Do you trust the MetaCritic scores?

[Aikouka]

I don't take scores at face value.

I usually almost always take a quick look at a few different reviews. If I see that a game has great scores (especially from both critics and users), I'll usually read whatever the lowest ratings are. Sometimes those reviews are useless, but other times, they may reveal something that would affect my purchasing decision.

The only problem that I run into is that reviews are usually a one-time deal. If a game is a bit of a buggy mess at release, it usually gets hammered for it. What if the game is actually good and gets fixed properly (and timely). The reviews never change. I have to hope some of the user reviews touch on the changes.

In other words, sometimes when a game reviews poorly, I'll look at the good reviews to see why they rated it so well. It could be because of fixed bugs or simply another perspective on what made them enjoy the game. The latter might be something that I end up agreeing with.

 

[Maximilian]

 

[Rezident]

I used to read reviews until I'd read one too many that was completely and utterly wrong (in my opinion) and realised that a review - even a professional one - is usually just someone's opinion, which I may completely disagree with.

I don't even look at reviews if it's a game I was going to buy anyway (max payne 3, half-life etc.) but if it's a game I didn't get on release and was considering e.g. Crysis 2 then yes I look at Metacritic. I don't have time for games with a Metascore less than 80-85%.

 

[JeffMD]

I find the meta score is fine and that the user score is useless. Both me3 and diablo 3 user scores were influanced by a single factor that does not make or break a game.

 

[coloumb]

Nope - no reason to in this day and age of live feeds [including onlive service] and youtube.

 

[diesbudt]

I trust the "number" review of a user more than a critic.

However the actual review writing I would take a critic over a user almost anyday. As they mention many parts of the game and don't just focus on the One thing that made or break a score with a user. Plus a good critic writer will always mention the issues with the good on a game. Though there isn't too many good critic writers.

 

[BurnItDwn]

I will read reviews and learn a bit about weather or not I want to play a game by the content of the review. However, I completely ignore the scores for the most part as I have found games with 80+ scores that I didn't like and games with low scores that I loved.

 

[Gordon Freemen]

It's all based on personal opinion that being said we are all human and opinions are bought and sold and manipulated everyday me I take everything I hear and learn with a grain of salt no matter the source.

 

[Anubis]

nope not at all.

Critic reviews can have some merit, but i don't go by score, I read what they have to say and add that to the information from other sources. Numerical reviews are stupid.

Most user reviews are also useless. Like the people spamming Diablo3 who admitted they never played the game, yet gave it all 0's.

A huge amount of people playing games don't bother to review them. And the people that are the most vocal are usually people who have negative opinions, which slants the reviews. Generally people who enjoy a game don't go searching the internet for review sites to profess their love for the game. Haters on the other hand seem to want to announce their dislike for the game to anyone who will listen.

I really think Steam should implement a review system where if you owned the game you could rate it right there within the steam user interface. That way you could ensure only people who actually own/played the game can review it and it would get opinions from a wider amount of players. They could even include a %played with your review to see if the person rated the game after 30min or played a significant amount.

I agree with this.

for me game reviews are like movie reviews, 99% worthless and not worth reading.

 

[Druidx]

I only go by the reviews if both the critic and users scores agree, otherwise I give emphasis to the user scores.

 

[KaOTiK]

I use it as a tool sometimes. I'll read a few of the best and worse scores and get a general idea of what the game did right and wrong. That's as far as I go though, I go to forums and read peoples actual opinions on a game and decide from there if I am not sure. 99% of the time I know if I want a game or not after watching a video or two and reading on its features.

 

[DigDog]

MetaCritic score for ME3 : 94 (and the highest in history)
MC score for Skyrim: 93

my reviews

ME3 - boring, 3/10. good for people who play barbie dress up and the sims.
skyrim: 3/10 , broken, repetitive, just plain bad.

 

[VashHT]

I haven't trusted reviews in a while, they basically just throw 9+'s at any big hyped game that comes out, I've played a lot of these games and they're nowhere near as good as the ratings suggest. 9 or higher means a game is practically perfect, that's just not true and considering how many games get scores like that nowadays makes the whole system worthless.

 

[Pr0d1gy]

I don't even look at reviews anymore, it's pointless.

 

[Sulaco]

ME3 - boring, 3/10. good for people who play barbie dress up and the sims.
skyrim: 3/10 , broken, repetitive, just plain bad.

Ok...so I take back what I said about intelligent people being on forums.

 

[shortylickens]

MetaCritic score for ME3 : 94 (and the highest in history)
MC score for Skyrim: 93

my reviews

ME3 - boring, 3/10. good for people who play barbie dress up and the sims.
skyrim: 3/10 , broken, repetitive, just plain bad.

The game wasnt broken. And if it was boring thats your fault. You can choose to pursue interesting quests, or spend all your time stealing ceramic bowls. Its your game, do whats fun.
As for repetitive, well, its a big game. With all stuff you can do it makes sense some things would feel similar to others. Heck, I dare you to find me a video game that ISNT repetitive. Again, if you just focus on the quests or more importantly, the main quest, you can have lots of fun.

 

[KaOTiK]

The game wasnt broken. And if it was boring thats your fault. You can choose to pursue interesting quests, or spend all your time stealing ceramic bowls.

Keep your eyes off my ceramic bowl collection!

 

[BurnItDwn]

I agree with this.

for me game reviews are like movie reviews, 99% worthless and not worth reading.

Movie Reviews are accurate if you find a reviewer who has a similar taste to onesself. I think the same would be true of games, however, I haven't found that game reviewer.... (there are several film reviewers who I follow and 99% of the time, their reviews are bang on....)

 

[DigDog]

The game wasnt broken. And if it was boring thats your fault. You can choose to pursue interesting quests, or spend all your time stealing ceramic bowls. Its your game, do whats fun.
As for repetitive, well, its a big game. With all stuff you can do it makes sense some things would feel similar to others. Heck, I dare you to find me a video game that ISNT repetitive. Again, if you just focus on the quests or more importantly, the main quest, you can have lots of fun.

1)no.
2)you are wrong.
3)you might as well buy Supreme Commander Forged Alliance and arrange your mass generators in pleasant shapes while the AI tears you a new hole. You MUST defeat Alduin; you MUST learn the ways of the for.. of the voice. The spice i.. the game is about following the plot, OR you can delude yourself that you are "playing with it" instead of "playing it". Eating a steak and holding it on your nose are not the same thing.

-=-
chose one of the 3 above. i recommend n.1, it's the one least likey to cause butthurt.

oh btw i bet you play Minecraft and make buildings out of wool.:biggrin:

 

[hans030390]

It entirely depends on the game. Some games get glowing critic reviews that don't deserve it, and the user reviews reflect this. Some games get glowing critic reviews and unnecessarily horrible user reviews (generally for the stupidest of issues). Some games get poor to decent critic reviews and good user reviews.

When using metacritic, one must always understand that the internet is full of morons that assign exaggerated review scores to products (good or bad). When you understand how these morons work, you can better use the critic and user reviews on these sites to your advantage.

That said, if a game has higher user review scores than critic review scores, that's a good sign. It means that the critics were probably being too harsh on the game.

 

[shortylickens]

1)no.
2)you are wrong.
3)you might as well buy Supreme Commander Forged Alliance and arrange your mass generators in pleasant shapes while the AI tears you a new hole. You MUST defeat Alduin; you MUST learn the ways of the for.. of the voice. The spice i.. the game is about following the plot, OR you can delude yourself that you are "playing with it" instead of "playing it". Eating a steak and holding it on your nose are not the same thing.

-=-
chose one of the 3 above. i recommend n.1, it's the one least likey to cause butthurt.

oh btw i bet you play Minecraft and make buildings out of wool.:biggrin:

Everything you just said was so utterly completely wrong that I cant even talk to you. You've already chosen to be ignorant, stupid and angry. No one can force you to improve. Good luck with life.

 

[Northern Lawn]

For me, I like You Tube User reviews/rants as well as game play video. I especially like when they have 10-20 min. videos of the game play, that is very telling if you like a game or not.

 

[Red Hawk]

3)you might as well buy Supreme Commander Forged Alliance and arrange your mass generators in pleasant shapes while the AI tears you a new hole. You MUST defeat Alduin; you MUST learn the ways of the for.. of the voice. The spice i.. the game is about following the plot, OR you can delude yourself that you are "playing with it" instead of "playing it". Eating a steak and holding it on your nose are not the same thing.

Actually, no. You can do just about every other quest in the game and never have to bother with the main quest.

 

[Sulaco]

1)no.
2)you are wrong.
3)you might as well buy Supreme Commander Forged Alliance and arrange your mass generators in pleasant shapes while the AI tears you a new hole. You MUST defeat Alduin; you MUST learn the ways of the for.. of the voice. The spice i.. the game is about following the plot, OR you can delude yourself that you are "playing with it" instead of "playing it". Eating a steak and holding it on your nose are not the same thing.

So..wait, what? You're mad that to finish the main quest line, you have to finish the main quest line? That seems kind of silly. I guess you're complaining that you don't have a choice, as in, you can't decide to be evil and aid the Dragons and destroy the world, instead of following the set path?

I mean, I guess, but that's not too huge of a negative in my opinion.

And, FWIW, I'm about 30% of the way through the main quest, and have 100 hours in the game. That's right, I'm not even half way through the main story arc, and still have found 100 hours worth of fun stuff to do and explore.

My main gripe with Skyrim are the largely cookie-cutter, fed-ex missions. Oblivion, for all the wailing and gnashing of teeth about how bland the world is and how the leveling system was like a perverse sex act with a hamster, at least had more variety and creativity behind many of the missions and quests.
Skyrim's "Bring me X amount of Ingredient X" or "Kill all bandits at Location X" missions failed to hold my attention, and are the biggest reason I stopped playing.

 

[DigDog]

well duh if you want to play skyrim yeah, you have to play skyrim, which involves following pretty much the storyline. sidequests are cool but spending hours making potions to sell to a merchant (even after you maxed out alchemy) just to play pretend that you're an alchemist instead of the dovahkin is silly. much like playing GTA but only doing taxi missions and pretend you're a taxi driver because "it's your game, you can do whatever you want with it"

i'm not mad that to finish the main plot, i have to finish the plot. i'm mad that if i sit down to PLAY SKYRIM i.e. trying the main plot, doing side quests when i run into them, trying to find the way to shrines, and enjoying the game in general, the things i have to do are so stupidly easy and broken (i'm not talking about enchanting; i'm talking combat) that the whole game becomes pointless.

Skyrim is not *hard* in any possible way, so it presents no challenge whatsoever. There's practically no way to lose. Prey had the same defect, you could simply not lose in that game (but at least prey had some great visuals and writing).

I'v played about 80 hours of skyrim, with mods an all, but it's simply too annoying in its defects to play it any longer and with hindsight, i wouldn't even bother anymore.

This even without expressing any "personal" opinions (i can come to your house, play a new game of skyrim, hit level 2, grab basic equipment, and own the daedras on the shrine of meherunes dragon, so if i can prove it to you, it's more fact than personal opinion), which i have plenty of.

Hey i even finished ME3 while thinking it's a shadow of ME1, but skyrim has some choices which are horrible. No classes?? So i'm a orc berserker who casts fireballs, summons daedra, assassinates people from hiding while wearing crafted and enchanted heavy daedric armour and double wields, makes his own custom potions, picks locks and pockets, LOL who ever thought a berserker double wielder archmage/fighter/thief whith every trade skill in the world was a good idea needs to go read a dungeon master's guide 1ed.

Or maybe we think that Gary Gygax was full of crap.

The point here isn't if people enjoy the virtual world and ignore the game; you can buy a WoW subscription and just enjoy chatting with people but you're more playing "with" the game rather than playing the game. If you buy a racing bike, head to the track and spend the day taking photos of the scenery, i wouldn't say you've "been racing". I'm not trying to nazi you out of your enjoyment, i *am* however pointing out that the "racing" is shit. And for so many people quoting Skyrim as the GOTY and whatnot, i feel i need to tell you that either you've been playing another game, or you've not been playing at all. Which is fine by me. Go ahead and do all the taxi missions you want, just plz don't say you're playing Skyrim, tell it like it is and say that you're just mucking about with Medieval Barbie Dressup and i promise you a won't call you a big girlie man.

omg why do my skyrim posts always wind up so long; short version: i'm one of those 6% people who think skyrim is bad. take it or leave it.