Look at me! I am playing badly reviewed games and having fun!

[The_vagabond7]

I agree that you should play what you enjoy, but there are some problems here some of which are the gamers fault. Namely the attitude that 50 is awful, and that it is an egregious offense that a perfectly fun game could ever fall below a 7.5. I have Indiana Jones on Wii (a friend got it for me for some reason), that game is justifiably a mediocre blah game.

It can be fun, it can by all means be enjoyed, it's a relatively competent action adventure title. But you put that game next to something like Uncharted 2 which I'm sure has some metacritic rating in the 90s (to lazy to check), and the difference between the two is absurdly vast. The graphics obviously, but also the control is tighter, more responsive and better thought out than the furious left right waggling on Indy, the story is better crafted, the acting a billion times better, the level design meticulously thought out, The sound design phenomenal, the camera work fantastic, amazing set pieces, the amount of time effort and care that went into uncharted 2 compared to Indy is insane. Indy is an enjoyable, nothing special, middle of the road action adventure game.

So where is the problem? The problem isn't that reviewers give games like indy or CB 5s and 6s but that gamers consider anything that falls below a 7.5 as garbage. The OP said "I know it is NOT a masterpiece, but I would give it a 7 out of 10. In fact, I think any game I finish to the end deserves at least that much." Now lets think about that statement for a second. That means that any game that manages to hold his attention til the end warrants at least a 7, or rather that he will only play "7" rated games all the way to the end. A 6 is not worth playing til the end, a 5, good god, should be avoided at all costs. 7 is the baseline for quality, anything below it sucks to bad to be finished. The problem is that gamers only respond to games that fall in a 3 point radius.

Indy is a mediocre game in all regards, playable, enjoyable, incredibly mediocre. Crystal Bearers was an unfocused mess, shallow combat, lots of minigames, but with a ton of polish and care taken with it. 5s and 6s are not out of line for those games, it's just that gamers refuse to play anything below a 7, and thusly anything below a 7 must be crap. And this topic is just this wierd grinding of gears in the brain trying to comprehend this bizarre contradiction. A game below a 7 can't be enjoyed.....but I'm enjoying these games that aren't 7s........soooo....it's the reviewers messing things up!! These really are 7 games and....and.....it's anti-wii bias!!! That must be it because I'm enjoying this and 5s and 6s are crap!!!

I don't care that much for the numers at end of reviews, I've been gaming long enough to know what I do and don't like, and what I look for in a game. But seriously, if you're complaining that not enough games are getting 7s, and that any game you can tolerate until the end deserves at LEAST a 7, then you have to admit that gamers expectations of review scores are a big part of the problem, and not just "ant-wii bias".