THE 8/10 Video Game Review of All Time
No real games were reviewed in the making of this… review.
Reviews – and more specifically, review scores – are often a hot button issue in the gaming community. And this week, I was inspired by a great article from Westen aka @BigNerdGaming to do a bit of a thought experiment on the subject.
If you haven’t already, you should check out what he had to say, but the overarching point is that despite some vocal criticism from gamers online, aggregator sites like Metacritic or OpenCritic show that official reviews and general user scores tend to align more often than not.
So then, the question becomes: if the scores from official outlets tend to reflect the popular reception too, why do we run into so many issues and toxic review discussions online? (And just a general “everything is toxic online” isn’t specific enough to satisfy me as an answer – there’s more to it than that.)
If you’ve ever read any of our reviews here at DearGamers, you’ll know that we don’t personally use a scoring system. That’s our choice and we do our best to provide a clear snapshot of the pros, cons, and our personal opinions without also assigning a number to our reviews.
But that doesn’t mean I think review scores are bad or that they don’t offer any value. Quite the opposite in fact. I think they are an incredibly useful tool for snapshotting and sharing information quickly to wide audiences, and I myself will look at them when I’m researching some of my own gaming purchases.
However, just like any tool, their efficacy is determined by the hand that wields them. A hammer wielded by a master craftsman is very different than a hammer wielded by a barbarian or a berserker.
So, given my recent fascination with the topic of review scores, I wanted to challenge myself to dig deeper and examine why I think the way I do about them – especially when it comes to what’s considered a “good enough” score nowadays.
In particular, I’ve noticed that what was once an issue with too many generic “7/10” games has increasingly become an issue with “8/10” games (and I’ll touch more on the dynamics driving that later). Point being, what’s wound up happening is that I started having a lot of fun thinking about all the different ways I could write an 8/10 review.
So, without further ado, let the experiment begin:
Clear the Fog of Warfare III – 8/10
This game has some really high highs, but also some notable lows. At its best, it’s an absolute blast to take out enemies and get lost in the main character’s quest to take back their homeland. What lets it down at times are some repetitive open world activities that offer necessary XP to progress but aren’t particularly innovative or fun objectives to complete. At the high end, some moments are damn near a 10 – but on the low end, it dips down to a 6 so between the peaks and the valleys, I’m giving it an 8.
Warrior Ninja Returns: Kick the Bad Guy’s Ass (Again) – 8/10
When you fire up a Warrior Ninjas game, what you expect is nonstop action and satisfying gore from the opening cut scene to the final showdown and that is exactly what this game delivers. It’s everything you love from this series with a fresh coat of paint and some cool additions to the combat. It is a consistently good ride the whole way through, even if it doesn’t do anything totally revolutionary for the series. A solid 8/10 for fans and newcomers alike.
Wilderness Calls over the Horizon – 8/10
There are a ton of massive AAA games with blockbuster set-piece moments, high fidelity graphics, and gameplay loops for days that you could sink dozens and dozens of hours into. And while this game does everything pretty well, there are plenty of others that do the same, so whether this one is worth the day one purchase is totally up to you and your tastes. While it ultimately may not do enough to distinguish itself fully from what’s already on offer elsewhere, we had a blast during our time with it so it’s getting an 8/10 from us.
Avarice – 8/10
This game is completely content-rich and the story is really compelling, especially with the excellent performance on display by the main villain. What’s more, the RPG systems are really fun to engage with and make the playthrough feel truly “yours.” BUT there are enough technical hiccups and glitches – at least at launch – that I have to make a point of mentioning them. I’m hoping they’ll get patched out after launch, but for now at least it’s going to bring the rating down a bit so I’m gonna be giving this one an 8/10.
Saber of the Heavens: Cataclysm Collapse – 8/10
One look, and you know this game will be remembered as one of the first of the generation to push the hardware to its limits. The visuals are really something to marvel at, from the mo-cap and character animations to the densely detailed environments that surpass photo-realism and almost land in the super-real. But the story never managed to make us care and I just didn’t find the gameplay compelling. So while it sets a new graphical bar, I can’t say it was necessarily the most fun experience. At best, I can give it an 8 out of 10.
103 Mercies Monogatari: The Legend of the Cleric King – 8/10
This hidden AA gem came out of nowhere and smacked us in the face with its beautiful pixel art and banging soundtrack. Apparently a reboot of a series that was never localized outside of Japan, we had no prior knowledge of this world or its story, but it immediately drew us in with its diverse cast and snappy ATB combat that really lets you feel like a strategic genius. Don’t let this one get buried in the busy release season, it’s one of the best surprises of the year – earning a high 8/10 from us!
The Penultimate of You Part II HD (Director’s Cut Edition) – 8/10
This is still very much the game that you know and love, but they’ve touched up the fidelity of the graphics and implemented some nice quality of life changes. At the end of the day, there isn’t really any new content here minus some bonus challenge levels. That said, the core gameplay experience is still as good as you remember it – but if you already bought it 4 years ago on last gen consoles, it’s probably not worth the full $70 price tag. Overall, an 8/10 remaster.
SO:
Which of these 8/10 games are you buying?
My point with this experiment isn’t that review scores are wholly good or wholly bad. On the one hand, you can argue that having that 8/10 next to each of those blurbs helps you interpret the overall tone and sentiment that the reviewer is trying to get across, thereby helping you gauge the weight of what they were saying and how they said it.
But on the other, just the score alone – divorced from the context of the review – doesn’t come close to giving the whole picture, even if it can be a good measure of a game’s general quality or reception (especially when taken in aggregate and not just one or two in isolation).
And then there’s the issue of what does that “8/10” even mean – especially nowadays. As I alluded to before, we’ve already passed the point where big games getting a 7/10 is seen as a bad score. This is particularly true for full price AAA releases. But now I’d argue even an 8/10 is seen as a potential ding against a game’s quality – especially if it’s a “low” 8/10 (aka a Metacritic score of 81-82) vs. a “high” 8/10 (88-89).
Notable 2025 releases with Metacritic scores in the 80s (at the time of writing)
There are a ton of reasons driving this dynamic of an 8 not being good enough in the AAA space anymore – enough to warrant an entire dedicated article. But I’ll quickly list a few of the big ones:
Competition in the gaming market is higher than ever with the number of annual releases constantly going up and up and up, making it harder to stand out and secure buy-in from large portions of the audience
The bar for the level of quality that audiences expect (again, especially for those full-priced, AAA releases) has been set extremely high by the best of the best taking home GOTY awards each year
The democratization of video game development and publishing (via more accessible dev tools and online storefronts) has not only increased the number of games releasing (from ever growing numbers of indie and solo devs) but the variety of experiences for players to choose from too
The digital marketplace has made it both easier to buy games than ever but also potentially harder to discover them, with digital storefronts becoming increasingly crowded and noisy but not necessarily offering the best UX or algorithms for recommendations
“Black hole” games are more dominant than ever, seeing people play the same live service games year in and year out. These games receive consistent updates and new content, putting them in direct competition with new releases even years after their initial launch – but only if those updates are good and exciting enough to keep consuming your precious time
The rise of F2P models is getting stronger and stronger in some of the most pervasive genres – from multiplayer shooters to gatcha RPGs. What was once a “mobile game” business model has increasingly made the leap to consoles and PC, changing the perception of games’ value and now even raising whole new generations of gamers to expect free vs. paid models when it comes to how they consume media
The competition games face isn’t even just with other games in the space – new or old. It’s become increasingly clear that games have to compete not just for your dollar, but your time and attention – going head-to-head with content in all forms from TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube to Netflix and Hulu
So at the end of the day, while an 8/10 is categorically, by definition, an “above average” score – sitting in the realm of “very good” to “great” – it simply isn’t enough to guarantee success and the widespread sales many of these titles need to recoup let alone surpass their development costs.
This dynamic puts a highly pressurized lens on a game’s critical and popular reception alike, leading to some highly volatile conversations online about many of the biggest titles releasing. This insane pressure is only added to by the seemingly more vicious than ever “publish or perish” nature of the business, wherein if you don’t sell bigger than big, your entire studio could close down.
People will therefore often use review scores – for games they haven’t even played yet, especially when scores drop ahead of release day – as ammunition in charged online discussions.
They may be defending a platform or a developer that they’re loyal to or for their own confirmation bias. They may be misplacing their FOMO over not being able to buy and play all the latest games. They may be attacking a publishing label whose business practices or past titles they don’t like. They may even be lashing out to vent wholly unrelated feelings, using the latest rage bait to distract themselves from any number of political, socio-economic, or emotional things happening in their lives offline.
My point ultimately is this: review scores are a powerful tool. They can succinctly communicate key information in a way that is highly consumable and easy to share – something that can’t necessarily be said for unscored reviews, unless they use some other (albeit more nebulous) system analogous to scoring (ex: buy, wait for sale, or pass).
But if wielded ineffectively by reviewers or their audiences, these tools can be used to do harm too, especially when taken out of their original context.
My hope is that by writing this, I can impart at least one thing:
We all need to examine our approach to reviews. Whether as a reviewer or as an audience member, we all need to be thoughtful about how we write, share, and consume reviews and their scores. And I don’t just mean for today, but to always be mindful of and thinking about our media consumption habits and how we can keep improving them.
There is an amazing discourse to be had here. What is a review score? What makes it good or bad? Why did the reviewer arrive at said score? How does that score make you as a reader or a viewer feel, and more importantly, why? Has the review helped you decide how to spend your time and money? Has it helped you understand what you value most in the content you consume, and why you enjoy consuming it?
The more you consciously engage in thinking critically about the things you enjoy and why you enjoy them, the more your ability to form and share strong insights about them improves. And that way, we as a larger gaming community can come together to have increasingly strong discussions about games, what makes them tick, how they can improve, why we love them, and who else might be the next person to find joy from them as well.
So with that, I’ll turn it over to you. What do you think about reviews and review scores? Do you use them? Do you like, dislike, or not even have any strong feelings about them? Feel free to tell us what you think about all this and why!
