Hiku said:
midrange said:
That is the reality of it today. Sometimes you only have time to look at a metacritic score and make a judgement call. Like I said, not everyone will take the time to extensively review an "average" game that they have no interest in. Reviews should only affect the games you are interested in or they should bring light to massively underrated games.
How do you get around this? Market the game and get people interested
Without metacritic, people would jump from site to site glancing at the final score. Metacritic never changed anything, it just sped up the process that goes on, and in a way, brings light to hidden gems (without it's high metacritic score, Bayonetta 2 probably would have been ignored this generation).
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There are alternatives to numerical scores that are much more clear though. A number can be missinterprited without context. While with something like: "Is it worth playing?: Yes/No." you can't missunderstand the reviewers intention regarding if he/she recommends you to play the game.
Metacritic didn't change much. I agree with that. But there are a few things. When you jumped from site to site to check the final score, you could also some times see what a particular score meant according to that site, because they would specify it. And you'd realize some differences between the way some sites score things.
This concept gets lost without that information, and instead people interprit the scores based on their own preconceptions of what they represent. And I've seen someone who thinks that the difference between 89 and the "at least 92" on Metacritic (not even a specific review) that he expected meant canceling his preorder. Three points. And three points at the very end of the upper scale of the spectrum, for that matter.
Another thing is also that, even if you only came there to look at the final score, there's a greater chance of something in the article catching your eye, and making you actually read the review even though you initially didn't plan to, if you go to the review rather than just look at the final score somewhere else.
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A yes/no system would reward the average and downplay the achievement of the greats.
Also, if metacritic is gone, people would most likely just focus on 3 or 4 reviews as opposed to looking at the general consensus. Suddenly major sites like IGN and Gamespot are given waaay more influence and are more likely to be bribed.
Metacritic is not perfect, but it takes an already subjective field (reviews) and tries to objectify it so that people get a good sense of the games they are interested in. If your friend cancelled the preorder because a game got an 89, then I doubt he was truly interested in the game. Looking at a final score simplifies things immensly and while mediocre games get overlooked, hidden gems get brought out.
