I personally don't care for the numbered score systems in reviews anymore, and rather just prefer to see a summary of the pros / cons of a game at the end of a review.

Or maybe we just stop giving undue attention to rewiews and meta scores and start treating them as what they are: a subjective critical examintation of media.

Best thing you can do is find a reviewer who's point of view you usually share or consistently disagree with and use their reviews as a starting point to figure out if a game is for you or not.

Reviews of art, by their very nature can never be completely neutral. Art is subjective. A 'neutral' game review would be something nonesensical along the lines of:'It has controls, it also has graphics, there is a 2D/3D camera' etc.
And if you want a neutral rundown of the technical aspect digital foundry's got you covered.

Of course if you're that obsessed with metascores you could always eleminate the highest and lowest scores.

1.Everyone has their own opinion.
2.I feel bad for you if you base your purchase on someone's review
3. One bad review won't matter.

What I find surprising is the low score- 4/10 is what you'd find for near unplayable games such as Hyrule Warriors Legends for the old 3DS. What does he base his review on?

While I wasn't a fan for Halo 5, even I couldn't give it such a low review. I mean, dear god, the lowest I could possible give the game would be 7.5/10. But 4? You're basically saying the game is unpolished and broken.

It has needed it for a loooong time. These so called "journalists" let their fanboy preferences influence their decision as well as some rating extremely low scores as click bait. Gaming journalism has been nothing more than a joke for quite some time.

The problem isn't freedom of speech or expression, no one is taking that from him. The problem is actually more of a metacritic issue....

There have always been one or two contrarians or troll reviews that have been accepted by metacritic; Tom Chick over at quarter to three and Jim Sterling at times fall into this category. 

It is fine to have a descenting opinion if it is well argued and justified by the text. The problem lies in when metacritic and others accept an unusually low score that is poorly argued and does not take an objective view of the game within its genre and does not discuss mechanics, developments and how it furthers or stagnates the medium of video games. 

Now look at this guys review..... it is just a tirade of hate, ignoring any virtues of the game. It is actually disgusting. 

There really needs to be a minimum standard, it sounds like this guy didn't even play the game frankly... 

I used to care about review scores but eventually, I began to buy what I liked and just ignore them until after I've seen/played whatever was being reviewed.

I think people get mad at reviews because they don't actually want to be informed. They just want to hear what they want to hear. I've greatly enjoyed games with low scores and I've been highly disappointed with games that have scored highly. In the end, it's all just opinions.

I'm loving U4 but I've never been a fan of the gunplay in this series. I'd still give the game a 10 based on what I've played thus far (hint: I'm wearing a tuxedo). If somebody puts more weight on some aspect that's important to them, who am I to say they're wrong?

Yes, we need something asap. Reviewers have way too much power these days. They decide whether a game gets treated like trash or like gold before it's even released, yet they behave like monkeys, change their opinion just as it fits, criticize bullshit that nobody cares about or - like that Polygon dipshit - be so heavily biased that they don't even finish neither game nor review and blame it on the game. Fuckhead. I really think that some reviewers are far from independent these days. I can't shake the feeling that some reviews are sabotaged by some small amounts of money here and there. Like that one idiot who claimed he could see a 1 frame per second dip in Mario Kart 8 and this had a negative impact on his entire reception of the game? That amount of stupidity is not explainable without bribes, don'tcha think?

You have a LOT of game ahead of you and it gets way better towards the end.... enjoy! 

I'll see waht you think after you finish :)

Once you play a "bad" game and realize you liked it, you'll stop caring for reviews.

I remember all the hate critics gave pokemon black, saying the series is done for. When I realized it wasn't that bad of a game, I realized what critics say doesn't make a difference.

Critics are the ones who gave pokemon omega ruby, a game based on an island, 7.8 for TOO MUCH WATER.

Haha yes IGN... I remember! I used to EV train my pokemon....