Reviews are fine the way they are since, theoretically, a game should work day 1 and be judged based on that day 1 release. If they did change review scores for patches, that's basically giving broken games a get out of jail free card and we'll get more broken games, and since we have gotten some more glitchy and buggy games recently I don't think we should give more incentive for devs to pull this crap.

I think all of you are missing the point or have a warped sense of what a review should be. Its seems to you a review should be a way the gaming community can punish a dev which is just wrong.

If it is broken at launch the dev will lose sales at the full price point. If the game is fixed or amended they cant undo lost sales.

Reviews are for the consumer and in many cases that do not properly do their job.

Well....shut up >.>

:P But seriously, your right, but I maintain that removing review scores is the solution to every problem ever.

PS: The returns on updated reviews just doesn't makes sense in pretty much any business model, having reviewers re-review a game every time a patch comes out.

This

How about devs actually ship complete products instead of buggy, broken, unfinished pieces of crap?

I agree. Reviews should educate the consumer about the product they have at hand. If it is a broken piece of shit, has missing features or a bad game when they have played it, then the score should reflect that.

However, perhaps an update in the review is needed to inform consumer that a number of improvements have been made via patch or whatever, but the score and the general tone should remain the same.

thats not always the case, sometimes the issue is replayability and if they patch in a mode that helps in that regard it does not mean the game was crap or the devs shipped a lemon.

For instance the single biggest knock on the Order is value. If they added a co-horde mode because players want that it should reflect in the score. Ya it wont go up to a 90% because people also had issues with some of the gameplay (or lack there of) but it would certainly pull it out of the 60s.

And it should work the other way around like I mentioned with my Hotel Analogy. No way MCC should be an 87. It was reviewed in one state and was released and currently is in another. It should be dropped until they fix the issues then it can have its 87 back.

Shouldn't you be happy that they are telling the truth? What kind of a job would a reviewer be doing if they neglected to "punish the dev" because they thought it was wrong?

A review is not about stroking the developers ego; they are about educating the consumer, thus an accurate depiction of the game's launch status is necessary. Many of these reviews state quite loud and clear that the game is not worth purchase until the necessary fixes are made. That is all that needs to be said; any subsequent fixes will be covered by the developers social media and the abundance of gaming peripherals we have. 

A developer is a business; a corporation. Do we really love a business so much as to need an updated score in order to sleep better at night? If you enjoy the game, then you shouldn't care about a fictional number anyway. It most certainly is not wrong to punish a dev for being lazy. Poor launches should be remembered, not covered up by an updated score. A short time ago in the PS2 era, there were no patches; games were ready at launch. The only reason devs can get away with day 1 broken messes is because of patches.

It's like saying "at least you tried" and giving them an empathetic pat on the back. That is not how it works. You don't need to have feelings for a corporate entity ffs. This isn't your 4 year old kid's drawing an portrait of the family; this is a business' product mostly designed to sell as much as possible. The relationship we hold with them is strictly buy and sell. Rewarding poor behavior enables a repeat performance.

This is why you don't bother going to gaming websites - especially metacritic - for reviews of games 3+ months old. Those reviews are probably of a version of a product you can't even access anymore due to patching. Completely worthless, other than a snapshot of "version 1.02, as of XX/XX/20XX." I'm continually disappointed in gamers supporting reviews as a publisher bludgeon rather than a useful tool for players down the road.

...but on the other hand, these reviews would be garbage even if they were up to date. Go watch some LPs with commentary, first impression videos, anything is better than reading a few paragraphs and an arbitrary numerical score attached (probably with a bloody decimal point, because on a scale of 1-10 people can't decide between a 7 or 8).