Metacritic Madness

mrmessy · November 2017

I have only recently wondered what Metacritic scores actually are, having seen them mentioned on the net for years. So, I had a look. It seems it is a place where anybody can rate and “review” (and I use the term loosely) Music, TV, Films, Video Games and probably other products too. Oh dear.

It became quite obvious to me very quickly (bearing in mind I was not really familiar with Metacritic) that many of the video game reviews are from people simply trying to decrease or increase an average score. Here be Fanboys and Trolls.

Before I arrived at this conclusion, I thought I would take a look at some of my personal favourite games to see what scores they got, including a current favourite of mine, Horizon Zero Dawn. I was drawn to the small number of red “negative” rating, wondering what people were finding so bad about the game. For most of these red ratings, the people in question were giving the game a score of “0” out of 10. Really? Zero Dawn – zero rating?

I clicked on one of these “reviews”, which started off with the heading “Unbiased Review”, and expresses concern over "Sony fanboys" - only to find that the reviewer has only ever done two ratings. And here they are:
https://flic.kr/p/214ZJo3

Amazing. Our unbiased reviewer has managed to fully review both games on their actual release dates. I was vaguely aware that there was some sort of HZD vs BOTW thing going on, but this is blatant.

Sorry if everyone except me was already well aware of this rubbish. I don't know why I was so surprised. I should know better...

I give Metacritic 5/10, only because there are some real reviewers on there...

Rebelstar without a cause · November 2017

I think when people talk about Metacritic scores they're talking about the critics review scores which are collated from magazine and internet review sites.
I'd just ignore the user reviews, if I were you.

Vampyre · November 2017

Metacritic's always been worthless. In the past I've seen 100/100 or 0/100 for things that haven't even been released yet.

Rebelstar without a cause · November 2017

I liked the review of Alien Breed 3D 2 in the last Amiga Power. They said the game was shit in the review but gave it something like 96% to annoy all the people too lazy to read the review!

Zup · November 2017

Well...

I don't trust magazines/websites reviews. It's easy to see that some reviewers are easily "motivated" by software houses.

There are some indepent reviewers, but it's not easy to tell when one of those has been corrupted or is a fake.

I used to like Metacritic, because here in Spain we got worse problems with fanboyism. User reviews in other countries seemed more fair, but it seems that fanboyism is a worldwide problem and some software houses are actively "poisoning" reviews for their own purposes.

Also, downloadable demos seems to be nearly extinct.

It seems that the only mean to get a formed opinion before buying a game is to get a pirate copy or watch some gameplays on twitch or youtube (SPOILERS! SPOILERS!).

Timmy · November 2017

I don't trust these "professional" reviewers nowadays.

We know that since the Crash/YS/SU age, that even then the "reviews" are mainly written by people who have different access to games than the regular paying gamers.

Also these "reviewers" can't be partial because their games are different than the one we pay; for example they don't need to pay for them, and they definitely don't need to pay for any loot boxes.

Another thing is that these people don't care about the price of the games, an average 60(+ 400+ DLC) EUR/GBP/USD game has the same score of an average 10 EUR/GBP/USD game.

And these people can finish a game in 7 hours while I might play 70+ hours without even able finishing it.

Basically, you can trust those "professional" reviews just as much as a random political speech promising you free money. :)

DavidB · November 2017

Fanzine review's were the only honest ones. They generally had to pay for software. Apart from the odd generous company.

Timmy · November 2017

Well, I guess nowadays we normal people can figure out that there is no need to read any reviews of any AAA-gambling game. These gambling games are not worth buying even if those "reviewers" will try to convince you otherwise.

Metacritic Madness

Comments