A lot of people just expected too much from Halo 4, still it won't go below 90% which is a great score. A lot of games are being more harshly criticised this year but it doesn't seem unfair, reading some reviews on AC3 or RE6 justify their mixed/bad scores and what's hard to believe about Mass Effect 3 being the most acclaimed game this year? A vocal bunch of fans hated the original endings but most people think the game as a whole is brilliant. It's my personal GOTY, which might not mean much since this is the worst year this generation in my opinion.

I don't think you need to do something revolutionary to achieve a really high average, if a game's truly good it will score very well. God of War: Ascension will probably score over 92% due to the fact God of War III did and the new game is going to be improved in every aspect, new multiplayer component to shut up critics crying for replayabilty and by the time of release it will be 3 years since the last entry so it'll feel fresh. Gears of War: Judgement definitely won't as Gears of War 3 couldn't, it's from a different developer and it's releasing too soon which some critics will complain about. Beyond: Two souls probably won't either as it'll have some critics slating it for being more a movie than a game like what happened with Heavy Rain. The Last of Us probably won't either as Uncharted 3 couldn't and people's expectations are way too high for the game, unless it is virtually flawless (which is unlikely) people are going to be disappointed. 

Regardless of how harshly or not the games are reviewed next year I do believe 2013 will be the best and last year of this console generation, so many guaranteed to be brilliant classics are coming.

You were overhyping it more than anyone lol. Most halo fans, like myself were more realistic say 90-93 at most. This is the 4th installment in a franchise, how many games in there 4th continuely go up in score? I'm just excited to play the game and I could give a rats ass if t score 90 or 98.     

And now people will start to yell and curse because the metascore is "low"... What has this generation done to us as gamers? A domestic site gave it 4/6 (Pressfire.no) and the commentary field below is littered with enraged fans shouting how useless the reviewer is and citing the many high scores it has gotten from the largest mainstream sites (who mostly aren't aware that there are scores below 9.5 for blockbuster titles) rather than read the review and respond to his criticism in a productive manner.

And this has happened so many times this generation with many games across all platforms. Why do people care so damn much about metacritic scores?! A lot of my favorite games have "poor" metascores, all the way down to 85 and even lower, I should really start complaining loudly about it since I feel that they deserve more. I could understand the ruckass if we were talking about a surprising 75/100 metascore, but this is the upper 10th percentile we're talking about here, waaaaay into elite territory. If 90 is "harsh" nowadays, I don't think I can ever take metascores seriously at all any more.

Keep playing your favorite games and enjoy them and stop obsessing over what others think of said games.