I’m a sucker for Average Games. Those games that scored on average about 65-70%. I flick through magazines and click through websites and feel a pang every time I see a game that was almost a success. I know, I know, I’m a complete soft touch, and this is a hard industry these days. But let me explain.

I feel sorry for, and often buy these games for a number of reasons….for a start, 65% isn’t that bad, you could probably get a fair bit of enjoyment out of most games that score this much. I’ve often found that review scoring, like it or not, is always going to be entirely subjective upon the reviewers personal tastes — that’s why the wise among us read lots of reviews, or hit up a website like www.gamerankings.com to get an idea of alllllll the reviews.

I’d suggest reading the 80% reviews and the 40% reviews of the same game – only after reading two totally subjective opinions can you see the best and the worst of a game without actually playing it. Someone may slate a game for rubbish music, poor story, short length or a steep difficulty curve – however if these things don’t bother you, then the score is irrelevant. Equally, if another polarised review commends its sense of style, the unique control mechanic, the voice acting and the character models, and these are the things that appeal to you, then that’s the review you should be reading, because there’s a chance that reviewer and you are similar kinds of people, and maybe you should trust him or her!

The second reason I lament this very specific 65%-70% range is that games these days cost extraordinary amounts of time and money to make, and its no longer fantastical to say that many games are approaching the level of art and engineering genius. I consider the artists/musicians/writers who worked really hard on some of the games around these days that didn’t perform so well, either critically or in terms of sales figures, and I think, I bet they’re really p*****d off that someone else dropped the ball on this, and so no-one is going to bother appreciating their fine work.

Anyway, rant over, I appreciate the practicalities of the market — hype for games is now at movie levels, the games industry is incredibly exciting, with the Next Big Thing popping up every other month, sometimes all at once (like the end of 2007), so why should we spend out hard earned cash on average games? I agree entirely, and if I had £40 ($80 — yeah, games are a bit more expensive in the UK, my American friends) then I’d buy the highest rated game de jour in my genre of choice – but when I see a game for half that, or pop into Blockbuster on the way home after a tough day at work, I always pick up a good old average game, because the world and his brother will have played (the superb) Drake’s Fortune and Call of Duty 4 in six months time, but not that many will have bothered with poor old Folklore, or Jericho.

And so to the reason for this (I suspect overly long) article – I have rented Folklore for the week, and I have Jericho coming from www.play.com next weekend (£17 – a bargain!…possibly), I’m going to invest some serious time into both, and let you know in part 2 if, in this instance anyway, a game scoring 65-70% at full retail price, should be scored separately when considered at a much discounted price, or as a rental.

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