@Applejack. I laughed so hard @ the “we hardly knew Ye” portion of this post. I laugh every time I pass it now. Thank u for that. I really liked those 2 also. They were meant to be read back to back & I loved the characters. Oh well, they will always have a special spot in the obscure DC section of my heart. I hardly knew Ye’.
IGN doesn’t give 0, 1, or 2 anymore as far as I know, and I don’t even think I’ve ever seen the ever elusive 3. I’ve definitely seen 4s though. It’s hard to not piss off the readership if you go and trash on someone’s art.
I think some games are certainly worthy of a 1, 2, or 3, and I think those games are mass produced, but I think most of them aren’t allowed for review because the already well-advertised games are the news stories that bring readership.
I don’t remember what Bethesda Brink got.
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IGN once famously gave God Hand a 3/10. They were extremely wrong.
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They just gave a movie a 3.
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Good analogy. And that’s why I like @dago-mage 's more subjective word grade system as opposed to a more objective number grade system. It allows for personal opinion; your own and others; without pissing off the readership. (Provided everyone is entitled to their opinion and everyone can agree to disagree.) 
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Proves my point.
When I say pissing off the readership, I specifically mean the readers of the news outlet/company/whatever the review belongs to.
I don’t think changing from a number system to a word based system is any different at all. Opinions are opinions. Another way said, subjectivity is subjectivity. A reviewer is always at risk of pissing off the readership (whether his own personal fanbase, or the pre-established readership of a magazine/company).
I’m was just saying IGN are fence sitters because if they rate something too low they can get a lot of flak and lose readers whom they lose credibility to (for making a review that regards whatever given subject with so little value) (there is always the stake if offending someone or being out of the standard deviation).
All reviews are personal opinion, otherwise they wouldn’t be a review and would just be a literal re-view. “Review” is just a bad term (because of the variable semantic values which the word implicates because if poorly chosen word roots) for judging the value of something (regardless if critically or not).
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exactly
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