New rating system for video games: A modest proposal

I was feeling nostalgic last night, so I went and downloaded the ending to Final Fantasy VIII. It's a half-hour long FMV orgasm. And it's the best video game ending. Ever. Seriously. It's that good.

Which made me realize, that for console RPGs especially (but also non-MMO games in general), a video game is only as good as its ending. I say console RPGs especially because these are the games that originated the 80-hour playthrough. We're talking a helluva lot of time invested in these mofos, so the payoff better be worth it. I remember in high school, a friend of mine saying, "after I beat Final Fantasy, I feel like Square should send a prostitute to my home for a free blowjob." A kickass FMV ending is the next-best thing. And, you know, it's less problematic.

This is why Halo 2 sucks. Yeah, I said it. I don't care what anyone says, that game is stupid. Oooh, look! He can hold two guns at once! Gee, we haven't seen that before! No in-game map + no ending = lame.

So I propose a formula to determine the value of a video game:

A = (Q_e x Q_gp)/T

That is, Awesomeness is equal to the quality of the ending times the quality of gameplay over time (i.e., time required to win). Note: This only applies to traditional single-player video games, not MMORPGs. It also does not speak to the quality of the multiplayer modes of games.

Now, it may seem that, according to this formula, a game that was 3 seconds long but had a great ending would be the most Awesome game ever. However, a game that was 3 seconds long would most likely not have any kind of gameplay, so actually, it would have an Awesomeness factor of 0. And yeah, "quality of gameplay" is kind of nebulous and subjective. But that's the way it is.

Okay, geek mode off.