It’s a very common tradition: when a game is released, gamers will read the reviews to know if the game is good or not. Nobody really understands the logic behind the abstract scores. What is a 67? Who knows! But a 67 is better than 66 then people says game X is better than Y so my console is better than yours.

I’m tired of this tradition because people can’t think by themselves anymore and have a personal opinion. All that matters is the metascore, the sales, the resolution. Numbers. Games are NOT a physics class, they are entertainment. We can stop depending on “professional opinions” because there are no pros when it comes to games: they are all just opinions.

So I propose that the next time you are in doubt if a game deserves be bought: download the demo, watch the gameplay on Youtube or even if you are going to ask someone or read a review, don’t bet your life on it, maybe you are discarding a very nice experience.

I've never depended on them. Some of my fav games have gotten poor reviews for whatever reason. Some games I hate more than any like ghosts got a decent metacritic. I've really never followed them. Better ways to find out if a game is good.

As long as my favorite game scores high. Otherwise I'll laugh at it and the ones who believes in it.

They're a good indicator for quality games.
That's not to say that low scoring games/media are bad. I've enjoyed many things that have scored bad.
Though people will only stop caring once all reviews stop scoring their reviews based on any value.

Numbers seem to be very, very important to a lot of gamers out there. The ACU thread on GAF literally exploded after the parity, here it was almost the same considering the userbase.
Numbers are easily to judge, even for the simplest minds... Everyone is able to compare numbers with each other and so it is important as people feel that *obviously* a game with a meta of 90 is better than a game with a meta of 80. Or that 1080 is a bigger number than 900.

If I'm interested in a game I really don't care about the review scores. But they can help a lot to show case when a game isn't as good as you thought it would be. Or if it's broken. Just look at Alien: Colonial Marine. I was really interested in that game (because of the hype) but then when the reviews started to roll in... I haven't gotten it yet and never will. On the other hand, ZombiU didn't just get rave reviews, but I still want that game.

For me, I take a general look at the reviews, but I also read what the developers have to say about their games, what they wanted to achieve, their goal and vision. If I'm not certain I do watch some footage or try a demo (rarely). Meta and reviews are only one factor. I never based my decision solely on them.

Never rely on critics. I just buy what interests me regardless of what they say. Hard for me to show any respect to these "critics" when I have believed for years that payola has been rife in video game "journalism".

I don't think you understood the issue with ACU... it is nothing related with numbers.

It totally is as the number is the same as the competing product and people actually think this is done intentionally by gimping one version.