Game Reviews and Aggregate Scores. Why Do You Bother?

[ishiki]

adriane23 said:

UnitSmiley said:
I watch reviews just for the hell of it. I don't base my purchases on them though, I can see gameplay and immediately tell if I'll enjoy the game or not.

What is annoying though, is I have a friend who if you mention a game he's never heard of before, the first thing he does is look it up on Metacritic and if it doesn't get a good score he goes "Lol that game sucks".

Sadly, a lot of people do that. On the flip side whenever a game gets a high Meta Score, the people at my GameStop always try to get me to buy it, and are then shocked if I say I don't like the series/genre. The sheep mentality is rampant in there.

Well, I think a reason why metacritic is used so much is it's easily quantifiable and encompases a lot of opininons. Since forums a lot of times turn into X vs Y game and a lot of silly people put down certain games without even playing it. Metacritic is the easiest/best ammunition for them.

Most of my favorite games this gen scored in the 80's, 2 in the 70's and 2 in the 90's range. However Aggregate scores are still somewhat accurate. If you blindly select 5 90+ games and 5 games below 80. Most likely you're going to end up liking more of the ones in the 90's range correct?

However, if you are able to read and analyze games with interesting elements that score less than an 80, and put them against games in the 90's with elements you despise, you're likely going to end up liking more of the lower scoring games. Which is basically your point. I don't think aggregate scores are useless though, They're just limited in what they represent.