How I rate games - The rubric

Now that I have explained to you why I want to review flash games, I think that it's time that I tell you how I will be rating them. The most important thing to a reviewing site is consistency, so that the audience (you) can reliably understand what a particular score might mean in context to other scores and other reviews. Here I will be providing a rubric for my reviews -- one that I will keep in mind during the review process of every game. Obviously you needn't refer back to this rubric before reading each review, but I think that giving it a glance once-over will help you understand the method to my madness.

The rating process

Most ratings systems are tired and old. They don't really provide much relevance to the average gamer. Topics like sound don't need their own score, and so I am inventing my own broad categories to integrate each aspect of the game into relevant scores that you can use to objectively decide whether any particular game is for you.

Each game will be scored 1 to 5 in these categories:

1. System - Basically the skeleton of the game and how well it supports the other categories. This category will be influenced by aspects in the game such as the controls, the flow of the menus, and the layout of the user interface. A game that is intuitive to play and just makes sense is the goal in this category.
2. Atmosphere - How immersive the game is. This category will be primarily scored on the audio and visual effects and how well the game utilizes these to heighten your suspension of disbelief. It doesn't matter if the game is deep or a parody or what, as long it uses effects to convince you that it is the most of whatever its trying to be.
3. Storytelling - Almost every game has a story, even if it is a very shallow story or a very short game. There are two ways to score highly in this category; have a very provocative storyline, and tell your story in a unique or interesting way. Using storytelling to influence other aspects of the game (such as a tutorial) will be a major bonus here.
4. Replayability - The whole point of playing flash games is to waste time, right? Thus, I am giving how much time you will waste enjoyably with this game its own score. Replayability describes how long the mechanics of the game will hold up before they become stale. Sometimes its several run-throughs, sometimes (for longer games) you'll be bored before you even beat the game once. Games that have variety or very addictive mechanics will score highly here.
5. Fun Factor - Sometimes a game is complete crap in every objective way, but it still incredibly fun for some unknown reason. Maybe one small part of the game is so addictive that you end up playing it for a long time even though the graphics are terrible, or maybe it just makes you laugh for 10 minutes straight and that's all its supposed to do. This is kind of a catchall for all the parts of the game that aren't included in other categories.

 Finally, the game will be given a "final score" that is a weighted averaging of the five categories. The weight will change from game to game depending on how I think each of the categories "should" have scored compared to what rating that they actually received. A RPG with poor storytelling will suffer more than a tower defense game with poor storytelling, for example. A game's final score will be highly dependent on the how it compares to other games in its genre.