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"A 3DFX card can play Quake in 640x480 resolution at 60 frames per second, that's a fact. Quake has 89 points' worth of game in it, that's a subjective opinion."
-Niko Nirvi, Finnish games journalist and critic.
The stir created in the video game community when a high-profile game receives an unexpectedly high or low score from a major reviewer, especially when it significantly differs from the general consensus. Especially jarring because professional video game reviewers tend to give out very similar scores.
Whether or not this stir is justified is up for debate. On the one hand, a reviewer shouldn't just automatically go along with the crowd, even for nigh-universally-loved games. On the other, sometimes you get the feeling that they're doing it intentionally to create controversy and attract attention. After all, professional game reviewers aren't exactly entirely trustworthy.
Sometimes you get the feeling that Eight Point Eight situations are simply the fans are making a mountain out of a molehill. It's worth noting that reviews tend to be published a day or two before the game is actually released, meaning that many people are decrying the score awarded to a game they haven't yet played themselves. Such is the behavior of a console or series fanboy: Complaining About People Not Liking The Show. Naturally caused by the fact that many gamers believe that Reviews Are The Gospel.
Often, the score may be controversial because it adversely affects the game's overall average score on review compendium sites such as Game Rankings and Meta Critic. Alternatively, animosity can be generated from detractors of the game who all start to act as if the low score is the only 'correct' one, so no matter how many good reviews it got, if GameSpot says it's not that great, it's officially a rubbish game.
Note: This is not Complaining About Reviews You Don't Like. There has to have been a definite ruckus generated by the review for it to be counted as a Eight Point Eight situation.
Examples:
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Gamespot
- The Trope Namer comes from the unimaginable havoc created by Gamespot's review of The Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess in November 2006, which awarded the game a great-but-not-amazing score of 8.8 out of 10. The Internet erupted in anger and chaos as the game was one of the most anticipated games of all-time, and near-perfect scores were expected.
- It Got Worse when the GameCube version of the game receieved an 8.9, from the same reviewer. This was in spite of the fact that the review's text recommended buying the Wii version instead if the option was available. Repeat, he gave the game he thought was superior a lower score. Even for a tenth of a point, it was still a tenth in the wrong direction of his recommendation. The reviewer in question was blackballed for this logical inconsistency, and reportedly received death threats. The number "8.8" has since become an Internet fad in some gaming circles. In fact, as proof of its infamy, as of this writing typing ' 8.8 ' into Google and clicking "I'm feeling lucky" will yield the review.
- Interestingly, when he later got fired, accusations started flying that he was fired for breaking the opposite rule: the Four Point Scale. See that entry for more details.
- Completely inverted and played with and generally mocked by Dutch videogame magazine, Power Unlimited, a couple of reviewers gave Zelda: Twilight Princess a whopping 9.8, everything fine and dandy, you reckon? Nuh uh. Another reviewer, who wasn't in particular a big Nintendo fan as opposed to the two that did the game, was so pissed off that in his review of Dead Or Alive Extreme 2 he gave it a 9.9 out of spite.
- Or did he!?
- One can also argue that the magazine can be taken seriously anyway, seeing the Broken Base and / or Unpleasable Fanbase, and the general fact that even the editors themselves claim that they don't often follow the main stream reviewers. That, and from the review itself it becomes clear that the game did deserve a 99, if you substract it from 100.
- Helps that a lot of the mag works on a Rule Of Funny anyway.
- Gamespot's 8.7 review of Metal Gear Solid 3.
- Gamespot's 8.3 review of The Legend Of Zelda: Majora's Mask. Especially odd since they gave Ocarina of Time a perfect 10.
- Well, Ocarina of Time does tend to score higher than Majora's Mask, but usually not by THAT much (IGN, for example, gave Ocarina a 10.0 and Majora a 9.9...off by just one point.)
- Interestingly, the Gamespot reviews for Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, Wind Waker, and Twilight Princess were all by Jeff Gerstmann.
- Gamespot's 8.5 review of Metroid Prime 3. Various "problems" cited included controls that were too good, lack of multiplayer (notable for a 20 year old franchise that has almost never had a multiplayer component. Then again, this game came after the multiplayer-focused Metroid Prime Hunters...), and not being Halo.
- It didn't help that Gamespot had recently altered their review system, making all score multiples of .5 .
- Gamespot and IGN's scores of Lair, which were 4.5 and 4.9 respectively. PS 3 fans continue to insist that all reviewers that had problems with the controls are wrong and that the reviewers were probably 'paid off' by Microsoft or Nintendo.
- Sony didn't help by insisting the former as well, to the point of even sending "clarified" manuals to show them how to play it right. Most people countered that if you have to go that far for people to play the game right, that's a problem in and of itself.
- Rumor has it that when Lair was close-to-completed, Sony decreed that it should use the motion controls, since they had recently decided to make a motion-sensitive controller standard equipment. Adapting the game to motion controls ruined the controls in general... if released as intended, scores would have been much higher.
- Gamespot's 7.5 review of Ratchet And Clank: Tools of Destruction.
- Gamespot's 6.0 review of Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn seemed to put the game in the crap pile with Gamespot's other "6" games. The argument was that it had dated graphics and was very, very hard, even compared to other Fire Emblem games. And they said that the story was crap. And then docked it for not providing Mii support.
- The magazine Game Informer gave the game a 7 and a 5.5 for similar reasons.
- The game was also given 76 by Australian magazine Hyper, for the same two reasons above. And its obscene difficulty. The same magazine awarded a 85 to Super Smash Bros. Brawl, contrasting with the 90+ scores it had been getting.
- Gamespot also gave a similarly low score of 7.7 to Silent Hill 2, a game which received almost universal critical acclaim (average 8.9).
- The uber-anticipated Spore is receiving anywhere from 7s-9s. The average critic score, according to GameSpot is - wait for it - 8.8. Gamespot themselves gave it an 8.0, Drama indeed...
- And, adversely, people are calling the peeps at X-Play sell-outs cause they gave this game a perfect 5/5.
- Gamespot recently awarded The Conduit 6.5/10, which again is around 1 to 1.5 lower than what most other reviewers have given it.
- And according to Metacritic, 1UP's C+ rating for The Conduit rounded out to 58.
- Giant Bomb gave it a 2 out of 5. That review was also written by Gerstmann, who notably spent time ripping on the Wii in his Twilight Princess review as well.
- The original Metroid is on Gamespot's list of the Greatest Games of All Time, yet their reviews for the GBA and VC re-releases were very negative.
- Which makes sense. Metroid is in the list of greatest games for historical reasons, since it kick-started the Metroidvania genre, not to mention the Metroid franchise itself. However, from a modern perspective it lacks the features and atmosphere of the later games.
- Gamespot slapped Persona PSP with a 5.0 review score. Most sites gave it much higher marks.
- In ancient times, Gamespot gave Tales Of Destiny, a favorite among the Tales fandom, a mere 4.8. They still aren't ready to forget and forgive.
IGN
- IGN's 7.9 score for Mario Kart: Double Dash led to the expression "7.9'd", another name for this trope, and is still used in the IGN community.
- Coincidentally, Gamespot gave it the exact same score. They probably didn't get as much heck for it since they already got heck for giving its predecessor an even lower score: their 1996 6.4 review of the near-universally loved Mario Kart 64.
- IGN's 7.6 score for Kingdom Hearts II.
- IGN's reviews of Assassin's Creed range from 6.8 (IGN UK)-7.7 (US). It would appear they're not quite pleased with the game's AI. The fans would appear to not be quite pleased with IGN.
- IGN's 3.0 review of cult favorite beat-em-up God Hand, a rating a full five points lower than the reader average of 8.0 and a frequently brought up justification against trusting anything IGN says, ever (especially when compared to their review of the Cory In The House game, which garnered an equivalent score).
- The Imagine series always has had flak from most 'traditional' gamers (i.e., male and liking to blow things up), and there was shock, dismay, and laughter when a freelance reviewer on IGN gave Imagine Party Babyz a 7.5.
- It should be noted that few of the major game review sites will touch games NOT aimed at the young-male market, meaning there's not much to compare that review score to. IGN reviews a number of Imagine games, and generally gives them scores from abysmal to mediocre... which is much appreciated by people who actually buy these games and would like to know which ones are less crap.
- IGN, again, gave a surprisingly negative score of 4.5 out of 10 for the anticipated PS 3 "Halo Killer" Haze. And there was much rejoicing, mostly from people who don't like the PS 3 very much.
- And the game
not being that good being a complete pile of crap helped.
- In a bizarre inversion, IGN awarded scores of 9.1 to both WWE Raw for Xbox and its sequel, way out of sync with the games' average scores of 6s and 7s.
- Suspiciously, the review for the first Raw game had quotes from the developer in the text of the review. Think about what would happen if a film critic had a conversation with Uwe Boll in the middle of a review of one of his movies....
- IGN's 7.6 review of No More Heroes. Different sources gave scores in the 8.5 range (Gamespot gave it 9.0, N Gamer gave it 9.4, X-Play gave it a 5 out of 5; hell, even IGN AU gave it 8.9).
- IGN's 6.7 score for Disgaea 3 compared to the average score of 8.13 (before review) primarily for its graphics and lack of improvements. Controversial enough to warrant a second opinion immediately after the review.
- IGN scores again with Wii Music, giving it a square 5.0 (with the average Metacritic rating somewhere in the sixties range) and igniting more heated debating about IGN's "bias", regardless of whether or not there actually is any bias to talk of.
- IGN has been getting hate-mail over their 8.8 score of the DS port for Chrono Trigger. Others are just noting the irony of the meme actually being applied to a game often heralded as one of the greatest of all time (including by IGN).
- The reason it didn't get a better score was because it was a straight port with lackluster additional content, which seems awfully lazy when you consider that Square gave Final Fantasy III and Final Fantasy IV 3D remakes. This is a common complaint, really.
- IGN and Gamespot's reviews of Sonic Unleashed for the 360, giving it 4.5 and 3.5, respectively. They blamed the Werehog levels and the hub levels for ruining the entire game. And with the Gamespot review, it was rated lower than the universally considered So Bad It's Horrible Sonic 2006 (which got 4.0).
- In fact, Sonic fans have been going apeshit over Unleashed's scores in general, being lower than expectations. They even find it outrageous that the supposedly "inferior" Wii version is statistically superior to its HD counterparts.
- And history repeats itself with Sonic and the Black Knight. Nintendo Power gave it an 8. GameDaily a 7. IGN? Three point nine.
- IGN US gave Football Manager 2009 2.0, IGN UK gave the same game 9.1. Far from simply reflecting the varying popularity of the game in different regions, the IGN US review compared the game with action football games rather than reviewing it as a management sim.
- And amazingly, the reviewer actually recommended it for management fans, while clearly hating the game and having no idea of what makes a good one in its genre.
- IGN gave Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time Reshelled a 5.9/10 and cited "unavoidable traps" as a design fault, when, in fact, all the traps are avoidable; it just takes skill to do so. Perhaps the reviewer is just blaming the game for his inadequacies?
- IGN's 6.5 review of Backyard Basketball on the PS 2. This review established IGN as hypocrites because they praised pretty much everything about it in the actual review.
- And this is why we have the Meme that "You Can't Spell 'Ignorant' Without IGN."
- Inversion: IGN gave Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 a 9.5. But the reader average as of this writing? 1.5.
- It's because of the Internet Backdraft on said game; read that page for the full story.
- While we're at it, IGN gave the Wii port of COD4 a 7. The reader average as of this writing is 9.1 (and you can guess the reaction from those IGN readers' comments), and NeoGAF immediately followed suit and called the reviewer out. It doesn't help that the review uses screenshots from the alpha.
Everyone Else
Non-gaming examples
- At a Roger Ebert lecture. one of the questioners asked directly why he had given Fight Club 2 stars but Booty Call 3.
- Two further examples from the Ebert reviews, one rather old and one quite new: the 2/4 for Dead Poets Society and the 2.5/4 for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
- In another Ebert example: not unlike Yahtzee and Brawl, he wrote an article aimed towards the response to his Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen review that is basically summed up as "You even just liked the movie? You're wrong." Never have we seen Ebert being so scathing since North. Which leads us to this related point...
- ...there's an article talking about how Revenge of the Fallen may become the worst-reviewed movie to surpass the $400 million mark. The article points out how there's a clear disconnect between what the critics are saying and what the audiences want and expect. For the most part, it seems as though critics and half of the Transformers fanbase hate it because it's really nothing more than giant robots making shit blow up (it has 19% on Rotten Tomatoes), whereas the general audience and the other half of the fanbase love it for the exact same reasons.
- Or it could be reaching profits off the back of the previous movie and fans who will see the sequel no matter how good or bad it is.
- Perhaps the most infamous example is when he gave Gladiator 2/4, calling it a "muddy looking" and "dimwitted" film with "dull" characters. Said movie would later go on to win the 2000 Academy Award for Best Picture.
- Ebert also got saddled with the inverse of this trope when he called Knowing, which most other critics hated, "among the best science-fiction films I've seen."
- Ebert has just given 2012 3.5/5 stars. Jesus Christ, just retire already, man.
- That'd be 3.5/4, actually. And his reason was that the film basically achieves what it sets out to do - blow up stuff - without, seemingly, becoming as annoying as the Transformers example listed above.
- Carl Kimlinger's review of Death Note at Anime News Network in which he gave the thing a C+ was met with much fandom complaining and some bannings for calling the reviewer an asshole on the forums.
- Movie example: Plenty of people have already gone apeshit over IGN giving Coraline (the movie) a 6/10 even though the movie wasn't even out yet so none of the people complaining had actually seen it.
- People do that all the time. On websites where it's possible for users to "rate" games before they're released, it's entirely possible to see games that aren't even officially completed yet with 10.0 scores.
- Other users will often try to counter these early reviews with 0.0 reviews which, if they even have text, generally consist of rants against people who give games early 10.0 ratings.
- Something to this effect happened on Metacritic, where thousands of users rated Littlebigplanet with 0.0 scores without having actually played it. For revenge, thousands rated Gears of War 2 with 0.0 scores without having played it. Cue wallbanger.
- Happens all the time on Rotten Tomatoes. If a movie receives a large amount of positive reviews before its official release to the public in a row, putting it at 100%, the first review to kill its perfect rating will earn no less than 100 comments of people defending a movie they haven't seen and overall slinging personal attacks.
- Leonard Maltin infamously gave Laserblast 2 and 1/2 stars. The film was later riffed on Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Maltin was mocked along with the terrible film. He also gave The Undead 3 stars, and was again mocked along with the film, with Mike Nelson dressing up as Leonard Maltin and talking about how stupid he was for giving the film such a good review. To his credit, Maltin appeared on a later MST 3 K episode and had a sense of humor about it.
- Maltin is famous for his recognition of the fact that all his reviews are subjective and based on his own opinion of the film and that other people will probbably feel different. Combine this with his legendary sense of humor and good nature and you get the reason why despite not agreeing with his reviews people still generally like and respect him, including the guys over at MS T3k.
- Music example: Pitchfork Media. They have been known to give negative reviews to what are otherwise well reviewed albums, although many times this has more to do with it conflicting with their hipster tastes. It occasionally goes the other way, also. They're one of the few magazines who thought The Final Cut was a better Pink Floyd album than The Wall.
- The 9513, a country music review site, uses a thumbs-up/thumbs-down for singles, and a five-star scale for albums. The site constantly gets lambasted for giving thumbs-downs to singles that most other critics like (e.g. Carrie Underwood's cover of "I Told You So", all of Sugarland's singles since "All I Want to Do"), or giving thumbs-ups just beacuse they like the artist, without really commenting on the work (e.g. any of the last few singles from Gary Allan). The same 8.8-ism applies to their album reviews. For instance, George Strait (usually a darling of the critics for good reason; he really is that damn good) got only 3 1/2 stars out of five for his 2009 album Twang, which was almost universally lauded for having three songs that Strait — who hasn't written any of his songs since 1982 — co-wrote, as well as a Spanish-language cover song, which is a major departure for a neo-traditional country music singer. Guess which tracks The 9513 critic called overrated.
- All of Terry Pratchett's books have good reviews printed on the cover, but they also all have just one bad review—the review that infamously called him an amateur for not writing in chapters. It seems to be something of a Running Gag at this point, and nobody takes it seriously.
- One of the later books actually did have chapters.
Close Non-gaming examples
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