Explaining my Cock-Eyed Game Rating System (plus my review of a certain "edgy" card game)

Okay, so, by my calculation, this post is about, ummmm...I dunno, almost a decade overdue!

So, at the end of all of my game reviews, I usually post a pic of my over-sized six-sided die turned to a number. Sure, it fits in with the theme of the blog, but what heck does it mean?!?

Some folks (Andrew) have been asking me to switch to a different scoring method, like maybe using a ten-sided die, but until someone (Andrew) buys me a novelty set of polyhedral dice, than those people (Andrew) will just hafta shut their cake-hole and be content with the following breakdown of my admittedly-oddball rating system.

Alright, are y'all sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin at the top!

Six pips outta six, I.E. the best possible score that I can give to a game. To earn a "6", a game either has to...

1. Do something wildly original OR
2. Do what it does, really, really well OR
3. Alter my very existence in some fundamental way. No pressure.

A good way to tick off that first criterion is to design a wholly original mechanic that truly elevates the game's overall theme and enjoyability. For example, Dominion might have introduced the concept of deck-building, it's always felt more mechanic than game to me. 

Conversely, the second edition of A Few Acres of Snow uses the mechanic of deck-building efficiency to mirror the logistical challenge of colonizing / warring over a vast overseas nation. Orleans also gets a perfect score from me because it's highly innovative, compulsively playable and I'm a huge sucker for the medieval art design.

Then there's T'zolkin, which certainly didn't invent worker placement, but the whole roundel / wheel timing system is so clever that the game easily earns a "6" from me. Also, despite being in a crowded market of similar games, both Rajas of the Ganges and Champions of Midgard distinguish themselves by being tight like a tiger.   

And I'm sure this is no surprise to anyone, but condition #3 is the toughest to meet. In fact, this hallowed pantheon currently includes a mere five games, namely Axis & Allies, Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, The Settlers of Catan and Puerto Rico. Are all of these games perfect? NOPE. Do they all get perfect scores because they revolutionized board games and literally altered the trajectory of my very existence? You bet yer sweet ass...

Some games I've given 6 pips to include: Above and Below, A Feast for Odin, Combat Commander: Europe, Francis Drake, Le Havre, Orleans, Puerto Rico, Scoville, Settlers of Catan (purely for its life-altering effect on me, more realistically it's a "4" tilted up), The Princes of Florence and T'zolkin. 

A five-pip game might not re-invent the wheel or result in some personal epiphany, but it still deserves top marks. 

So why give it a "5" instead of a "6"? Well, here ya go...

• Honestly, it might be due to some very stupid and / or superficial reason. For example, I'd love to give Clank! a perfect score but I just can't get over its uninspired art design. 
• Maybe the game is just missing that key bit of chrome to launch it into the stratosphere of perfection. No word of a lie, I legit crave playing Wingspan because it's a very pretty-looking, engine-building game sporting a unique bird theme. But, when all is said and done, I'm forced to admit that the base game is kinda shallow.
• The game is great but the theme is completely bland to me.
• I have concerns about re-playablity or game length. 
• A particular element of the game just doesn't resonate with me.

So, basically, I think these games are great, but maybe there's some niggling irritant or lingering concern that's holding me back.    

Games I've rated five pips: 7 Wonders: Duel, Battlestar Galactica, Betrayal at House on the Hill, Blood Bowl, Castles of Burgundy, Castles of Mad King Ludwig,  Clank!, Dead of Winter, Descent: Second Edition, Eclipse (First Edition),  Eldritch Horror, Euphoria, Glenmore II: Chronicles, Hallertau, Imperial, Lords of Waterdeep, Lost Ruins of Arnak, Mice and Mystics, Mysterium, Pandemic Legacy: Season 1, Parks, Power Grid, Rex: Final Days of an Empire, Robinson Crusoe, Root, Seven Bridges, Shadows Over Camelot, Sonora, Space Alert, Specter Ops, Star Trek: Fleet Captains, Star Wars: Imperial Assault, Star Wars: Outer Rim, Star Wars: The Queen's Gambit, Star Wars: X-Wing, Star Wars: Destiny, Steam, Wildcatters and Wingspan.  

If I rate something a "four", it means that it's a good game, but not something that'll blow you away. A game falls into this bracket for the following reasons:

• Chicken-or-the-egg vagaries abound in the rules, a la Godzilla: Tokyo Clash
• You really enjoy the game but suspect that there may be some balance issues. Jaws is an example of that.
• Maybe you recognize that the game is perfectly fine but it's not the deepest experience in the world. Ticket to Ride: Europe springs to mind here. 
• My initial experience with the game was poor but I suspect that there's still some promise in there, I.E. Spirit Island.  
• The game is good but the set up / tear down time is ridonkulous, like Heroscape. 

Needless to say, most of the games I review fall into the "4" category, including 110 Days in Europe, 5 Minute Dungeon, Among the Stars, Batman: Gotham City Strategy Game, Brewcrafters: The Travel Card Game, Carcassonne, Cave Troll, Century: Spice Road, Dicemasters, Drakon, DungeonQuest (Third Edition), Eight-Minute Empire, Elder Sign, Firefly: The Board Game, Forbidden Island, Gloom, Godzilla: Tokyo Clash, Tokyo Clash, Heroscape, Indian Summer, Infiltration, Kemet, King of Tokyo, Kingdom Builder, Kingsburg, Love Letter, Martian Dice Marvel Legendary, MegaLand, Merchants & Marauders, Merchants of Venus, Middle Earth Quest, Midgard, Pandemic, Paperback, Paper Tales, Quantum, Raptor, Rise of Empires, Road Kill Rally, Small World, Spirit Island, Star Trek Panic, Star Wars: Original Trilogy Risk, Survive: Escape From Atlantis, Takenoko, Telestrations, The Downfall of Pompeii, The Thing: Infection at Outpost 31, The Resistance, Through the Desert, Thunderstone Quest, Timeline, Tokaido, Tsuro, Warband: Against the Darkness, Worm Up and Zombicide.

A level-three game ranges from "fine" to "m'eh", with varying mileage based on the reader's own level of interest. These games aren't terrible by any means, but they may have a noticeable flaw that affects game play in some detrimental way. 

Here are some tell-tale signs of a "3" boi:

• It BASIC as all get-out.
• The game overstays its welcome.
• Poorly-written rules make it feel unnecessarily complicated. 
• It provides no interesting choices from turn to turn and game play is kinda repetitive.
• Things happen arbitrarily despite your best efforts. 

Games I've given a "3" to include: DungeonQuest (Revised Edition), Dungeons & Dragons: Castle Ravenloft, Fallout Shelter, Fallout, Walk the Plank, Godzilla: Kaiju World Wars (with new rules), Photosynthesis, Sentinels of the Multiverse, Star Fluxx, Zombie Dice and Zombies!!!   

Everything I said about level "3" games can be repeated with a "2"...but the problems are often numerous and a lot more pronounced. A short descriptor for this rating is: buyer beware!

 

What makes the game a "2":

• It's downright brain dead or more activity than game. Apples to Apples, I'm looking in your direction. 
• It's an IP game that totally fails to delver on its theme.  
• The rules are so bad that it would require a ton of FAQ's, hacks and / or house rules to get it to vaguely work and, even all of that effort, it still kinda sucks.

Games I would give two pips to include Apples to Apples, Crappy Birthday, Friday the 13'th: Horror at Camp Crystal Lake, Godzilla: Kaiju World Wars (out of box) and Marvel Heroes. 

The "1" rating exists in case I lose control of my faculties and agree to play something that looks awful at face value. This might happen if I get outvoted amidst a group of people who have all the gaming taste of a cardboard Popsicle.   

In order for a game to earn this dreaded Scarlet Number it must be:

• Completely broken.
• Really boring.
• Deliberately stupid, insulting or try-too-hard "edgy."
• Barely a functioning game.
• Complicated to the point of being unplayable. 

I've only recorded a single "1" here, mainly due to the fact that my blog's by-line ("Because life's too short to play crap games...") is advice that I also live by. Let's face it, our beloved hobby is a veritable minefield of awful "1's". If you don't believe me, then just visit a Calendar Club store or hang out at a board game cafe on a Friday night. 

Case in point, this fucking dreck... 

    

So, if you've ever played Apples to Apples you can probably recall a time when someone either deliberately or inadvertently made a pervy or inappropriate card combo. Maybe some weirdo in your group played "Hot" in response to "Helen Keller", I dunno.   

You just know that this is the Cards Against Humanity origin story, since the designers built an entire "game" around making people think 'Tee-Hee-I'm-SOOOO-bad-for-playing-this-card!'. If anything, it kinda makes you wish that mechanics could be trademarked after all.  

Cards Against Humanity isn't really a game. At best, it's a social activity and, as social activities go, it generates its laughs in exactly the same way an expired gas station egg salad sandwich inspires regularity. 

Essentially, CAH is a simple and easy way to boiler-plate a pre-fab sense of humor onto a group of basics. Sure, some of the surreal language and combinations are engineered to crack people up, but, if you're anything like me, you'll probably feel like a bonafide POS after doing so. And that's not because the game is "edgy", it's because it goes out of its way to insult entire swathes of people in the laziest manner possible.

Now, I'm not gonna sit here and righteously claim that I've never laughed at a Cards Against Humanity combo or even claimed that it "completely killed" the aforementioned Apples to Apples. I also recognize that it's long past trendy to crap on this ancient, scarcely-relevant artifact and that this "hot take" is about as bold and insightful as coming out as "anti-COVID." 

But I also think it's telling that Cards Against Humanity is literally the first thing that popped into my head when I wanted to illustrate the sort of garbage that would earn my lowest possible rating.  

 

As such, Cards Against Humanity scores a generous 1 pip out of 6. 

***

Let's face it, Andrew is absolutely right; my rating system is idiotic...but so is every single other rating system. Let's face it, assigning an arbitrary score to a movie, book, concert, television show or game is inherently stupid. There's really no way to encapsulate your thoughts on something via a number, letter or cluster of stars. 

And that's why it's so important to read into the body of the review itself. 

I've also taken to giving my scores a "tilt" in an effort to make them a bit more accurate. For example, if I give something a "3" with a tilt up, it's closer to a "4" than a "2".  Or, if I give a game a "3" and then tilt it down, you know that's probably a game I don't care to ever play again. 

Full disclosure, in the process of writing this post I've actually tweaked several of my scores, and I'll likely change more. Maybe I've played a game a bunch of times since my first introduction to it and, in doing so, I've discovered major flaws. Or perhaps an initially off-putting experience has since revealed a hidden gem. Or maybe a new and improved game has come down the pike and eclipsed its original inspiration. 

One final point to illustrate how subjective all of this is. I played Terraforming Mars when it was first released...and I thought it was amazing. 

But if I was asked to rate it right now, I'd give it "5" pips.

Why?  

Because I don't really care for space stuff, the cubes always slide around on your player board and the cards are butt-ugly.  

But at least now you know that a "5" for me can also be a "6" for everyone else!  

 

Alright, that's all I've got for you today, folks. 

Thanks for reading and keep playin' games to keep ya sane!