I'm sick and tired of games getting patches to fix problems that were there at launch. I realise it's unlikely to change much now because publishers like their deadlines and patches allow them to meet them, but if review scores reflected the build quality then maybe more developers and publishers would think twice about releasing broken games, especially when they know Metacritic has a stranglehold on the industry and that number is 'all that matters' to most.

Take Fallout 4 for instance. That game ran terribly and had ridiculously long loading times for transitioning between outdoor locations and indoor locations. We're not talking a few seconds here, we're talking about long enough to think the game had crashed. There are and were a myriad of other problems, the worse of which was a bug that prevented you from finishing the game. What's more, this is probably the worse looking open world game I've seen since last gen, and no, high resolution doesn't fool MY eyes. This game should have been docked 2 points out of the gate because of the bad quality.

Docking points for having problems is the only thing stopping an onslaught of badly optimised games and unless reviewers are prepared to be completely honest it will continue unchallenged. Of course gamers themselves could also help but let's face it, gamers are a fickle bunch that say one thing and yet do the other. 'I dislike this practice and refuse to buy the game. Damn, I bought the game.'

I agree with this.

I have to agree with this wholeheartedly. Reviewers should not only be able to dock points for lack of content, poor story etc., but also for the structural integrity of the game itself. I mean that's the foundation of the game itself.

I mean if your game doesn't work right then what's the point?

Exactly. It's the most important aspect of any game a yet broken games like Fallout 4 regularly get 10/10. Sod the story, the graphics, the characters or the acting, the first thing I want to know is 'DOES IT FUCKIN' WORK?' Evrything else should follow this.

agree

If a game has terribly framerate it will sometimes be reflected in the score already, DriveClub would have got higher reviews if it's online actually worked for example. Most reviewers already take these issues into account.

They used to but not anymore, agree that build quality should be part of the overall verdict, imo the numbered system should be dropped for a bad/average/good verdict system as well.

because all reviewers these days just get paid to sweep things under the carpet and give it a higher score. the only time they actually do point out glitches and bugs is when they become ridiculously obvious. even then they will only mark it as low as a 7.5

In the vast majority of circumstances, a one year old game is a superior product to the launch version.

But when it comes to reviews It usually depends on the website and the person behind the reviews. In most cases however major technical problems are mentioned in the review.

Yes, some reviews do dock points for build quality but it's not the standard approach and what I'm saying is it should be.