I found Sonic 06 at EBGames for $0.50 and it does not deserve a higher score than what it has

I never did understand that North American grading curve system, in which the reward goes to the student who is the lesser dumbass of all. So you don't get graded on what you know, but on what others don't know.

Back to reviews --- that is where your theory is wrong, because each game should be scored on its own merit, not compared to other games. And Metacritic established a 75 average as a point which divides good games from average games, and below 50 denotes poor games. 

Basically, 75+ ---- buy the game

50 - 74 --- carefully consider a game, read the reviews and then decide

0 - 49 ---- avoid the game altogether

The bell curve has bitten my ass a few times (got a 90 but it got me a C), but also saved it (got a 30 but it got me a C). It's weird and I don't like it.

To reviews: I see it both ways. When I rate my music, if it sounds average to me, I'll give it a 2.5/5; but I see its individual merits and use them to distinguish it as well. I guess I got off topic with the bell curve stuff; all I really want is 5 to be the average instead of 7. I dislike IGN giving almsot everything an 8/10 or above; but that's just me. I agree with what you said about Metacritic; really their method is just a few shifted numbers away from what I want to see. I just have a problem with high review scores and see 5 as the wanted average. That would make: ~75+ buy the game, ~40-74 consider it (number spread is subject to preference) and ~0-39 avoid.

Yep. Here read about it if you like:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grading_on_a_curve

I pretty much covered it though

Well there's not intrinsic reason as to why the median and the mean should be the same. You've just assumed that.

The university system of adjusting based on the local standards is maybe a good idea. Although not entirely clear how you'd do that. You can do that in an exam because you have a kind of background objective baseline that you can compare everything to. That doesn't really exist with games. Each score is just relative to all of the rest. You don't have the archetypal perfect score that everyone agrees on and can compare to.

Yea I made a rushed connection. I wanted to establish the 5=average=middle of the pack thing but I didn't really make logical sense.

I wish we had the ideal "average" or baseline game that we could compare the others too, but I don't even know what would be taken into consideration when making that call. Heck I'd go for any score that 100% of the people agree on so we could compare other games to it. Maybe that would make all reviews more agreeable? To me it would anyway.

I got a tad off topic with the bell-grading in school, but I guess my main goal is to bell curve review scores to my own ideal standard. I want the average score to be 5 so we can compare from that, and I think review scores are too high these days, and a lot of reviewers are afraid of criticizing, and individuals are too sensitive to criticism.

The problem is that most reviewers never have to pay for games, they get review copies and so this can at times cloud their judgement. If I got every game for free I'd also be more generous with how I view certain games.

It depends on the game. You look at something like The Order and it can be argued that if it was $40 the game would be way more appealing. Sonic 06 was a horrible glitchy mess that shouldn't be recognized period.

Humans are biased and they will always be biased. It's impossible to make an unbiased review. But often the scores are just unfair and stupid only for the sake of getting more clicks.

Heck, I've read reviews of games which felt like the reviewer never played the game at all.

About the only way 1-10 review scores make any sense to me is to subtract 5 from the score and scale. Pretty much everything about game reviews is broken in one fashion or another, and it seems the only answer some are latching on to is ditching numerical scores altogether (to avoid metacritic, publisher pressure, forum wars, etc.).