What is it with this site? Are they all kids just throwing up 10's and 0's for no reason? How are you supposed to get a real gauge on these games? No game deserves a 10 and none deserve a 0. I'm just finding it very unreliable and maddening.
There are many ways to get a good feel for a game from reading a game magazine. Watching videos of a said game on YouTube, Twitch. Or read a thread on it on Guru3D. Metacritic is just used to troll or flame.
Dont use metacritic. Find some youtube reviewers that has the same taste as you do, and that gives games about the same rating that you tend to give. And you will have pretty good reference point, if he gives good rating to some game, and he likes it, chances are you will like it aswell. Atleast thats what im doing, works good for me. I have abandoned corporate (money injected) reviews for some time now, and im not looking back.
The only review website I trust lately is PC Gamer.. they seem to share the same ideas as me and as far as I can tell they haven't sold out to big corporations for money.. Metacritic is nice only because they show a combined score of numerous professional reviews as one score, but that's a double edged sword considering the amount of paid reviews.
I don't really use it to gauge games. I just think its a shame that people are dumb enough to give games a 0 & 10. I do not trust review sites either ,because you know they are bought and paid for. I agree that you tube is the best. I have watch some game play on there. There are some honest people on metacritic tho. I just look for the reviews that are maybe a 5-7. Those people tend to review honestly.
Metacritic has its uses, people who hate on a game will point out what they find the short comings of what ever they are reviewing, they will give it a zero, which is ridiculous, but the critical parts may have some merit. Then you get the people who give a score of ten, they acknowledge the shortcomings but give the game a high rating to counter the zeros. Who is more whacked? User reviews on Metacritic give me a good laugh.
I agree with you rflair,that's the only reason I read reviews on there. Lets face it,they are kids. Most adults don't do crap like that. Giving a game a 0 or 10 to counter is idiocy.. I tend to read the reviews of the 5-7 area. Normally they are more intelligent reviews.
To be fair, YouTube is largely a sesspool as well.. Some of the comments I've read on there I'm sure have taken my IQ down a couple points. Metacritic is no better or worse than YouTube in my opinion.. some comments hold some weight, some are actually very insightful, and the rest.. well...
The worst thing in the world, and I'm sure I'm probably being over-biased, is when you load up a game review on youtube and the instantly hear some snot-nosed sounding kid start talking. I instantly close the video and move on to another review. Sadly most review sources are tainted and it's become hard to find a good source. PC Gamer is sadly one of the few ones left, and I'm not even sure if they are 100% honest.
There is only 1 game I can think of that would deserve a 0... And that's Battleship AD3000. But a game like Mordor,just because you didn't like it doesn't deserve a 0! They could easily give it a 4 or 5. Hopefully these kids aren't old enough to vote or they would destroy the country..
Why would anyone look at Metacritics user scores? Totally worthless. The value of Metacritic is as an aggregate of reviews and for that it can be useful. Its also useful in showing upcoming games and release dates.