game or that game a lower grade than they thought it deserved.

And you know… that’s valid. If my views don’t align with yours, why should you care what I have to say? If you see my C- grade for Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate or my C+ grade for Dark Souls Remastered and those are your favorite Nintendo Switch games and you love them way more than The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, why the heck would you value anything else I have to say? In that case, I absolutely encourage you to keep searching for a reviewer whose opinion more closely aligns with yours. Or perhaps consider the possibility that there are occasionally going to be some games where our views simply won’t align. However, in any case, you definitely shouldn’t consider my word the final say on a game’s quality, no one should.

And to be clear, I’m under no delusions of grandeur here. As of this writing, this subreddit has under 4,000 subscribers, while Arlo’s YouTube channel has over 536,000. I’m not comparing myself to him to say I’m better than him, as good as him, or even anything like him. I mean, I’m not a puppet, for one thing, so there’s that. But also I’m sure my audience is not only smaller, but different too. Arlo isn’t reviewing games like Sky Racket and Debtor, and as of this writing I haven’t yet reviewed games like The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening or Pokemon Sword and Shield. And while the biggest and most popular games tend to be some of the most-upvoted reviews on this subreddit, my highest-upvoted article by far is still my Elemental Knights R Review, so I don’t think I’m wrong in saying that at least a decent portion of my audience is looking to learn about the quality of some of those lesser-known games.

So as I continue onward, I’m just gonna’ keep doing what I’ve been doing, continue reviewing both big and small games, and continue giving letter grades as I feel they are appropriate. Even if this is an imperfect system, it’s one that I feel falls in line with my reasons for doing this in the first place, and just as Arlo and Jim Sterling don’t want to use review scores and perhaps feel that their audience is done a disservice by their use, I do want to use them and feel that my audience is better-served by their continued use.

Oh, also, for those of you who stuck around for all this self-aggrandized ranting, I give you an A++. Yes, I know that’s a thing Arlo did too, but I’d like to think I can recognize a good idea when I see it. 😉

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