[Morskababa]

How is it possible that in last ten years none of the games did not deserve 5 stars.

[Jackal]

Are you asking why we haven't given 5 stars to any games, or why no one has made a 5 star game in the last 10 years? The second question pretty much answers the first.

As the highest score possible, it really should be reserved only for the best of the best, and there just aren't many of those.

[kuze]

Give me one serious gaming magazine that gives 5 stars/100%/10 out of 10 to a game more often than once or twice in a decade.

[Morskababa]

yes but one decade has passed and still no 5 stars i think that some games in last ten years did deserve 5 stars :
Runaway: A Road Adventure
Longest Journey, The
Still Life

[After a brisk nap]

Whether or not an individual likes those games, I think it's pretty clear that none of them are 5-star titles. (TLJ did receive 5 stars initially, but the score was later adjusted once the drugs euphoria wore off.) They each have non-trivial issues in various areas.

I could count on the fingers of one hideously disfigured hand the number of adventure games that really deserve 5 stars in my opinion.

[stepurhan]

The problem with any 100% based rating is it implies there couldn't be anything better (allowing for the technology available at the time of release) Therefore anything that brings the gaming experience down (I've often seen people posting about how they don't like the main character in Runaway for example) should bring it below that level.

At the end of the day though. any score is just the opinion of a particular reviewer. I'd always seek wider views (especially ones that give a game a particularly low score if the reviewer is clear why they marked the game so) before making a decision.

[After a brisk nap]

Adventure Gamers only has ten different ratings, so each represents a range of scores. If you insist on thinking in percentages, 5 stars could be anything between 90% and 100%.

[Gabe]

Originally Posted by Morskababa

yes but one decade has passed and still no 5 stars i think that some games in last ten years did deserve 5 stars :
Runaway: A Road Adventure
Longest Journey, The
Still Life

You like baloons then,and not pins?

[fov]

I don't think I would ever give a game 5 stars. Nothing's perfect.

[AGA]

Except Day of the Tentacle.

[The Seed]

Originally Posted by Morskababa

yes but one decade has passed and still no 5 stars i think that some games in last ten years did deserve 5 stars :
Runaway: A Road Adventure
Longest Journey, The
Still Life

It's near scandalous that two of those games got more than 3 stars, never mind a perfect 5.

The Longest Journey is of better quality, but still not worth 5 stars.

[ArsenyK]

I would give 5 starts without hesitation to Grim Fandango (no need for explanation, I guess) and Last Express (for sheer innovation value and genius design).

[Giligan]

There's really no point in a "perfect" score, as there is no perfection. Five stars should be given to a game which, under the circumstances, did as good as it could do. Games like the early Monkey Island games, Day of the Tentacle, or even (in my own opinion) Abe Licoln Must Die! did as good as they could do. We don't even know if a "perfect" game exists because no game has ever gotten a perfect score from all reviewers, as anyone can find something wrong if they look hard enough. Even a tiny error could be considered enough to rank a game at very good, rather than excellent.

For a game development team to get everything absolutely "perfect" is impossible. It's just not going to happen.

[Morskababa]

For a game development team to get everything absolutely "perfect" is impossible. It's just not going to happen.

But id did happened three times according to reviewers.So it can happen again very easy .

[Kurufinwe]

Originally Posted by Giligan

There's really no point in a "perfect" score, as there is no perfection. Five stars should be given to a game which, under the circumstances, did as good as it could do. Games like the early Monkey Island games, Day of the Tentacle, or even (in my own opinion) Abe Licoln Must Die! did as good as they could do. We don't even know if a "perfect" game exists because no game has ever gotten a perfect score from all reviewers, as anyone can find something wrong if they look hard enough. Even a tiny error could be considered enough to rank a game at very good, rather than excellent.

For a game development team to get everything absolutely "perfect" is impossible. It's just not going to happen.

Completely agreed, and that's always how I've understood 5/5 scores (that's what our editorial policies say too ).

To return to the original question, I think another reason why no recent game got 5 stars is that those games were reviewed at the time of their release. 4.5 means extremely good, but 5 means that the game's making history -- and that's a very bold statement. (Of course, that's not really a problem for those who use those ridiculous percentage scores, but when you have only ten ratings, it does make a big difference.) As a reviewer, you're always more comfortable with rating games in retrospect than at the time of their release (and risk seeing your review fail to stand the test of time), and I feel that's why you don't see many people dare to give the highest score to a game without hindsight.

I haven't had the chance to review a new game that I felt was extremely good, but I wonder what I would have done if that had happened. For instance, if I had been reviewing the first Phoenix Wright, when very few people had yet had the chance to comment on it, would I have been so bold as to give it the 5 stars I definitely feel it deserves?* I hope I would have, but you never know until you're really faced with the circumstances...

* which is not to say that Laura only gave it 4.5 out of lack of courage; probably she just felt the game wasn't worth more (which is completely wrong, of course ).

[LuigiHann]

Sam and Max Episode 4 got 4.5 stars, so if episode 5 or 6 is waaaaay better (and addresses all of Ep 4's faults), it's conceivable that we might see 5 stars. Similarly, the first Phoenix Wright game got 4.5 stars, and while the 2nd didn't live up to that (and I'm guessing the 3rd won't either), the DS-native 4th game in the series, if it does everything right, could get a 5.
Then again, maybe not. It's just a number, anyway.

[SSH]

Most performance appraisals in jobs I have been in have had a theoretical top mark that no-one has ever got... similarly with the bottom mark: people are afraid of extremes!

[Crapstorm]

I don't think any of the adventure game reviewers would ever give an adventure game zero stars, no matter how incomplete or stupid it was. You get two stars right off the bat just for being an adventure game.

[Melanie68]

There's at leaast one game on here that's gotten a half a star and some with one and one and a half.

[Trumgottist]

This topic is also currently discussed at Quandary: http://www.quandaryland.com/ipb/inde...howtopic=11836 (The closed thread mentioned in that thread is http://www.quandaryland.com/ipb/inde...howtopic=11751 )