TP deserved the 8.8 he gave it

OK I have a Question. Why do people care so much about reviews? EVERYONE has different likes and dislikes over the same game. I love the Conduit, It is exactly what I thought I was buying. Has pretty good graphics. Has solid MP.great controls.a ok story,and for me at least has Made me respect HVS for the great effort they put into it. I would give it somewhere in the 80's as it is a good game and has left me wanting to see what more they can do.

Now, say a game like Halo. This game has sold millions. I have only played it a few times,so bare with me here. It is on a completely different level. Controls different, different budget,etc,etc. Is it a bad game? No, it is not as you can tell by the sales and the love of it from its fans.

Now, if I am a reviewer and I was to compare the two can you guess which would rank higher for me?

Of course I would Probably pick the Conduit. Why? The controls. My whole time comparing both would mostly be based on that. Now take someone who has played Halo a lot more then me. Most likely they would pick Halo to be on top. Whats a good reason for them. The Controls! The Graphics, etc etc. the same reason I love would love The conduit more. is the same reasons they would love Halo more.

Now, I know reviewers are at least suppose to? Review the game for what the game is. Not what it is compared to a game they already love. But can anyone,anyone at all not have in the back of there mind what they would compare it to? I would lean towards no. When I put this in I was thinking o boy! I hope this is as good as Perfect Dark! Is it fair? No not really as they are two different companies. One I loved and one that I am new to.

Anyways that is my little rant. Give this game to someone who likes FPS and in my mind the big like/dislike would be based on the controls or what gamethey would use to compare it to.

I would only review a game 40 if it had an awful lot of bugs/bad control and making it almost unplayable, but w/e. I knew this was going to happen, so let's live with it.

I don't really care about reviews other than many people determine what games they buy by looking at metacritic and this will hurt the sales a bit.  Also, I don't care about the raw score so much as how it was come to and for the most part this game has been compared to 360/PS3 games rather than other Wii games for presentation which is unfair IMO.

The main reason why I have posted so much in this thread is I just think Gerstmann is a tool based on the quality of reviews he has written over his career and his terrible bias that could lead some people to skip games that deserve support.

And yet, maybe the trouble is with how much relevance is given nowadays to metascores.

I prefer seeing them as a useful starting point to actually research different opinions and informations about games I'm interested in. And even then, I'm usually more interested in the actual content than in the grade.

Edit: gee, I see you posted another comment about reviews :)

Anyway, I do agree that it's unfortunate that ratings and meta-ratings can have big effects on the sales, more than actual assessments of games' qualities.

And yet it's a chain of responsibility. Edge gives its grades in a certain way, and its responsiblity is only towards its readers in estabilishing with them a trust relation about their reviews and grades. Then Metacritic aggregates it, but it's in a certain sense a use that is out of the contract that Edge has with its readers. In turn Metacritic does a bit of weighted average voodoo and publishes a meta-rating, but once again its only responsibility is towards its readers in that it always uses the same methodology.

If end consumers or even software publishers use this meta-rating giving it more significance than what the methodology indicates, then in my opinion it's a problem of customer education we're facing, not something wrong with Edge or Metacritic.

An opinion is not an invincible shield that allows you to spew any crap you want without being held accountable for it.

Yes, it's his opinion and he has the right to express it. And if/when that said opinion is flawed (ie. misinformed), he can and should be called on it.

I agree but you and I both know there are a ton of people who will only ever consider buying games that are in the top 20 or so titles scored on metacritic/gamerankings for a given console...  We are in the minority because we buy more titles than the average gamer...  This is one reason why I think third parties are having a hard time on the Wii.  For alot of gamers, Mario, Zelda, Smash, Metroid, and Wii Sports are enough and if they want anything else they get another console.  Of course casuals lap up all kinds of shovelware and never ever read any reviews so maybe it all balances out...

I'm not sure Metacritic does any weighting of Edge scores like it does for letter grade scores...  Metacritic's interpretation of 1up score's doesn't make any sense to me...

with a dearth of decent FPS titles on wii.. this is bound to sell somewhere near 500k atleast if not more...

nah, i'm not.