Why is Metacritic so bad?

It's ok, but some people put too much stock in it. I don't take it too seriously, but what I like about MetaCritic is I can read multiple opinions on a game in one place, I don't really pay attention to the average score too much. I get to read what people that loved the game thought, and what people that hate the game thought. It gives you more perspectives to say the least.

But the site does have some problems, take for example Eurogamer, they often have multiple regions for their reviews (such as Eurogamer portugal, Eurogamer Spain etc...) and each one of these reviews is pretty much the exact same in wording and score, but metacritic counts all these as seperate reviews. This tends to over inflate the score a bit, and some sites seem to boost the number higher.

But in the end I don't really care about that. I just use it for the multiple reviews so I can get more than one opinion on a game, some people take the site like it's the word of God but that's not right at all. People shouldn't put so much stock into it.

I like metacritic. It's an easy way to see what the consensus on a game is, although it usually pays off to read the reviews as well.

I think the problem is that some people take it too seriously. The score a game receives is nothing to get worked up about.

its because video game review scores are FUCKED across the board. hell even giantbombs scores are kinda fucked.

an average game, a pretty decent and enjoyable game is a 5/10. its a 3 star game. yet if someone see's three stars, or a 5/10 they go "oh shit i dont want that piece of shit game". so reviewers have to up their scaling and rate that "decent game" a 4/5 or a 7/10.

metacritic averages these scores, which in itself isn't a bad thing, but when you take into effect reviewers that "fluff up" their reviews, and ones that are honest (and yes i think GB fluffs). which are in turn used by publishers to decide which developers should stay in business.

i mean hell, GB reviews skew the scores like crazy on metacritic cus a 5/5 reads as a 100/100. a 4/5 reads as an 80/100. ect. math. so it gets fucked.

metacritic itself as a tool is a fine, yet the way its used by just about everyone is horrible.

I actually really like metacritic. It's a handy resource for me when I'm looking into purchasing a game. I do generally avoid the user reviews as they're often not very helpful.

I have a problem with how they translate the scores from certain sites. Like 1up has a letter grade system, a C- is graded at 41 on Metacritic, an A is 100, but 1up has an A+ which is also 100. Its just random, broken and they never fixed it.

The thing is though that even if their system is flawed you can still compare games directly against each other since they are theoretically being scored as equals even if the meaning behind each site's review system is marginalized. Like I can see right now that Tomb Raider is scoring slightly above previous entries from Crystal Dynamics while Dead Space 3 has reviewed significantly lower than its predecessors and that reflects the general opinions I've been reading and listening to lately.

I don't think you should base purchasing decisions on a metacritic score, you should actually read some of the reviews forming that score. And publishers should absolutely not be placing a metacritic score as a requirement in a contract. But metacritic is an okay place to gauge general opinion of one game against another.

Maybe it's just the type of people writing the reviews but I end up trusting Metacritic more for my games than Rottentomatoes for my movies. There are plenty of critically acclaimed movies that I found very boring.

I avoid it because it shines a light on how childish a lot of gamers can be. And i'd rather just ignore that portion of the gaming community.

I dont mind gamerankings though, it does what it says without any of the bullshit.

@animasta: You don't think 3/5 is the same as 6/10?

Reviews in general are bad. I don't need to read a review to know if I want to buy a game, I only skim reviews to find out if a game is plain broken or has horrendous technical issues. Stuff like Metacritic is entirely pointless in my eyes but it is a quick indicator of whether a game is plain broken or not. (kinda)

After years of reviews singing the praises of games that bored me to death (like GTA IV, AC1, MGS4) I kind of stopped listening.

I do a lot of research when buying stuff that matters and isn't throwaway, such as PC hardware, phones and car parts, but games? Nah.

I think, if a game is reviewed by a sufficiently large enough number of enthusiast press members, the meta-critic ranking will be somewhat valid. But many games can end up skewed with fewer reviews and a few outliers, and comparison validity also does not hold up over time (I would say 3-months) so it ends up being misleading at best.

Control of the release dates of reviews, and ensuring that certain outlets will be less likely or completely unable to put out a review in a timely scale add to this.

It also encourages not reading reviews, but many of those are so similar that I think that is more of an item that arises from wounded pride on the part of the review writers. It really does say that a large portion of the reviewer's effort ends up wasted, and ultimately makes the review just another statistic/cog rather than a comprehensive reaction.

Clearly there are many non professional reviewers that, for some reason, somehow get their reviews on metacritic. Still, the site summarises many reviews in a cool way so you can have a general idea of the main pros and cons of a certain game and stuff like that.

Which is fine for you but I hate it because it seems like a lot of people just care about the number and the number is extremely inaccurate.

I always found it interesting when people in the industry talk smack about metacritic but when they talk about movies they mention Rotten Tomatoes all the time. They serve the same sort of function. Anyway, I think that people (my people I mean press people) is that unless you have a 100 point score system, the metacritic score won't necessarily reflect the score that you ment the game to have. Also, the publishers use of the score seems to be broken as well (tying it into bonuses and such).