opinions vary

There's a thread on the TIGsource forums where people are sharing their IGF feedback - and, often, raging at the judges for Not Getting It or for contradicting each other.

Understandably, it is really annoying when you're faced with someone who has the power of judging your game's "value" - and they hate the entire genre you're working in, so you have only a slim chance of scoring anything other than "crap". It's also really annoying when a reviewer misses the incredibly obvious.

But judges disagreeing? That's why there are multiple judges in the first place! What seems innovative to one person may seem old hat to another based on either how they understand the mechanic OR what games they've personally played in the past. A judge who truly loathes jumping puzzles cannot be expected to give the same feedback as a judge who loves them, even if they try to look past their own limitations enough to guess whether it might be a good puzzle for those that like that sort of thing.

The real point of this is, of course, to bring me back around to my ongoing complaints about review scores and people expecting them to be some kind of objective ranking of value rather than opinion. OPINIONS VARY. If you don't know who's providing the opinion and what their biases are, their data is not necessarily meaningful to you in making your own choices!

(Your own choices about buying games, I mean)

A review only tells you one person's opinion.