From Here on Out

There's a learning curve involved with this kind of thing, and I'd like to think we've learned a lot over the past three months or so here at Zero Tolerance. With that said, there's going to be some changes coming down the pipeline. A little more structure is needed, and we think that maybe we've found a way to add it, without adding any extra bullshit.


One of the ways we're changing things up is in our reviews. We're now going to have a standard to compare to when reviewing games. This first change is going into effect (more or less) immediately, though probably not retroactively.

The second big one is that you should expect to see more second opinions on games we've already reviewed. The reasoning behind this change is that things started to feel a bit too homogenized at a certain point, where @Latency and I started agreeing on a lot of things, going in on a lot of the same industry mistakes, and just generally seeming a bit too much like some sort of ominous hive mind. So, hopefully you'll see a few more disagreements, even if minute in nature, actually make it to the page, instead of us keeping it behind the scenes.

The Review Metric(AKA The Standard)

I'm going to go a bit into the thought put into this here as well, otherwise it's just a meaningless and arbitrary scoring system, much like the 10-scale has become.

The Modern Era

Latency might see this differently, though I think it is of note. While patches are commonplace, and games are sometimes incredibly buggy and/or broken upon release, given that this is something we do in our spare time, and that we pay out of pocket for each game we review, I feel that we should stand by them. 

I often feel a little ripped-off when otherwise reliable sources tout games as fantastic, only to find that upon release, they are nigh-unplayable, due to server instability, or a commonly occurring bug that didn't exist in development code. Watching these publications continuously change review scores over events like these, and then refuse to change them back after they're fixed, often due to the broken nature of the released version souring the entire possibility of the game actually being playable at some point to them.

That having been said, my(possibly our) reviews will be final, and unchanging.

Downloadable content is also something that comes up with most titles these days, and will have to be reviewed seperately, if at all.

Letter Grades

Why? Because the 10-scale has already been invalidated. Because it feels right. Because we said so.

It's also something of a goal to have each letter have a specific situation that calls for it, and to follow through with giving that grade, even when difficult due to personal feelings towards a game. This also means that every letter may be seen, that a C is average, and that you know where we're coming from in our evaluations, rather than looking at a 7-or-below from a 10-scale site, and deciding that the game is crap because an 8 has become the average.

Each letter(Yes, even F), can have a + or - attached to it as well, highlighting something that it does either particularly well, or particularly poorly, whilst still being fully grounded properly in the grade it got.

A

An A is something to rarely be given out, only to those games that have truly ascended to the pinnacle of their respective genre, or that have pushed creative boundaries in new ways, whilst being exceptional in nearly every category. A new release achieving an A, will not, however, retroactively cause any previous A's to be downgraded or cheapened in any way; it just means that the bar has been raised again.

B

A B is given to those games which could almost achieve greatness, falling a little short of the mark, while not being entirely average. Everything technically has been refined to near perfection(Remember: screen tearing is better than slowdown), while playing it entirely too safe with its gameplay mechanics, storyline, and/or multiplayer. 

C

C's will be given to most games. These often have one or more areas that are incredibly average, or sometimes below average. They may suffer from minor technical issues, or, in the case of a normally great game, a few larger ones.

D

A D is given to those games that suffer from huge technical problems, such as crashing/freezing often, or wiping saves. Of note is that a game with a single game-breaking bug may find itself here, depending on the ease/availability of a workaround, and how often it is triggered. There may be some artistic or mechanical value to these titles that will save them from being forever confined to absolute mediocrity, however, the experience is so broken that it's often hard to stomach.

F

The cream of the crap, this game offers nothing new, is incomplete, technically broken, and unplayable. Very few games will have the distinct dishonor of earning an F, however, those that do will be shown no mercy.

Areas of Focus

Far too many publishers and developers are focused on pushing graphical boundaries, or hiring Hollywood composers to soundtrack, while remaining in the safe, stagnant, sequel-focused realm of releasing the same game six times. That's fine for them, and it plays to their benefit among most reviewers who often knock a point and a half off here or there for not impressing them with one or the other.

However, here at Zero Tolerance, there's more of a focus on raw gameplay, so when giving sub-grades to a game's individual aspects, don't expect to see graphics and audio on there, unless it does a mind-blowingly good job, or a downright awful one. Following this line of thinking, the key aspects of a game will vary wildly based on the game itself. For example, it would be just as wrong to criticize a role-playing game for it's lack of multiplayer and lower-than-normal replayability as it would to cite a sports game for having a terrible story.

Two of the many key areas we'll be focusing on, and some of the genres they apply to are server stability and netcode in MMO, multiplayer focused FPS/TPS, and RTS titles, and story in RPG, survival horror, and campaign-focused FPS/TPS titles.

Wrapping Up

There are, of course, hundreds of other areas we could potentially focus in upon on a title-to-title basis, and even more things we could do to change how Zero Tolerance operates, for the better, and we will. This is just a bit of a preview of what you can reasonably expect to be headed your way, and a sign of things to come.

- Mike "Tsaikotyk" Kelly