Our System
Our System, 
Our Review Philosophy
Currently, we believe that the way many Gaming sites and magazines choose to score games, using a 7 out of 10 or 70% as the average score, is fundamentally broken.
This system isn’t used to emulate a “public school grading system”, its more likely done to appease publishers who might threaten to stop review copies and/or pull advertising. Its our job here at Blistered Thumbs to have a responsibility to our Readers NOT Publishers – and we will NEVER allow undue influence over our ratings. Blistered Thumbs will NEVER exchange favor for rights to an “Exclusive Review”.
Its possible that as a direct result of our policy and “True Scale Review System” we might end up having to post our reviews slightly later than the other sites, especially if we aren’t issued a review copy alongside the other mainstream sites. We work hard to establish contact with as many publishers as possible to cover the games you care about. You can see a list of publishers we currently have contact with on our Publishers Contact page.
Blistered Thumbs has chosen to use a hybrid of two systems;
A Recommendation, such as Buy it, Try it or Skip it; as well as an Out-of-10 System.
The Highest Ratings combination on Blistered Thumbs!
We feel this offers us the most flexibility. For example, a game that scores a 5/10 on our system is deemed “Average” but may come with the Author’s “Buy it” Recommendation for a number of reasons such as an incredibly innovative feature, the title’s overall value, or simply the incredible price. It is then up to the reader to decide after the Review Text, Final Score and Author’s personal Recommendation on whether or not the game is worth their time or money.
Why did this author recommend a buy for a 5/10 game? Read the review to find out!
Also as a service to our readers we include Full Review Disclosures that lists the total amount of time spent to complete the single player campaign and the amount of time spent in various multiplayer modes and portions. We find this information is valuable and difficult to find so include it here to help the reader decide how much play time they will get with a title versus its cost. We also list whether or not the publisher provided a review copy, what system the game was reviewed on, as well as other other notes such as second playthroughs, personal notes, etc.
Finally, we offer a unique section called “Second Opinions“, in this section you will find a link to a Video or Text Review with a quick visual indication of the review’s tone (thumbs up/down) from one of our other staff members, with the hopes of offering a supporting or opposing opinion on a game’s overall worth – helping to paint a better overall picture for our readers.
The Reviewer says to Try Out Kane & Lynch 2, but Joe Strongly disagrees!
Review System Ratings
The first rating is that of a Final Score, this lets the reader know Out-of-10 where the game ranks. It’s important to take note of the worded description of the numerical rating. As stated before, we use 5/10 as Average – as fans of video games ourselves our Authors are told to start from this point and rank up or down depending on their gameplay experiences and analysis to ultimately arrive at a final score.
10/10 – Legendary
9/10 – Must Own
8/10 – Awesome
7/10 – Great
6/10 – Above average
5/10 – Average
4/10 – Below average
3/10 – Terrible
2/10 – Garbage!
1/10 – WTF?!
Author Recommendations:
Legendary!
Buy It Now.
For Fans Only!
Try It Out.
Avoid It.
Devil SPAWN!
As a final note, if you feel that any particular review posted on this site doesn’t abide by these guidelines please bring it to our immediate attention via staff@blisteredthumbs.net
- Joe Vargas
Blistered Thumbs
Director of Operations
