Here at BNBGAMING, we don’t use review scores: no “out of 10” or “out of 5”, no stars, no thumbs up – we take pride in our freedom from the influence of potentially unhelpful, non-standardised scoring systems.
Granted, it hasn’t always been like that. Indeed, you may have already come across some of our older reviews written before the current system was implemented, in the Dark Ages before our Renaissance, you could say. But banishing review scores to the beyond was not a decision we came to easily, or uniformly for that matter. In fact, you can read the internal debate here and follow it up with our hotly discussed editorial for an in-depth analysis.
“That’s all good and well and noble and idealistic of you and all that”, you may think, “but how am I supposed to know if a game is good or not if the review doesn’t have a number?” Simple: the writing. Our aim is to persuade the reader not with an all-powerful figure bookending two-thousand words, but with what is actually written. At BNBGAMING, the reviewer’s thoughts are carefully structured to relay certain aspects of the game to you, and these are summarised in a concluding paragraph – what we call “The Final Verdict”. In these last moments, the reviewer will either recommend the game to some or to all, or to no one, and with varying degrees of gusto/vitriol. It’s that simple.
To hammer home positive verdicts, we add one of two review stamps.
There’s the “Recommended” stamp here…:
(For games that we wholeheartedly recommend to you, particularly if you’re a fan of the genre; well-designed, well-made, enjoyable experiences whose minor flaws or lack of innovation stop the game short of achieving true greatness. )
…and there’s the “Mark of Excellence” stamp here:
(For games that exhibit masterful craftsmanship, emit an aura of fun, transcend genre and positively glow with excellence; legends, classics and icons of the medium that raise the bar.)
And remember! These stamps serve solely as pictorial complements to our writing. The real story is in the words.
