I only read IGN reviews as well. They just seem to do it the best and with the least bias.

IGN rates Wii games .9% lower then the average on Gamerankings.

Nintendo power rates Wii games 2.8% higher then the average on Gamerankings.

Most likely they pad a bunch of the "middle" games, either that or are just unlikely to give bad games low scores like 2's.

That's where Gamerankings holds it's value to me.  You can see how the site rates games compared to other sites.

Still like Metacritic better though, because it gives you actual summaries, and links to every review that's online... so you have dozens of reviews at your fingertips... that you can actually read instead of just trusting some fairly arbitrary numbers.

Eh, and since no one is bringing up the stats behing it.

No one can tell bias by saying "This site seems the least bias". In reality what your doing is saying "This site has about the same levels of bias I have about stuff."

The only way to accurately track bias, is to make a giant database like Gamerankings has and add all the scores together, by using all the reviews you filter out all the bias, because they more or less statistically cancel each other out.

What's left and isn't canceled out is as statistically close to unbiased as you are going to get. It gives you a statistically accurate representation of what critics think. It's the only thing you can do something like a review score which is as subjective as "On a number between 1 and 10, how much does this hurt."

If you don't agree with the ratings, it's likely due to your own bias.

How about buying games based on your own opinions, and not those of total strangers over the internet? Just because IGN says a game is good does not mean you will enjoy it.

I read reviews to educate myself, but I rarely look at the number assigned to the game. I read the actual review, and search for things that may make me want to avoid the game (glitches, control problems, framerate issues, ect). Other than that, I buy games based on the opinons of people who have tastes similar to my own, previews, videos, in-store demos, and rentals.

If the concept of a game interests me and there are no glaring flaws, I'm probably going to buy that game. I've enjoyed a lot of games that got mediocre reviews, such as Red Steel, Geist, Donkey Konga, and Sonic Rivals.

I've also hated games that got stellar reviews, such as Ratchet and Clank, Halo 2, and the Hitman series.

Why do people care so much what score a game gets? Does it really change your personal experience with that game?

They don't count all reviews, just "important" ones. The point with their system is that the different biases on different sites even each other out mostly, and the average score will be comparable with other games.

Now if you think the entire internet is against your console of choice, then you can just look at the Gameranking/Metacritic score and give them +5 in your head or whatever.

It's not perfect, but I prefer it to blindly following a single site just because they keep giving scores that I agree with.

 I only track the top 20 and for that my figure is that IGN rates the titles half a percent higher than Nintendo Power. The difference of a 7.2 to a 7.5 (which I don't track) is where IGN is tracking lower apparently. The last figure I saw a couple months ago was IGN tracking Wii games one percent higher than gamerankings. I'll take your figure as the up-to-date one. Do you have any figures for TeamXbox, PSXtreme or gameTM?

Scores are overrated. Read the reviews. If it's a good review you get a lot more information from the review text than from the scores.

I prefer to refer to my french review site "gamekult" :

Heavenly sword 5
Bioshock 9
PGR4 8
CoD4 8
Halo3 7
Lair 3
Warhaxk 7
BlueDragon 6
R&C 8
Mass Effect 8
Unchartred not yet
eye of judgement 6
SMG 9
Assassin Creed 8

it sounds ok for me
not extreme score 10/10, only Bioshock and SMG at 9/10

Shouldn't this be in the news section? j/ks.

If OoT is number 1 than the site is perfect in every way, duh, didn't you think that before posting this thread?

I agree ssj12...I tend to base some of my buying decisions on IGN.com or Gamespot.com......I don't listen to these other gay sites. Some of them are bias to other games and sort. I tend to trust Gamespot and IGN more. Gamerankings.com is kinda lame in opinion. Just stick with one site you trust and its fine. I don't care for Yahoo Games.com reviews or others, they are gay and really don't have any influence on the score in opinion.