Every time I see Killer Instinct gameplay, I remember that there is an alternate reality somewhere in the multiverse where Nintendo still owns Rare and Playstation is still apart of the Nintendo brand, and I weep a little.

It seems like reviewers are very inconsistent when it comes to multiplayer games.

Look at BF4 every reviewer seems to say it has a pretty bad campaign, but then they still rate the game highly because of the strong multiplayer (same story for COD).

Then they review a game like Killzone SF and reviewers really seem to enjoy the multiplayer, but yet they still rate it pretty low because they don't like the campaign.

I wish review sites would have a more consistent approach, maybe rate single player and multiplayer separately.

he's not saying to judge it based on potential but perhaps wait a little or revise a score or just add an a note at the beginning of the review if they HAVE improved the game, especially if you're judging online.  I mean Diablo at launch or WoW after an expansion would get horrible reviews if they were being penalized for the online capabilities.

they're trying to sort of reset the bar for next gen I think but then again AC and BF get excellent reviews despite not being examples of what next gen can do (other than 64 players I guess)

I have no problem with using both methods, but I do find the Metacritic system a lot more useful, when used properly of course.

It's more important for me to know the average score of a game than to know how many people gave it a "thumbs up," because the latter can be misleading.

But that's giving more importance and leeway to the developer/publisher and less to the consumer, who, in theory, should be the most important person in this scenario. Delaying a review or glossing over bugs at launch helps the company and hurts the consumer interested in the game.

If a website or publication wants to write a second review once the issues are cleared up, I'm OK with that. But that shouldn't be a right of the publisher. It should be up the the discretion of the site or publication.

Confrontation and SOCOM 4 were both garbage long after release, whether it was bugs or just terrible gameplay. Whichever one you're referring to, they both got the shitty scores they deserved. I think if you release a buggy, non-working game, you should be penalized for it. If it's not ready, don't release it.

To the OP, I don't have a problem with the way the reviews were done. Killzone is a FPS with a heavy emphasis on story and SP. It's not like CoD or BF where almost every preview and event revolves around MP. Plus since KZ doesn't have as strong of a MP component as those franchises, it makes the SP that much more important. As for KI, I think the same logic as SOCOM applies. How the game launches is all they can review. More content coming later is nice, but I don't have an issue with them reviewing what is there right now. You get what, 8 or 9 fighters for $40? Could be wrong there.

That would be cool.  Personally I wouldn't mind if critics started to update reviews after patches and DLC.  Because really a lot of games aren't the same months after they were originally released.

You can only review what's there so if Killer Instinct lacks content and you're playing it right now the score should be fair.
As for Killzone, the singleplayer is still a bigger part of the game than in games like CoD or Battlefield, so I don't see anything wrong with it either.

BF4 is also a big improvement over BF3 in terms of multiplayer and it still gets a worse score due to the singleplayer. Unless Metacritic (and the reviewers) split the scores into MP and SP I don't see how they could make it any more fair.
You could decide to just not play the singleplayer and rate it higher, but that simply wouldn't mirror the truth since many people ARE in fact playing the singleplayer modes of CoD,BF and Killzone.

I dont mind the scores.  Just the way people approach them.  They are focusing on the scores rather than what the reviews are saying.  Probably my fault for wording the thread wrong sinc a lot of the comments are similar to this one xD