Meta Critic

[sophie]

I would recommend the campster and bunnyhopshow youtube channels as good sources for video game reviews. I generally echo Prince_Scamp's recommendation of shying away from "objective" x oudda y metrics and instead look for in-depth editorial-style reviews (preferably with plenty of game footage). I'm particularly fond of those two channels as they tend to focus on things I value in video games.

 

[GoodGame]

Not really sure whether this is the best forum for this, so if mods think it should be moved then feel free.

I have just answered a questionnaire on meta critic about how they can improve their system. One of the annoyances i have about metacritic is all the yuppies who score a game 0/10 just because it wasnt quite what they were expecting. I would go as far to say that these people are just trolls and dont really add anything significant to the discussion. There is no objectivity to their review, they are simply trying to move the score closer to their view point because they understand it works on the law of averages. This makes the user score less useful in my view. It would be better to either replace it with a positive, negative, or mixed rating system, or remove the top and bottom 10% of ratings. i was just wondering what other peoples points of views were on this?

There's just not enough user posts on meta-critic to consider them statistically significant. When meta-critic first came out it was very 'edgy' because it was a good alternative to online and print reviews that seemingly were mind-blowingly purchased by publishers. At this point it is just interesting, not definitive.

How often is there a game with 30+ user reviews from just owners? Not often. So it's usually just a small sample pool, mostly just qualitatively useful when a user gives strong criticisms with examples.

It's still a good way of finding different opinions, especially from indie journalists, but it isn't a particularly convincing algorithm for determining that something is 'good' or not. For a gamer, the most interesting thing about meta-critic is the classic list of must have games that have scored over 90 points in professional reviews, yet a lot of those games and reviews are many years old. Go figure.

 

[scheva007]

In some cases like always-online DRM where they try to advertise it as a feature, especially in Sim City 2013's case, and it certainly can and does interfere with the ability to play the game. SC 2013 is like a 3 or 4/10 game anyway though and the online DRM is really bad, unnecessary and came with a truckload of lies and false advertising. Otherwise though, Origin really does nothing most of the time and doesn't have any effect upon the games themselves.

Except that origin itself is a very flawed piece of software, that cant even remember language preferences.

I've pointed out that if the drm doesnt work and therefore the game, then you have a case. Just because a drm is too intrusive in your eyes, i dont see it as a valid point to immedialty do a 0/10. Mostly because intrusive is a very relative term. AC2 drm might have seen intrusive at the time, now its pretty basic. And internet "availability" hasnt changed that much in the 5 years in between. (and ive played AC2 amost every day duing a year, Uplay was offline like maybe 1-2 days)

On a sidenote for that last point, i always wonder if people who complain about always online (which in itself can often be turned off), ever have made internet connection in the 90's with a dial up connection...These days internet streams out of every orifice.

Just saying that if someone doesnt want/like a game because of a personal principle (about drm in this case), thats fine for them, but dont go whack other people in the face with it and let themself decide. A "0/10 because it has drm" review, is pointless for everyone. A "0/10 because the drm doesnt work at all and prevents playing", that is usefull. I like to make that distinction

 

[civvver]

There's just not enough user posts on meta-critic to consider them statistically significant. When meta-critic first came out it was very 'edgy' because it was a good alternative to online and print reviews that seemingly were mind-blowingly purchased by publishers. At this point it is just interesting, not definitive.

How often is there a game with 30+ user reviews from just owners? Not often. So it's usually just a small sample pool, mostly just qualitatively useful when a user gives strong criticisms with examples.

It's still a good way of finding different opinions, especially from indie journalists, but it isn't a particularly convincing algorithm for determining that something is 'good' or not. For a gamer, the most interesting thing about meta-critic is the classic list of must have games that have scored over 90 points in professional reviews, yet a lot of those games and reviews are many years old. Go figure.

Most games have far more than 30 user reviews. They might be short though.

 

[sherbz]

Well yet again we see the usual sort of response to a big release on metacritic. A load of PC fanboys (aka arse holes) are going on to GTA 5 and voting the score down because the PC version has not been released yet. You also have xbox users voting down the PS3 version and vice versa (which is even more sad).

I think it kind of ruins the whole idea of metacritic, again going back to what i said in my OP. It detracts from what is otherwise a good concept. I ignore the user score to a large extent on big releases because you always have idiots who give it a zero. I have not played GTA 5 as it is not out on PC, but im pretty sure it could never be a zero.

 

[Maniacal]

There are 28 negative scores, 3 mixed and 93 positive as it is. Of the 28 negative reviews, only 4 or 5 mention the PC. The others are mostly normal troll comments or people who installed Disc 2 to their console's hard drive which causes major issues. That was for the Xbox 360 version, PS3 one has one spam PC 0/10 comment that is by someone who posted the same for the xbox.

 

[Sonereal]

People should just stop relying so heavily on numbers and just read actual reviews. Five or ten minutes of your (not the guy above me specifically, just you general) time to do some research and decide whether or not you feel safe dropping sixty dollars on a new release. The fact there are 28 negative scores, 93 positive, and only 3 mixed is the reason why the aggregate opinion of users who use Metacritic don't matter.

 

[Tsoate]

If you could remove all the 10/10 and all the 0/10 votes, that would give you a more honest appraisal.

 

[sherbz]

I agree with the view that people should be wary about what they use it for. Like i said, the metascore itself is a pretty dubious thing to be taken with a pinch of salt. I guess i just hate trolls.

 

[Sonereal]

If you could remove all the 10/10 and all the 0/10 votes, that would give you a more honest appraisal.

Then everyone will vote 9/10 or 1/10. People tend to the extremes and removing all of those votes does nothing but skew what might be a bad game's score up or a good game's score down.