At the heart of We Got This Covered lie the many reviews we provide for all sorts of media, from Films to Video Games to Albums to TV Shows. While each of our writers has different critical standards and styles, all our reviews provide comprehensive guides to the works being studied, in the hope that readers will have all the information they need before making decisions.
The cornerstone of each review is, of course, the text of the piece, and if you want to learn the most about the media being covered, reading the entire review is essential. But there are other components as well; at the start of each review, we break our general opinions down to the good and the bad, as well as providing a general verdict.
Finally, we have a unique grading system based on percentages, ranging from 0% to 100%. This is a little different from some sites, but it’s fairly intuitive so long as you don’t assume we’re grading movies and video games like your high school term paper. High school grades are silly. A 50% is not an F. An F is supposed to be the absolute bottom of the barrel. An F, by any logical standard, should be a 0%. So on our scale, a 0% would equate to an F. I’m not saying we’re smarter than your high-school teachers, but we are better at grading than they are, so there.
What follows is a guide to our percentage-based review scale. It’s laid out in five sections, arranged a bit unequally to demonstrate the weight of each possible grade and how it corresponds to other grading systems you may be more familiar with.
90% to 100%: A-range, 4-star, “Outstanding”
The top ten percent is reserved for the best of the best; you can read a 90% or higher grade as an A, if you like, or 4-stars, or conflate it with the highest superlatives, like “outstanding” or “fantastic.”
100% will only be given out for media we feel are flawless; a film like The Godfather, or a game like The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. The kinds of stories generally agreed to attain perfection are what you should think of when you see a 100%.
90% and 95% are reflective of truly great movies or games, like The Dark Knight or Red Dead Redemption, that while outstanding in every critical way, don’t quite achieve perfection. There may not be a notable flaw in any major area, but they aren’t quite 100% there because – let’s face it – few things are.
65% to 85%: B-range, 2.5 – 3.5 stars, “Decent” to “Good” to “Very Good”
Here’s where the scale opens up a bit. A “B”- level movie or game can mean a whole lot of things. Often, they are works we enjoy but don’t love, or love but find flawed, or want to love but can’t quite do so. Nothing in this percentage range could be called “bad,” but some are only on the cusp of being “good,” and none can be called “great.”
Some examples: I consider most recent Best Picture winners at the Oscars, like The Artist and The King’s Speech to be good but overrated movies, probably deserving of B’s or B+’s, falling somewhere around 80% on our scale. Movies that appeal to everyone without taking any bold artistic stance fall in this range of grades. The same goes for games; recent Call of Duty titles are probably B-level efforts, hovering around 80%. Titles that fall down to 65% are still B-level, which mean they’re still decent, but are on the verge of becoming mediocre.
That’s where the next range comes in.
40% to 60%: C-range, 1.5-2.0 stars, “Mediocre,” “Dull,” “Uninspired,” “Lifeless”
This is the stuff no one gives a damn about. Movies and Games that aren’t disasters, and maybe even have certain elements worth praising, but are overall forgettable efforts. These ones probably aren’t full-fledged “bad,” but they can sure seem like it at times.
One of the best examples of a film in this range is Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones. It’s not awful; some of the acting is nice, certain effects are impressive, etc. But the story is an absolute mess with no interesting progression, leads like Hayden Christensen are wooden as a board, and the whole film fails to incite interest. It rests squarely at 50%, inspiring nothing but disinterest. Some movies in this range can be a little better, or a little worse, but the core traits remain the same.
With video games, I tend to think of movie tie-ins for this range. Check our reviews of Brave – a 55% title – and Kinect Star Wars – at 50% – for examples of extremely forgettable, mediocre efforts.
20% to 35%: D-range, 0.5-1.0 stars, “Bad,” “Awful,” “Terrible,” “Atrocious”
Now we enter the danger zone. These are the works that cannot be considered “good” by any stretch of the imagination. They may have one or two redeeming elements – a solid performance, a decent gameplay concept, etc. – but on the whole, they are rotten to their core. Not so rotten, perhaps, that they are unforgettably bad experiences, works that scar the viewer for life, but a lot of them can come awfully close.
Some examples: any given Michael Bay film, with the exception of Transformers 2, which falls even lower than its wretched companions. Our piece on the 2012 film Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter – graded at 35% – is a good overview of what films in this range fail to achieve. There may be solid ideas, but the execution is disastrous.
0% to 15%: F-range, 0 to 0.5 stars, “Repugnant,” “Unholy,” “Unwatchable,” “Offensive”
This is where it starts to hurt. These are works of utter, unrepentant darkness, vast empty voids lacking any redeeming content, from which not even the faintest of lights can escape. These are the works that offend us, that get us outraged and inflamed over the very concept of their accursed production, the ones that we will never forget, no matter how much we may wish to, for the deep, permanent scars they leave behind.
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Batman and Robin. Battlefield Earth. Sucker Punch. Twilight. Twilight 2. Twilight 3. Twilight 4. Uwe Boll’s collected works. The demonic list goes on and on.
Films that earn these grades must be worthy of true outrage. Not just disinterest or boredom, but vitriol of the highest order. Take a look at my review of Adam Sandler’s That’s My Boy for more information; those are the words of a broken soul.
The same goes for video games. See what we wrote for Duke Nukem Forever or Gettysburg: Armored Warfare. These games insulted us. They made us sad. They made us want to swear off gaming forever. They are dark voids of negative energy.
But we hope most of what we review is better. As fun as it can be to pan a movie or game, it’s even more fun to watch or play something good. But whether it’s masterful or depressing, we call it like it is here at We Got This Covered, and we hope you enjoy everything our site has to offer.
