I find Metacritic scores are generally highest when they're from games in universally loved brands; otherwise, when the more niche games are reviewed by reviewers who generally like the genre. A lot of great games seem to land in the 80s despite being (IMO) a lot better than most of those mid-90s games.
My biggest issue with Metacritic is that it doesn't account for how different sites scale their scores, for some a 7/10 might be above the 10/10 threshold for another site, for others they might just downscore games out of spite (like that controversial Breath of the Wild review from that British youtuber). But, IMO, it would be ideal to have some kind of way of categorizing reviewers by what brands and genres they generally like - unfortunately, that would be batshit crazy because of the difficulty of getting reviewers to actually identify what they like, or for keeping them honest--and leaving it up to the audience of metacritic would be insane - these people are on constant review bomb crusades. So, at least I can dream :)
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
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