Dear Future Gamer

Why do you score in percentages? Sooner or later there's going to be a game which you think is so good you'll give it 100 per cent, thus depicting it as the perfect game. However, as technology advances, this game will most certainly be bettered. So, said game will either have to score higher than 100 per cent, which is ridiculous really, or you'll give it all these near perfect games, say, 98 per cent just to avoid this problem ever arising. Not really a fair system, as all these great games will receive pretty much the same score when some will be marginally better than others.

Also, why do you give games that you quote as "average" 60-70 per cent, which is blatantly higher than "average"? This system also makes it very hard for the writers to review games because there's such a small margin for error. Who's to say what the difference is between a 74 per cent game and a 75 per cent game?

In conclusion, I feel that scores out of five are much more appropriate. 1 is very poor, 2 is poor, 3 is okay, 4 is good and 5 is excellent. Simple, huh? And don't say 4 out of 5 is 80 per cent anyway, because that would just be silly.

Ben Brown

FG: We use a percentage scoring system because it gives us more flexibility. No game is ever perfect so you'll never see a game get a 100 per cent score in Future Gamer. I remember seeing a game get 100 per cent in an old Amiga mag, only for them to review a game the next month that they thought was even better, so yup, you guessed it, they gave it over 100 per cent - which, I agree, is ridiculous. We've never said an average gets 60-70 per cent. An average game gets 50 per cent. If something's slightly better than average it gets above 50 per cent. If it's worse than average it gets below 50 per cent. The difference between 74 per cent and 75 per cent is, well, 1 per cent. Scores out of five are too rigid, in our opinion.