[Jack of Arcades]

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Review scores are usually a joke, it's hard to find good ones.

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FYP

The reviews themselves are usually good, but the scoring system is terrible.

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The 100 point scale is useless, nobody's going to be able to say "hmm, this is a 7.4, it's better than that game I gave a 7.3 but worse than that one I gave a 7.5)."

I made a spreadsheet of all PS2 reviews from IGN (minus duplicates).

1254 (88%) were rated as 5 or better.

877 (61%) were rated as 7 or better.

752 (52%) were rated as between 7 and 8.9

The average rating was a 7, and the median was a 7.3.

Here are the ranges for IGN's 100 point scale:

1-1.9 Abysmal
2-2.9 Terrible
3-3.9 Bad
4-4.9 Poor
5-5.9 Mediocre
6-6.9 Passable
7.0 Decent
7.5 Good
8.0 Impressive
8.5 Great
9.0 Outstanding
9.5 Incredible
10 Masterful

IGN seems to recognize that their scale is bogus, which is why they made it more granular toward the end.

Here are the totals for the above ranges:

Abysmal: 2
Terrible: 28
Bad: 52
Poor: 104
Mediocre: 140
Passable: 237
Decent: 196
Good: 191
Impressive: 200
Great: 165
Outstanding: 97
Incredible: 28
Masterful: 0

Using this scale you get a decent bell curve, but you still get the weird anomaly of having more "great" games than "mediocre" ones, and more "Impressive" games than anything but "passable," but that's due to 13% of games getting exactly a 7 or an 8.

47% of all games were rated "good" or better. Were there really 700 good ps2 games?