"What I'm saying is "READ THE REVIEW!" If you want to disagree with Sterling over FFXIII's story, more power to you!"

How are we supposed to disagree/agree with the story if we never played the game?

Because some people tend to forget what reviews are for. Once I buy a game, reviews doesn't matter much anymore. But when I'm looking to buy one, that's when reviews are useful. That's why I'm looking for a review with no "I". What I really want is a small summary (spoiler free!!) of the story so that I can judge myself.

That's why you never put 100% stock in one person's review.

It's the same reason I don't watch Fox News as my lone news source. What you're going to get is one viewpoint and nothing else.

If you read 4-5 reviews and still don't have a good idea of what the game offers on various levels, those reviewers are not very good at their jobs. And it's my opinion that more can usually be gained from those out-lying reviews, not the middle-of-the-pack reviewers who gloss over game faults.

So are we saying that any good review will offer a contrary point of view to the main reviewers? A high score and a low score?

Hmm... I can't say that wouldn't be a bad way to give reviews. A reviewer that states why the game is meh, and another that states why it's A-Okay.

I think scores should be dropped altogether. It's just fuel for fanboy wars, especially since so many people don't actually read the damn reviews.

Now there would be a good idea. A two-review system, one to preach to the fanboy choir, and the other to take the game to task.

I don't know how well it would work but it would definitely be an interesting experiment to try out.

The biggest difficulty would be finding two people with varying opinions, or a person that loves to overrate and a person that loves to criticize the smallest details. But having two scores instead of one would be, in my opinion, a better way to know what you're getting yourself into, and deciding whether the problems with the game, however trivial or stupid, would bother you.

Brock, you really should write articles more often. I really enjoy reading them.

Good article.

I like how you compared the aggregate scores of best picture of the year winners up against video game scores. Crash was a 69 and that would be looked at as a crap game that many people wouldn't buy since they put so much faith in Metacritic and Gamerankings. Also, I like how you showed that movie reviewers give much lower scores on a whole since they aren't as afraid to give their true opinions.

I think that most true art has both huge fans and detractors, since it raises issues and many of the things that everyone likes are that way because they play it safe.

People also tend to forget that there is no such thing as a perfect game or movie, they can always be better. Giving a game a 97/100 means its near perfection, what does that make the developer do? Milk the franchise to death. If devs never hear constructive criticism how will they ever improve their games?