You know what, I'd have agreed with you, until I played Mercenary which completely transformed the approach they took with the game and it finally had it's own identity.

I'd actually say the thing they need to do, is ditch the KillZone branding. It just reeks of a crappy generic game.

Well I guess it is fair to have this expectation. But knowing the franchise and how average it did in the past; this is why I was not that surprised.

Well it's a good thing that Guerrilla Games is moving on to a new IP but i was really surprised with KZ Mercenary's low sales.

73 is such a flop.... god not sure if people are just thick or just trolling.

Well it's not getting that much negative reviews and the worst reviews it got are just focusing on it's mediocre elements like the story which most fps' can't seem to nail. Most of it's reviews are positive and I've been seeing new reviews for it that are all positive as well. So I don't think it could even be considered a flop critically. 74 is good. And with less than 20 reviews, I think it's still too early.

Unfortunate, but it happens. What are the reviewers main problems with the game? Is just another shooter? Terrible pacing? 29 FPS????
I saw IGN's review and tbh that's all I care to see, I might be better off getting CoD over this.

Er... Killzone 2 has 91 meta and Killzone 3 has 84 meta. If I were to gauge these numbers as fact, then I'd say 73 is pretty surprising.

And we all know Metacritic means a lot when gauging a game's worth and value.

I think a couple of dodgy reviews will initially affect the score. From what I have read, seems like a steady 7-8 / 10... Polygon's score on the other hand, really 5/10.... yeah ok. This is why i don't take seriously most reviews these days, as there are always ones that score low to prove a point/clicks. Mafia 2 4/10 or Dead Island 3/10 are reviews that are just so far off the mark.

Anyway, think it will sell well, it looks lovely, and considering the crap that BF and COD have been getting for graphics, I think a lot of people will give it a go as their first PS4 shooter.

does anyone know how meta critic calculates its score from all the reviews?

The exact formula is a trade secret. No sarcasm. Basically, Metacritic has a system where some reviews are worth more than others, and thus they adjust their values behind the scenes before pumping out an average. In practice, this ends up being similar to the real average, but with a nice integer and maybe one or more outlier reviews throwing things off by a couple of points.