HEY EVERYONE! METACRITIC USES A SYSTEM WHERE A "C" IS AVERAGE. MEANING THAT 5 IS A "C".

Woo, people might catch it now.

When I first started reading this topic I was in line with most of the people in thinking that giving a B- a score of 67 was horribly wrong but after reading the post by Dodece I now have to totally agree that it may not.

As an math teacher myself I can say that at least in our academic circle a B- is more commonly used for 80% give or take a few % when the need arises (I've gone down to 75 even for some). However, now I see the point that some review sites are merely using the grading system to make middling scores seem not as bad as they used to.

Recall the time when EGM used scores in their reviews. I do believe that they made it a point to note that a 5 was an average score (I'd have to check my old EGMs in the garage to make sure but I'm sure someone can double check). If a C is an average score now then I can definitely see how a C be given the score of 50 and a c- = 47 like someone mentioned was given to Too Human? It actually makes some sense now at least if you think about it clearly but I guess that just leads to more debate on why the rating system was changed in the first place. If anything it also could lead to a debate on how grading in schools could need reform (a topic that has been touched upon at my school this past spring actually) :P

ehhh outlaw beat me to it too lol >.>;

Graphics are NOT everything.

i cant understand why 1up lowered it because of grafix, its not as if the grafix are hitching or screen tearing or anything, its how the style of the game is and its how the developers made it.

either way metacritic is bollocks imo.

a game can average 80 over 47 reviews, then another game can average 87 over 27 reviews.

That's why the Too Human review from 1UP (C-) got a 42 on metacritic.
This grade review system is ass.

I didn't know if anyone posted this, but here is an explanation on how Metacritic comes up with the scores. The final score for a game, movie, or album is weighted ... giving major players in the review industry a higher weighted score over little known reviewers like Deeko, Giant Bomb, etc.

http://www.metacritic.com/about/scoring.shtml#game

If you actually read the 1up review, they were pretty critical of the game on a couple of different levels, thus the adjustment to a 67/100.

Also, for detail on letter grading:

"A: When you tell a computer to compute the average of B+, 45, 5, and *****, it just looks at you funny and gives an error message. When you tell a computer to compute the average of 83, 45, 50, and 10, it is much, much happier. Thus, in order to make our computers happy (and calculate the METASCORES), we must convert all critics' scores to a 0-100 scale. So for the letter grade scale used by Entertainment Weekly, an A represents 100, and F corresponds to zero, with the other letters falling somewhere in between. Similarly, 4- and 5-star scales and other odd grading scales are all converted to the 0-100 scales you see displayed on each of our film, video, game, and music pages.

Of course, we could have performed this conversion behind the scenes, and displayed the orignal grades on our film, video, game, and music pages; however, we also wanted to provide you with an easy way to compare the individual critic scores against one another. It is much easier to tell the difference between an 80, a 60, and a 20 than it is to tell the difference between a B+, a $5.25, and a *. We believe that this benefit outweighs any loss in precision caused by the conversion.

And remember, if you really want to know the original grade, just click on the quote from that critic and you'll be taken to the full review."


So of all the meta-review houses, Metacritic stays faithful to the 100 point scale by assigning F a 0/100.