RenCutypoison said:
Since the death of paper media actually. |
Yeah but for too long between 07-11 were games really nicely reviewed for being more of the same. You'd have annual Call of Dutys score higher or equal to its predecessors which led to many people feeling reviewers were just being weird. I'm not sure if it was like that prior to 07 because I wasn't really around then.
But what I am getting at is that by 2011-2012, things somewhat started changing. Reviews were suddenly harsher and it doesn't seem to be changing. It is as if the standards are simply being raised which is in some ways about time. But it also makes predicting things a lot harder.
Another really odd thing with metacritic is this:
Since Meta weighs sites differently: Some luck is ideal. Perhaps you have a guy called Henry working for IGN who gives every game a 1/10. Then suddenly, a game comes and this time its Sam who is reviewing it. Sam is much nicer and gives it a 8/10. Meta doesn't take into account who is reviewing it so it really is a bit ofa gamble. Saying "IGN gave it a 10" isn't the same as saying "Colin gave it a 10" or "Greg gave it a 10" but to meta, its all the same.
It's also why its odd to compare previous titles really. "X game got 95!" , "Y game got 92!". Both times change expectations and the first game has the natural advantage of being first. But it also depends on the reviewers. If you have 50 reviewers reviewing game X and another 50 reviewing Y => It's hard to just compare numbers since the people voting could be so different.
However there is one trend that isn't changing. And thats a game like GTA, TLOU and Bioshock. Games that are so .."good" I guess we can call them, that reviewers pretty much worldwide and a vast majority just give out 9 or 10. It's still luck based to compare 94 to 95 to 97, but generally regardless of who reviews it: There seems to just be something that makes nearly every single person appreciate it.
Not to mention the reviews being seperated by versions which is absolutely ridicilous. You'll see a review of a game in one version without it even mentioning what version it is. Or youll see a review of a game in one version when the text clearly indicates that they tried it on all platforms. Who the fuck makes these calls lol.
It also leads to multiplatform titles having less reviews per single platform and generally: adding reviews when a game is holding a high score will most of the time work against it since it only takes about 1 guy to give low to drop it heavily whereas it takes 10 guys to keep it there or bump it up.
So yeah... interesting times.
