TheReviewGeek Review Scoring

 

At TheReviewGeek we use a 0-10 scale for scoring Movies, Games, Albums and TV Shows. 10/10 scores are rare and reserved for some of the best titles we believe have raised the bar in their chosen medium or managed to stand out next to the slew of other titles released around that time. By that same token, it’s also rare to find a 1/10 or a 2/10 review on the site.

Why Do TV Episode Recaps Have Stars Then?

For TV shows we rate based on individual episodes and then feed that back into our full season review. Very early on we realized that this 10 point scale is far too broad for individual episodes. Therefore, we made the decision to use a star rating instead to rank each episode.

The episode recaps that we offer are usually full of spoilers and written in-the-moment, detailing the majority of plot points that take place. This means that for any show (even Netflix Originals which predominantly drop in one go) we give our episode-by-episode impressions as these events take place. This also avoids us inadvertently spoiling any bigger plot points that occur later on in the show and engage more with you guys as we “watch along” with you.

Each episode is given a weighted score with 5/5’s (excellent) and 1/5’s (terrible) having a much bigger effect on the overall score we give for that chosen show. On that same merit, an ending can make or break a show (as seen in our review of Vagabond in 2019) which dropped from a high score to miserable mediocrity in the span of one underwhelming finale.

These episode ratings are then calculated and fed into a spoiler-free full season review which either arrives before release (if we’ve been lucky enough to gain access to that show early) or after recapping every episode. These star rated scores feed into our 10 point scale which are visible on all of our full season write-ups for transparency.

Whatever rating we give a show out of 10, is our final, definitive score.

In this way, we hope that those looking for a recap or searching out our thoughts on a big plot point will find that in each episode. The full season review by comparison is much more analytical and looks at the entire TV series as a whole, not just a few episodes.

This helps give more emphasis on accurately gauging a show’s pacing, technicality, camera work and consistency across the season. To the best of our knowledge no other review website uses this format.

Why Are Games Rated So Low? Where Are All The 10/10s?

Video games have come far over the years but also suffer from a wealth of heavily-weighted, positive reviews for big, blockbuster games. While we do respect that the medium uses a weighted 6-10 scale for all ‘AAA’ games, we like to treat games as a whole with a consistent 0-10 scale, which aligns with how we review every other media piece on our site.

If a game is developed with a budget of $1 million and releases with heavily broken features, aggressive monetization (more on that in a minute) and bugs, should that then rate higher than an Indie developed by one or two people with a shoe-string budget without those in? For us, that answer is absolutely not. With that in mind, gameplay and story are our two highest scoring metrics for video games, followed by graphics, sound, voice acting and everything else.

We also take the subject of in-game monetization into consideration with our review scores. If a game is flat-out broken or skewed toward needless grinding to extract money from the player for the sake of fun, that will affect the final score that we give (like our infamous 5/10 Mortal Kombat 11 review, which would have been a lot higher had the micro-transations not been there.)

 


If you have any questions about our scoring or any of the reviews at TheReviewGeek, please feel free to reach out and contact us.