Site Philosophy

Reviewer Planet currently uses a bottom-up community-based review structure.
As such, it's impossible to try and enforce numerical or alphabetical scores because everyone has their own bias.


So instead, we divide our reviews into three parts.

1. "Personal Impressions": This section is the bulk of a review. In this section, the reviewer talks about how they felt while playing the game. What was fun, what was not, what was broken... basically a summary of the experience. Anyone can do this when prompted.
2. "Game Design Achievements": This optional section is just a bulleted list of the developer's particularly noteworthy successes in the game's design. (great story, good characters, etc.)
   
3. "Game Design Failures": This optional section is just a bulleted list of the developer's particularly noteworthy failures in the game's design. (combat system is broken, etc.)
   

So basically, all reviews are strictly "opinion" pieces, readers gather what they want from a review and decide for themselves.

One could argue that "critic-written" reviews are trying to do the same thing.
However, "critic-written" reviews ultimately only have numeric or alphabetical scores because of "the bottom line". Being influenced by "the bottom line" is what causes "critic-written" reviews to miss the point. The point after all, was to simply let the world know what you thought of the game. So, rather than a small "exclusive" set of official reviewers, Reviewer Planet has a large "inclusive" set that anyone with good writing skills can get into.

Reviewers are encouraged not to use numerical scores or divide the review into sections such as "graphics", "music", "plot", etc. However, they're free to do so if they wish so long as they use their own style. (i.e. "Three robot sheep out of five") Copying another reviewer's numerical score style implies you have the same bias as they do, which you do not.