How Do You Use Metacritic?

[Michelasso]

ganoncrotch said:

KiigelHeart said:
Nah I don't use it at all. If a game looks interesting enough for me I'll buy it. I don't want other peoples opinions affect me. Gaming is more fun for me this way.

How do you find out about games at all then? Just go in shops and read the back of boxes? I mean if you are hearing about new games from Game journalists then they are normally very opinionated one way or the other towards any news being put fowards about a game.

There are plenty of ways to form an opinion about a game without ever checking any review. For example I check the forums for that particular game and see what people have to say. It's better to check the forums for a single platform, like playstationtrophies.org. There are many less chances to read salty trolls compared to gamefaqs or the Metacritics user's reviews. Or we may follow the journalists we know are more in line with our personal taste. As well as there are tons of videos.

Personally I do check Metacritics (I love numbers. What can I do..), but I don't put a blind fate on it. For example I buy all Final Fantasy RPGs no matter what. If I had to follow Metacritic I had to skip LR: FFXIII, which to me is actually the best of the trilogy. Or a game like Saboteur. Hugely underrated. Lair for PS3 sure deserved much more than the 53 the idiots gave it. The motion controls, heavily trashed, were also what I liked the most. U-turn apart. It was just a bit too glitchy graphically. Oh, I'm still pissed about Skyrim for PS3 getting 9s and 10s as if it was raining. A broken game like that had to end up like Batman: AK for PC. Instead it has got a 92. Thanks God I waited, so I could buy it at less than half the price.

Then I use another rule: If I don't know much about a game, I don't care. It may have a 100 in Metacritics but I would skip it. It didn't trigger my interest, so I don't bother. Which applies to most retro indie 2D crap.