So, over the last few months Ive noticed quite a few threads/wars regarding critic scores from the infamous Metacritic. Well it's time to reconsider some things that go totally unnoticed regarding review scores that are accumulated in this site. Im gonna show you something that must be taken into account about why today we see so few games score so rare as a 90+

1. Internet today is overwhelming resulting in a lot more publications taken into account from the past years. we see games reaching like 100+ reviews

2. Originality/ideas. Over the course of years it's only natural to see recycled content and not only gaming but in all media in general. From music to movies etc.

3. Amount of games/Industry profit. Sure the couple last years gaming is taking over on HUGE numbers. a lot more games = less quality (Same as other media)

4. Game development time: A lot of games seem to take forever to complete these days and even after months of release, we see bug fixes and even new content. But has ever anyone asked himself the amount of work needed for today's standards: graphics/3d sounds/voice acting/? Sure Mario and Sonic looked good back then, but imagine the work that has to be done to see something like this:

Ofc then there is the always online component that gives developers room (or excuse) to further improve the game even after release. Something that wasn't possibe on Snes for instance. Hence games HAD to be complete. This leads to lower scores since games today are judged by the release date and not 3 patches after.

So in accordance to all these thoughts i've compiled the following  list: Over the years games that scored over 90+ but with some rules:

1. Used the version with the most reviews

2. Game has to have the appropriate amount of reviews so it's meta is accurate (not just 5-10)

3. No expansions/remasters

2016: Uncharted4, Inside, Overwatch, Forza horizon3 = 4 games

2015: MGSV, Witcher3, Bloodborne, Undertale = 4 games

2014:  GTA5, Super smash bros, Bayonetta2, Dark souls 2 = 4 games

Now lets go back in time to see:

2000: Tony hawk skater2, Perfect dark, NFL2K1, Baldur's gate2, LoZ: majora's Mask, FFIX .....From a quick look i've counted more that 25 games that scored over 90+. BUT here's the catch. Most of these games have like 10 to 30 reviews unlike today's standards that have 80-110 reviews. Also they were unable to receive any update whatsover (with a few exceptions on pc?)

With this info i provide, i hope you get to acknoledge that times have changed in how a game today receives it's score. So next time you are about to judge that 80% - 85% metacritic, just think how difficult for it is to score a 90+

Thanks for the read :)

Actually I think most games these days get a lot of point docked for technical issues that were not really an issue for reviewers in the past generations.
A prime example of this is the Last Guardian, this game has the same performance and camera issues that SOTC had but it's getting points taken off for them while SOTC got a free pass.

Last gen, a game like Skyrim which was nigh unplayable at times due to it's technical issues was able to score higher than any game this generation has so far, a game with that many issues these days would find it hard to hit 80 on metacritic.

Could be wrong but I strongly believe that in the case of Skyrim they'd overlook these problems even if it was reviewed today.

Aint going to change the haters from hating :P

Rather than overlook them, most reviewers probably did not encounter anything very terrible.  People often extrapolate "I had problems" or "some people on the forums had problems" to "everyone had problems".  The worst PS3 bug, for instance, did not affect everyone and usually only manifested after more hours of play-time than you'd see with most reviews.  If a reviewer did not experience particular bugs then they won't show up in the original article.

There is also the philosophy of the good counter-acting the bad against the philosophy of technical deductions being more important than content.  I can completely understand someone enjoying a game so much despite any problems that they give it a high score.  I can also understand someone being harsh over technical issues.  People have different outlooks.  There is no standard formula so we see both counted together in a "meta-score".

In the end, honestly, the real take-away is that numerical scores aren't a very good system for judging video-games and are a terrible substitute for reading actual reviews.  I really have very little sympathy for anyone who makes a decision based on scores.

When you mention the tech side of things and give a picture of Uncharted 4 (I think) but yeah compare that to everything that goes into Sonic... That picture alone is double the file Size of the original Sonic the Hedgehog game on the Megadrive.

It's just nuts now that games feature more cgi rendered movies than hollywood releases from 5-10 years ago which were heralded as amazing but then score badly because "we've played this sort of thing before" I agree with you that the decline of scores based on the tiredness of the reviewer towards video games as a whole has to be taken into account.

If that is true, it's very interesting how they don't come across any bugs while playing Skyrim on ps3 but sure do when they play other games. I find that unlikely. Extremely unlikely. Especially since Skyrim is such a long game and reviewed by so many people. Finding out about these problems didn't stop them from giving the game GOTY awards. I think it's more likely that they did encouter several problems but because they liked the game overall, they chose to overlook them (i.e. they didn't think they were a big deal).

Take Driveclub for example. Some reviewers went out of their way to update their score and deduct points because of problems they didn't encounter when they reviewed the game. They felt no need to update their Skyrim score for some reason. I think certain games are judged more harshly because they are reviewed by people who are already negatively disposed towards them. I think most people would agree that XIII-2 was better than XIII, but the reviewers were influenced by the negative reception of XIII by gamers and were too harsh on XIII-2.

That is not what I said at all.  

Also, Skyrim wasn't reviewed by many people on the PS3, at least not on Metacritic.  

I don't believe that updating scores was something anyone even thought about until recently.

And to think Xenoblade for Wii got a 92. All the more impressive.

Never said that that's what you said word for word.

What's your take on XIII and XIII-2? Don't you think that they review game with a certain mindset and that affects  their score? Even if you haven't played them, how likely do you think it is that they felt that XIII was awesome and XIII-2 a disaster? Obviously they ignored problems with XIII due to hype surrounding it. When the hype was gone, all they could see were the negatives.