I think you've missed the point of reviews. Just because a game has a 90+ on Metacritic doesn't mean it'll be your favourite game ever, or the best you've ever played. Dragon Age Inquisition was a fantastic game, it was three times longer than both its predecessors, full of great characters and quests, beautiful locations and some fantastic battles. It wholly deserves the great reviews it had. However, if you don't like long RPGs in that style, with that sort of combat, then obviously you're not going to like the game so much.


I'd also say that Metacritic is spot on with Infamous: Second Son. I really liked the game, hell, I literally wear Delsin's hat from the Special Edition, but it doesn't deserve more than 80. It's much shorter than Infamous 2, it's story falls flat due to its poor ending and complete lack of character development, its moral choice decision is very black or white, it's skill trees for Power development are very limited compared to Infamous 2, it just comes short in a lot of areas. It's great fun to play, but it could've been A LOT better, so you really need to give it that extra room in review score, which is why 80 seems about right to me; it's a solid game that's great fun to okay, looks stunning, but it's far from perfect and has a lot of room to improve. As for DriveClub, it launched in a really bad state and has grown A LOT since release. Sure, it's a fantastic game now, but it wasn't in the months after it came out, so naturally it had worse reviews than it would've if it had released now.

I genuinely think that Metacritic nails it more often than not. If you're looking at a game in a genre or style you like, and it has an 80+, the chances are you're going to love it. If it's a high score but not a genre you like, obviously you won't like it. Same goes for lower scores; a game might only get 60 or so, but if it's a genre you really love then you're obviously going to appreciate it more anyway, so even though it's not as well-made as other games, you'll still like it. Metacritic is a great tool as long as you understand what it is; a collection of opinions. It's scores don't tell you if you'll love a game or hate it, they tell you if it's a good example of that particular style of game, if it's well-made or not. The rest is up to the reader to decide if they'd like it or not.

i dont trust anything review related to begin with

Hmm... This feels as though this isn't really about DA:I.

OT: Reviews are reviews. Can't do much about that. I personally don't care about review scores themselves rather the content. Which is why meta-critic is more a less meaningless to me anymore. Look at reviews themselves and see if they are factual or whatever to determine if you should listen to their review. I only care about maybe 3-4 reviewers tops

No matter where you go the aggregate won't work out well. It's a simple flaw with the way the industry has gone thus far, and with wildly different reviewers reviewing wildly different games, sometimes one that they're super hyped for, sometimes ones they simply don't want to review but have to, it's not gonna change anytime soon. That's part of the reason I started my channel, because I'm just fed up with games getting boiled down to an overall number without any concern for relativity. At this point I'm sick of numbered scores at all.

I'm able to watch a game and say " I want that" even if it got horrible reviews. I don't need reviewers to tell me what to buy and what not to buy, I just use them as a perspective on what other people generally think about the game and what they did or didn't like about it. It never wavers my purchase though.

Having a cap for reviewers may be better, but I feel that the average is more or less the general view of the game, which Metacritic shows..

Do I agree with it? Not all the time, but metacritic does what it intends to do and not everyone agrees..

Best way is to find a critic or 2 that has a similar mindset as you and follow them, because their opinions will fit better than the overall average

"I have found myself buying games I hated based on high metas such as Dragon Age Inquisition, which I ended up hating."

Your own fault, to be honest. A reviewer cannot tell you if you'll like a game, only if they like a game. Even then, actually reading a review is much more informative than a subjective numerical score based on personal criteria. I genuinely have little sympathy for someone who buys a game based on an arbitrary number.

Metacritic score is a very loose guide, nothing more.

I would like to bring a case to highlight the problem with having no vetting process for reviews....

The individual provides reviews and other pieces for a website called "Games Revolution", he was banned from NeoGaf for his biased posts and troll-like behavior. He can be often spotted posting on various comment sections around the web, usually heavily endorsing anything Microsoft does and criticizing anything Sony does....

https://twitter.com/MrJonnyBigBoss

Have a good look at his tweets, is this a person that should be reviewing games?

(He is only one of the contributors to Games Revolution, there are many)

80 is low? and how about actually READING the reviews and not just looking at scores?

Relatively....