I've never understood the venom directed at Metacritic. The site is no more or less than a compilation of critics' reviews and users' less-than-informed opinions. As such, I use it all the time as a resource in the same way I use Wikipedia as a launching point to seek out aggregated source materials. And I ignore the chatter from the peanut gallery.

I actually find Metacritic quite useful as a review warehouse of sorts. It provides you with the links to the complete versions of each of the Critic reviews it aggregates so you don't have to go around Googling "___________ review." It's all there for the reading. The Metascore (despite being its flagship feature) is actually the least important thing it provides.

By the way, Mega64 made a pretty funny video about this same topic :

http://mega64.com/2011/11/12/think-twice-about-reviewing-uncharted-3-modern-game-journalism-the-movie-premieres/

I don't follow metacritic but I do read reviews from various sites.  Scores/grades have a little impact on me when it comes to purchasing games.  I think all comments shouldn't be allowed on a review until the game itself is release.  Yeah, we have forums but I think comments should be lock until release so that a fair response is given back.  Just vecause zelda got a 10 from different people shouldn't make a another reviewer jump on the band wagon.  We need to hear the opinions and thoughts from all with a fair mind.  Gamers need to play it and then blog/podcast their personal feeling and opinion about games.

@Roberto - That Mega64 video is nothing short of genius.

@Rus - I think the reviewers behind the Metacritic aggregate have a lot to answer for. I tweeted some reviewers regarding the perfect scores they either did, or said they would award Battlefield 3. They openly acknowledged that the games they were reviewing were flawed, but opted for a perfect score anyway. http://bitmob.com/articles/editorial-reviews-scores-dont-add-up

You can't assign blame to gamers alone. Dennis Scimeca wrote a similar piece which I think missed the point. For years, game reviewers seem happy to use one side of the 1-10 scale for the majority of the games they review. As above, a game assigned a 7.5 is seen to have bombed when mathematically, 7.5 is an above average score. 

Maybe reviewers need to acknowledge that a game that is average should get 5 or 5.5 instead of 7. A good game should get a 7 instead of an 8.5. Better yet, why not scrap scores altogether? 

At no point would I suggest Metacritic is evil (though you can absolutely take issue with some of their methods of assigning more subjective scores in the cases of alpha/non-scored reviews). It's a tool. It's a starting point. The problem is too many people stop right at that big number in the pretty colored box.

And it's also worth noting that publishers have gotten wise on how to game Metacritic. A lot of early, super-positive reviews go up -- possibly from sites you've never heard of -- to artificially inflate the aggregate during the critical launch window. Battlefield 3's a good example. I think it's score was around 94 the week it released (and I wouldn't be surprised if that number didn't show up in timed ads), but now it's settled down to a more reasonable 89.

I've purposely never let reviews decide if I wanted to buy a game or not.  Or pre-release hype, for that matter; when Assassin's Creed came out, I'd seen videos and read stuff, and nothing I had seen interested me.  I heard "Prince of Persia's spiritual successor" (and mind you, I like Prince of Persia.  A LOT.) and saw the pretty graphics and said "Meh."  It wasn't until a good friend of mine told me how AMAZING the storyline was, and how they had cleverly interweaved fictional conspiracy theories believably into an actual historical timeline, that I decided I would give it a shot.  It ended up being amazing.

I've bought about eighty bajillion Sonic games and collections on all their platforms because I KNEW Sonic, as a series, always had at the very least PLAYABLE history with me (Sonic '06, you are retconned.  You never happened) so I knew when Sonic Generations hit the PC, I'd be picking it up, since that's where I got my first Sonic fix.  Sonic had built a relationship of trust with me, and I rewarded that with a chunk of my paycheck.

Reviews are fine.  They are opinions.  When they become not opinions, but something that affects an aggregate score (ESPECIALLY when those scores are manipulated; 3/5 does NOT equal 60%, nor does 4/5 equal 80% when taken out of context) and THAT is being contested, we have problems.  I like reading opinions, but if I had my way, we would just take numbers out of the equation and simply... I don't know.  READ reviews.  Imagine that.

Clearly, the internet is just too easy to use.

If only I was an EIC of a major publication or something.  I'd write a positive review for a good game, and then give it a 1.0 score, just to see what happens.

Great and timely article. I've only recently started to read the comments on reviews. I'm still amazed by the amount of people that declare a review wrong without having played the game. It's something I've hardly ever seen for, say, film reviews. Why? Because gaming breaks brains. Games are part of an Illuminati plan to dumb us down. That's the only possible explanation.

I feel this is a problem on several fronts though. On one side you have gamers who think a review makes or breaks a game. While it can help/harm sales/form opinions of people who will never play it. Reviews are just the feelings of said reviewer.

But this is a bit of a tricky thing though. Since a few people rely on reviews to tell them if a game is good, and whether to buy it or not. So a positive/negative review can help/harm new titles from new series people are unsure of.  But when it comes to established series where a fan base is going to buy the games regardless of reviews another person's opinion is  rather irrelevant. Unless the game is completely broken.

But really gamers should just go out there, and buy games, and make their own opinions. While it's not possible for most gamers out there to buy tons of games, and play them, and form a opinion on them. The least they can do is not argue talking points, and claim it as their own.

Now onto the other side of the problem. The reviews itself. Personally I feel when it comes to game reviews scores have been inflated to nearly comical proportions. We seem to be living in an era where a 9-10 is the only worthy score, and anything below that is considered 'trash'.  Perhaps gamers have gotten so use to high scores we now expect them on anything. Or perhaps its due to the idea of getting ones money worth.  If there was one thing I could change about gaming it would probably be fixing the review scale into the old EGM system.  Where a 10 should be impossible to get, and a 1 meant stay away, and a 5 meant the game is average and middle of the road.

But with all the review styles out there, from 1-4, 1-5, A+-F, 1-10, 1-100. The main trick is to get reviewers to utilize the scale more, rather than sticking the best game they played that month  with a 9-10.

You also have to consider that a good portion of the people responding to the critics are actually kids. (Yes I know a lot of adults also play video games and act like 12 year olds)

Kids nowadays are a lot more advanced with technology, its kind of common place with them.  I have 10 year old nephews that send me multimedia messages all the time with their cell phones.  Even though they are tech savvy, they still arent mature and in the end they are still kids and will act like children when the opportunity arises.

This doesnt excuse the adults behaving like children, but I have a feeling there are a lot more of them than you think posting on these gaming sites.

About the Gamespot review:

I haven't visited or trusted Gamespot in a while, which is why I come to Bitmob. But to each his own. If he thinks it's a 7.5, that's fine. 

But you do have to say and think -- Everyone else thinks this iteration of Zelda is awesome. Nearly every other iteration of Zelda has been reviewed as being awesome. So when you're the one guy that gives it a 7.5...you have to question it.

Maybe he's Roger Ebert. Maybe he's some great critic that understands the flaws better than mainstream society. Maybe he sees the imperfections of the Mona Lisa and thinks it doesn't deserve the praise that it is receiving. Or maybe he's just a guy with an idiotic opinion.

Either way, it's his opinion to have...so he has the right to have it and publish it. But I also have to right to surmise that he's probably just giving a solo idiotic opinion on the game.

This is exactly why we over at greatgamingcrusade.com have switched to a 5 point scale. Actually READING the review is what matters most. Also, having a 5 point scale makes more use of the full scale as those with a 10 point or 100 percent scale usually only use the top 1/2 to 1/3 of their scale anyway and this is why a 7.5 reads mor elike a .5 to most readers. It's a mixxed bag in my mind: the readers AND the reviewers are to blame equally.

This article mistakes the gamers it criticises for something that they really aren't: People who buy a game because of a review. - Off course there are many many people out there who buy because they see a favourable review but those usually ain't the ones who take part in discussions. The loud people usually are very well informed about their games because they tend to follow the development of games they have interest in, in very detailed ways. While they might not be able to get their hands on early builds and review copies, I say there is a great chance that those people actually know more about a specific game than a professional journalist because they passionately follow the development of a few games they are interested in over a multitude of different media outlets and don't have to deal with work while doing so, like a journalist does. In addition to that off course you can know if a game is good or bad if you haven't played it. I and many others have been gamers for a very long time and at least I usually know pretty well if a game is worth my while without having played it or seen a score. That's experience.

Here starts the specific problem the article deals with: While what a player sees might be enough for him to judge if he'd like a game or not, it is not objective criticism. And while those loud gamers don't really need objective criticism to judge if a game is worthy buying or not, they want it critics for entertainment and "becoming part of something". Owning a game that is appraised always felt like something good. Back in the day I knew from the first screenshots I saw that I needed to have Metroid Prime, I bought it day one and it had a sticker that said "96%" on it. That sticker was completely irrelevant to my purchase and looked really ugly but it is still on the cover because I liked the thought of owning something this good.

But here is the problem: The journalist doesn't write the review for me but for all people in his audience and mostly for the people who need his advice to know which game to buy. And if 80% of this audience can have fun with Uncharted 3 I cannot expect the reviewer to give it a shit score just because I wouldn't have fun with it. Et vice versa.

But please, stop giving 10's. That's just ridiculous.