Do "Perfect" Games Exist For You?

[Koh]

A rather simple question.  Has a game ever been a 10/10 for you?

My answer would of course be no, never, and there never will be, no matter how much I like the game.  Final Fantasy Tactics is probably one of the most finely crafted, incredibly orchestrated and deep RPGs you can play, but even with all that I'd only consider it a 9/10 game.  Nothing ever get s a perfect score, because nothing is perfect.  There's always something somewhere that makes it lose some points, whether it be a design oddity, bugs or glitches, or whatever else that takes away from the polish or experience.

[psychospacecow]

10/10 usually doesn't mean that a game is perfect. Skyrim was critically acclaimed, got perfect scores in a lot of places, and was one of the buggiest messes I have ever laid my eyes on. It would be ridiculous to assume that any one game is "perfect". There's always something that could have done better, and devs more often than not DO want it to be better and have more time but they simply have to face reality and logistics. A lot of games get a 10/10 from me. That doesn't mean they're perfect.

[Monobrobe]

Depends on the definition of perfect. To me, a game can have tons of problems and still be perfect. Banjo-Tooie is my all-time favorite game, despite its problems. Well, the only real problem I personally had with it was that it would slow down in certain places, and, of course, the graphics are pretty dated compared to what we have nowadays. But does it have pretty much everything I've always wanted in a game? Yes. Is it a game I'll always come back to and always enjoy? Absolutely. It's perfect in my book.

Of course, that's just me with a very simplistic view.

[puggsoy]

When I often think about "perfect", I think about other people, and in that case it can never be perfect. No matter how much I like a game, someone else won't like it as much and then it won't be perfect. By this definition it's impossible to make a perfect game.

If we're just talking about only my opinion, well, then I still think that it's really not possible to make a perfect game. Pretty much every game has something that could be improved upon, and it simply wasn't because it can only be noticed in hindsight. Perfecting it afterwards doesn't make it perfect anymore, because a perfect game would have everything 100% on-point from the start.

A perfect game would be the most fun, exciting, emotional, challenging, and memorable experience. It'd have infinite replayability without becoming any less fun, but that would also mean that you wouldn't ever want to play any other game. So even if it was possible, I think I wouldn't want it to exist. Because I love playing different games, all the variations and awesome things they do, despite their flaws. A truly perfect game would render every other game trash (for whoever renders that game perfect), and I think that would just be a shame.

---

OK, now I'll actually talk about it more realistically.
In terms of 10/10, I don't really rate games (at least not on a scale). I do often go over the graphics, music, and aesthetics, but I don't really like saying "well the graphics were 5/10, gameplay was 7/10 and music was also a 5, so I'd rate it about a 5.6/10". I just think about how much the graphics related to the gameplay, if they actually had an impact on my decisions and how I experienced it, if it would work better or worse with a different art style. And the music, did it also affect me much, was it actually a part of the game or more of something to listen to in the background? If I start rating it on scales, I look at it more objectively, as individual pieces rather than how they come together as a whole. Whether the aesthetics in a game are good or bad depends, in my opinion, on the game itself. One example I often use is VVVVVV. Some people would say it's terrible graphics, or "too retro". I think that, while the game would also work well with more detailed graphics, the style was still enjoyable in the game, and allowed me to focus more on the puzzles.

So yeah, it's hard for me to say if a game is perfect for me. I would say that some games I enjoyed a lot, wherever the joy actually comes from, be it how beautiful it looked, how challenging it was and the sense of achievement, if it was funny to mess around, felt good to help NPCs, the story was intriguing, it made me think in interesting ways, or any other of the hundreds things that make a game "fun". The ones that I enjoyed the most, and replayed (or plan to replay) to enjoy them again, are probably those which I would consider the closest to "perfect".

[Zero Kirby]

In my humble opinion - why bother having a ten out of ten if you're never gonna hand one out. What is the point.

Nobody's gonna learn anything from that, this isn't school, and the developers don't care what Joe Schmo on the Internet says about their game not being a ten out of ten but still getting a nine. "Oh, well, obviously we can make some improvements, but a nine still means good." Well, duh. Nothing's perfect. So why bother trying when all you can get is a nine? What if every reviewer did this? "Oh, they never hand out tens because tens don't exist. We got a nine though. So obviously we did as good as we can and don't need to try any harder!"

If you're gonna rate something out of ten, have parameters for handing out the ten that don't call for the game being completely flawless. It doesn't necessarily have to be PERFECT to get the best score possible. But don't parade that this golden score doesn't exist for you because it just makes you look like an incredibly-hard-to-please-hardass-about-number-meanings.

Come to think of it, incredibly-hard-to-please-hardasses-about-number-meanings are why I hate numbered scores anyway.

[psychospacecow]

This kind of reminds me of an English teacher a friend of mine complained about. Apparently, she would give 99s to students specifically to prove that nothing they ever did would be perfect. Always figured that was a strange way of communicating things to 9th graders. She wasn't a teacher when I was in 12th grade now that I think about it.

[NICKtendo DS]

A 10/10 doesn't automatically mean it's perfect. It just means it did everything right.
For example, I had one school project where I had to design a robot, make a 3D model of it and animate it. My class mates had way more complex designs and way more details, while my robot was just a simple sphere with arms. I got a 10/10, because while my robot took less effort, my teacher couldn't give me a lower grade than that. I met every criteria. I did everything right, but my robot was far from perfect.

I don't have a game that ticks every box for me (maybe Super Mario Maker after a certain amount of DLC), but if there was, there's going to be a game in the future that's better. Besides, what I consider a 10 could be a different grade to someone else.

Perfect games shall never exist, because people are different and art is ever evolving.

[Arcrom]

Rating a game is very subjective to the point that is almost impossible to say that a game is perfect, 10/10 or A+ because a lot of factors contribute to our rating: Games’ music, plot, characters, genre, etc…

I find that things like hype and review sites contributes a lot in some people minds when they state that [insert any game name here] is perfect.

[Koh]

In my humble opinion - why bother having a ten out of ten if you're never gonna hand one out. What is the point.
-Rest-

Those of us who use this system would probably explain it this way:  A point of reference.  Since we're establishing that 10/10 implies the game is perfect, and that no further polish could be done to enhance the experience, we're saying a 9/10 game is "near perfect."  This doesn't mean that the concepts behind the game can't be perfect for us (i.e. Pong, Chess, Tetris, Columns, Puyo Puyo, Solitare, etc.), but something about the execution seems off or could be improved.

For example, I think Puyo  Puyo is a 9/10 puzzle series, and will always enjoy its gameplay, but some things about its gameplay always came across as awkward for me.  Like how you can't access the hidden rows above the board until you build a staircase and rotate the piece up it.  You can't just simply move the pieces over those high columns while it's coming from above the board.

[Gors]

honestly, seriously giving score to games is really dumb.

as if developers will see these scores and say "oh man, we got 7/10 this year, let's make a better game using its parameters and aim for 10/10"

While developers will indeed use their past experiences to build a better game in the future, it's dumb to give actual numerical value to that.

The modern society is highly dependant on numbers. Okay, numbers are important in our lives and I'm not saying "abandon math". But, math is often used for things that shouldn't be much of an issue. I think this is ingrained to our heads because of the majority of us playing games and having to rate characters' health and stats via numbers. Of course, numbered/graded exams also take part in this.

But this is not the truth when a subjective point of view is taken. You can't rate a game a number out of a number, because it's subjective. There are many nuances to why you like a game or not, and It's useless, if not impossible, to go and give random numbers to every single factor that makes up a game (especially because when you play a game, you aren't enjoying the sprites, gameplay or music alone: you're enjoying the whole piece).

This being said, perfect games don't exist because perfect is a concept. It's not a thing that really exists, like infinity and Pitcairn Islands.

[Koh]

I agree that the number alone is useless. This is why I like thorough reviews that try to be as objective as possible. The number gives you an idea of how close to "perfection" they found it to be from their perspective, and the text should give all the accompanying reasons for why that is so, and why it didn't get full points.

i.e.

I'd rate the Graphics a 5/10.
The score is right at the halfway mark, because the graphics are just okayish. They get the job done and everything looks like what they should, but they don't really bring out the world or the characters. Everything animates stiff and roboticly, and don't convey much emotion or action. There are a very limited number of animations too; the character's sprites hardly ever reflect the actions they're currently performing. Like when they lift up an object, you'd expect for the character to look like they're carrying it, but they're just using the same walking sprites with no change, with the object just floating above their head.

[Kriven]

I used to write reviews on my blog and was pretty dedicated to reviewing things on Goodreads/similar sites and going with a 1/5 or 1/10 model... but now I just rate things by "I Like It", "I Think It's Okay", and "I Don't Like It". Those are the only ratings that really mean anything, IMO.

As far as "Perfect"... I mean, nothing ever will be, but there are quite a few games, my "Desert Island" games, that I hold above the rest.

[Yawackhary]

There are no perfect games since there are a bunch of factors involved (plus nothing really is perfect since anything have variations preventing as such). Each person likes different things so it isn't a case of universally liked games. Even highly popular games like Candy Crush, Tetris, Super Mario Bros, GTA series, FIFA have people who dislike them whether it is not to their tastes or find problems with them. Technically due to the complexity of some games, it might even be considered really imperfect due to bugs or really bad performance with slowdown/tearing/graphically glitches/physic/collision issues. Like Bethesda's games, they get high scores and people really like the games even though due to the engine there are a metric ton of bugs, some that really do annoy a person playing to the point of game breaking/inability to complete the game (why I only have one Bethesda game and the port was done by someone else, non-game of the year too since that version had some game breaking bugs). Doesn't help that many of these bugs are never fixed and some versions are still too risky to try still (e.g. Skyrim on the PS3, some consider it broken). Whether it is due to the gaming environment, publisher pressure, time limits or just don't care.

Regarding reviewers, it is to do with context of the review. A fair amount of reviews are indeed biased, both positive or negative. So someone like Jim Sterling loves Dynasty Warriors, so he will give the games a high score since he likes the game series however someone who is big on say the Last of Us and plays games for the story rather that the gameplay might give Dynasty Warriors a low score due to the repetitive gameplay controls (even if it is more than just pressing Square and Triangle) and lack of an emotional story to their interest. Many of these reviews were actually "paid off by the publisher" whether it is ad space on a website, an exclusive preview beforehand, advertising or in the case of a few games sadly had to play them with the publisher looking at them (e.g. GTA IV, Metal Gear Solid V for a few people for the latter). If they get a bad review or bad press as in that the publisher doesn't like it, they get blacklisted by a publisher for anything and has actually happened a bit recently (Kotaku is banned by Bethesda and Ubisoft, Jim Sterling is banned by Konami). It even dates back to the Spectrum days so it isn't anything new. Someone actually tried to do a subjective/balanced review of Final Fantasy XIII however the reason why more subjective reviews weren't made were because for a lot of people it is "too dry" and want to see either some praise or bash it like anything. Either that or the review was a joke.

Many 10/10 rating games are hard to call it that score whether it to reflect the score at the time or to this day. A few while I don't think are 10/10 at all (e.g. GTA IV) due to the problems of the game and possible bribery, even the games that I enjoyed that got the score (or 5/5, 100%, whatever) find it hard to make a personal judgement generally. It is really that good? Even some 6/10 games are more closer to my favourites rather than the 10s. For the past year, I have been trying all sorts of games. It is down to really like it, like it, like it but does have problems from liking it further, it's okay or just don't like it. Personal opinion and try to go for stuff with my tastes but also trying something new to see (Plus personally the quality of games on consoles has been higher compared to 10 years ago where you have some strong highs but also some very lows, it is more consistant even if the game is just okay). Actually I stopped following reviews but still aware of the bad eggs (the original one was 6/10 or higher to consider a game).

Similar things to movies, books and music. All of these get a score but they seem to have more of a free pass publically compared to games, even though personally if games shouldn't have scores neither do the other mediums. Even Rotten Tomatoes is still using a scoring system. Books don't even have a rating system for content and they get away with content that are banned/restricted in other mediums... Only a very few publishers actually tell people whether it has violence or bad language in a book. In the case of movies, I just try to watch something that fits to my tastes, I don't want to know that Magazine X or Newspaper Y gave it 4 stars (Shaun the Sheep got a high score but I found the movie sooooooo boring).

As for a game that I personally consider perfect, sadly there isn't one. OutRun 2006 was very very very very close though. Well for me it is due to the graphics/music/gameplay hitting all of the spots for me but there are a few things preventing me from calling it perfect though. If there was a category for arcade perfection that would be the closest thing to me. I do have my favourites though but none are perfect, some even have performance issues or quirks.

[Maxpphire]

Dark Cloud 2

That's my perfect game.

[Omegajak]

A rather simple question.  Has a game ever been a 10/10 for you?

My answer would of course be no, never, and there never will be, no matter how much I like the game.  Final Fantasy Tactics is probably one of the most finely crafted, incredibly orchestrated and deep RPGs you can play, but even with all that I'd only consider it a 9/10 game.  Nothing ever get s a perfect score, because nothing is perfect.  There's always something somewhere that makes it lose some points, whether it be a design oddity, bugs or glitches, or whatever else that takes away from the polish or experience.

You son of a snitch you WOULD use Tactics as the go to "It's really great but it's not perfect!" game!

Perfection in of itself an illusion we think things that have imperfections to be perfect simply because we accept we can't like everything about anyone thing. So when people say something is 10/10 and then they explain why and what that means to them i usually can attest and find common ground to agree. For example Splatoon, not my cup of every day tea but that game is getting number is really robust colorful, fun and not a chore to just pick up and play. Or like Pokemon. All i ever wanted from Pokemon was that black people exist I can be a black person who trains Pokemon and I can change my clothes they gave me that in X and Y and that games still got imperfections and I consider it to be one of if not the best entry in Pokemon and that's coming from someone who was content with Pokemon after getting Crystal.

So do perfect games exist? No. Are there games so good they make it very easy to overlook a lot of other things that could make the overall product better? Yes. Those are the games we strive to create.