Rune Lai wrote:To be fair though, games rarely get 1-4 on a 10-point scale. ^^ It generally only happens with something truly atrocious. A score of 7 seems to be the borderline that will make people wonder whether or not they should buy it (unless they're die-hards). So in that sense, a 7 is "good, but nothing special," or, what we might call average. Not the numerical average, but average in the sense of being ordinary or unremarkable.
It depends on how you are defining average. There's a chunk of critics who think regardless of the quality of things on the market, it should all even out around 5/10 so that 5 is always average. The thing is, that's not the case. Even though there aren't many truly blockbuster titles in the 9 and 10 range, most titles are still average to above average. 5-7 is a pretty safe range to say many games fall in. Most games that would fall below 5 either don't make it to market or people rarely review because they are so hum-drum they aren't worth caring about.
Basically, it's a matter of if you think you should adjust the scores to the market quality or if you should generally keep the same standards in mind for judging games. Neither one is "right" as there is no right, but most publications tend to try to keep the same standards while keeping in mind the overall quality in terms of production values is always increasing. I've noticed some publications that try to go out of their way to use "the whole scale" such as 1up end up having some really out of whack review scores once in a while. Halo 2, for instance, got perfect scores from every single Ziff Davis publication. 30 something Halo fans, I guess
