I understand that some people may dislike some aspects of the game but that doesn't make it a flaw, imagine if I don't like power ups/ weapons on racing games, because is just not my thing, and then I pretend this is a big issue with Wipeout or Mario Kart, imagine I dislike cartoony looking games, and then I put BoTW a 3/10 because that drags the game down for me...of course I have the right to dislike it, but that doesn't mean the game is doing it wrong. Some people talk about BoTW as if it was objectively a flawed game, and while technically true since you can find some flaws, is one of the last games that deserve to be considered as flawed specially on its genre.

I disliked the 30 second elevator rides in Mass Effect, while some people didn't mind. Isn't that a flaw? And if someone like me who has played RPG's since 1989 thinks that the weapon breakage in a game messes with my immersion and incentive for gathering good arms, isn't that also a flaw?

The problem with your thinking is that you impose what happens to be your subjective views as the objective norm when this is clearly not the case. I love the combat in The Witcher 3, while others hated it, so for those who enjoyed games like Skyrim or Fallout, this could easily, subjectively be called a large flaw in the game, especially since combat is such a large part of the game.

As someone who has played an enormous amount of different games, and especially RPG's, with the few hours I've spent with BotW, there were a few issues that I know would dampen my experience, especially the sum of them (the insane breakage rates and lack of feedback in melee bothered me a great deal, the camera is rather poor as well, especially against larger groups of enemies). The same goes for Horizon, it has some rather glaring flaws, the main ones being the ludicrously low combat difficulty and the overall pretty poor writing, these flaws affect my total experience quite a bit since combat and interaction is what the majority of your time is spent doing in-game.

Again, you don't get to decide what can be considered flaws by others in their gaming experience, and this whole thing with Sterling simply makes it seem like a bunch of folks are throwing a tantrum becuase a game they love wasn't praised like the second coming, the way it obviously deserved to be. If your line of thinking prevailed, there would be no more targeting demographics, using focus groups or beta-testers or even writing and reading reviews at all, it would all become quite pointless.

There are cases where I scratch my head at reviews, while in other cases it's clearly about a particular reviewer having issues with certain aspects of a game, failing to adress these out of fear for backlash of simply for fan service would be nonsense by all reviewers. I'd argue that reviewers are much too forgiving in reviews, especially on lack of innovation or evolving concepts and rehashing of everything from stories and plots to entire assets being lifted between games.

I wonder, did you spend this much time having a go at the 4/10 review Uncharted 4 got from Washington Post? I'm kinda thinking you didn't. and that's sort of the essence of what I'm trying to point out here; with all the great scores it got, it should be objectively impossible to give it such a low score in any outlet. According to you, that is.

It defines me?  Sure it does ... it defines me to you inside your pretend world where everything is filtered by an association to a corporation.  You define yourself by your fandom and that's just the way you think.  Trust me, I'm not worried about your obsessive associations.  The world isn't really ordered by a system of how much people like or dislike a videogame company--that's just your lopsided and unrealistic perspective.  Your obsession is coloring the rest of the world an unrealistic shade of fanboy inside your head.  Either get over it or stop dragging other people into your reindeer games.

As for Sterling, I can't stand him and have no doubt that he's a sensationalist, but I have no reason to think his scores are dishonest.  Just because you want to believe that doesn't mean it's true.  Do you understand that?  

His scores have always reflected how much he enjoys a game, not what he thinks a game deserves based on an objective scale.  This is a pattern that I've seen for years, going back to when I was a regular at Destructoid, where Sterling got his start.  He's not worried about "deserves".  Do I think that kind of system should be on Metacritic?  I don't, but I'm certainly not going to lose sleep over it.  Do I think his scores have any meaning relative to me?  Not at all--the fact that they're entirely subjective mean they only have relevance to him or those with the exact same tastes.

At the end of the day, it's just someone else's opinion about something you had no part in creating and it doesn't hurt you at all.  Call his review terrible, say he's awful at his job, that's all perfectly fine if you can back it up, but you're just trying to invalidate a numbered score because it hurts your ego.

You should honestly stop this.  Take a step back.  It's just not that important.

Of course is not that important, is people like you that makes it important, whenever anyone says something bad about jim review someone like you come to shit about people for not accepting his score or for having doubts about his intentions, then later when someone defends himself about it someone ends up with something on the lines of  "is not important get over it"or "it doesn't take away your enjoyment get over it" or "no reasons to waste so much time about someone else opinion, get over it" or any kind of similar bullshit, but what if YOU get over it too? Because the review was suspicious so some people is gonna have their doubts, period, easy enought to understand.

There is nothing about Jim score that hurts my ego, that's such a nonsense and random statement that I don't even know if I should take you seriously, his review was very suspicious and anyone with half a brain saw it, so I have all the right to express my suspicious about it without you fucking around, stop with your bullshit already and be consistent with yourself for once in your life, I'm only suggesting Jim is a calculated sensationalist which is something you have been saying for years, but your level of hypocrisy is so ridiculously big that you shit about me for saying the same thing you have been saying about him for years, its ludicrous. 

What? Of course I'm not gonna give any importance about the 4 Washington post gave to Uncharted 4 because I don't even care about Uncharted 4 to begging with and I haven't played it so I have absolutely nothing to say. And I don't understand that expression "did you spend this much time" what are you talking about? You guys waste more time than those that disliked the review themself lol Last time it was the same story, I said Jim review was very suspicious, ONE simple comment, and people started disscussing me about it and creating a debate just to finnish with "you shouldn't waste so much time about it"...wtf? I'm not wasting any more time than you.

Do you ever read over what you've written?  You remind me a lot of Alex Jones or another one of those political pundits with the way you twist everything around to one side.  It's all about you and your faction.  You can't even understand anything anyone says to you without running it through your console warz filter first.

I've explained to you the way I think his review scores work, and that his scores now are consistent with what he's been doing for years.  Because I say that his scores are extremely subjective in no way means that I think he's making them up completely.

By all means, express your opinion.  However, I have the right to express my opinion when someone says that a reviewer is giving one game a high score because he gave another game a low score.

It may sound ridiculous, but it isn't. First he creates a huge polemic by giving the most important Nintendo game ever a 7, a perfectly calculated movement, a 7 is considered a good score in absolute terms, but at the same time every gamer knows a 7 in the gaming industry means pure mediocrity, perfect score to make people mad and at the same time make them look ridiculous because "a 7 is a great score", then later in order to kill any possible rumour of biasement he gaves a Nintendo game a huge score. Solved. Problem is the game he has choosen to give a 9 is a game from a franchise we know he hates, he didn't even reviewed the WiiU version because he was not interested, he gave MK7 a 5/10 because is "just more mario kart" and then he gaves a 9 to an enchanted Mario Kart port?.... I'm sorry, but you want to see only fanboyism in my doubts even when there is clear reasons to remain suspicious.

It's not about whether or not you've played the game, it's about the conspiracy theories that always start flying around when someone scores a Nintendo game lower than expected and it's about the fact that you claim that games with lots of perfect scores and high metascores can't be objectively flawed in such a way that it detracts to the gamer's experience.

Also, you'll note that I wrote "did you spend this much time" rather than "did you waste this much time", big difference. You're just polarizing the argument and refusing the see the weak logic in the "games with high scores can't be objectively or even subjectively flawed because I say so". And the reasons I ask about your time spent doing that is simple; the first is that I would expect some consistency in critique against reviews that seemingly exist solely to harvest clicks, even if it's about games you haven't played, if your stance is that this is a poor practice, it should be in your interest to have an opinion on such matters and the same skepticism should be applied to other cases involving other games. Whether or not you've played UC4 isn't as relevant when the score in question was a 40%, just like anyone who ever saw BotW or even read about it any any reviews of it would be skeptical about a 40% score. You're sure quick enough to shoot down anyone who suggests that Horizon has better combat than BotW (for the sake of clearing that matter up right now, I'm not sure I personally agree with that, both games have some pretty major combat issues, but they're different issues) and every time someone makes a remark on possible design weaknesses or flaws in BotW, the shouts and angry index finger spring up right away from the same old group, people are accused of not having spent enough time with the game, having played the wrong section, flat out just being wrong because the game has no flaws or simply accused of not having played the game at all. I never saw anyone go this nuts defending any games in the GTA series, for instance, despite its huge installed base, which leads me to believe that perhaps, just maybe, sometimes, possibly, the problem might not be everyone else in the world who don't get it, but rather the vocal minority who shun any and all criticism of a product or company they love.

Having been a member here for almost a full decade now, I can tell you that this is far from a fresh practice, the tone was much the same in the 7th and 8th gen.

Hey, I agree with the last part, you're not wasting more time than me, but you're making a whole lot less sense, with your metascore arguments and rhetorical lockdown on opinions that differ from yours, whether it be from Jim Sterling or anyone else.

PS: No matter what anyone writes from here on out; can we at least agree that it's ridiculous to dub someone a Nintendo hater for giving a Nintendo game a 9/10? I think it's the most unsound line of reasoning I've seen all year.

And I never ever saw this amount of people lying about a game, just the first day the game had +1000 reviews of people shitting about it on meta and we have seen people here pretending to play it and then refusing to give any proof of that in the moment someone asked for it, never a game has showed the colors of gaming comunity as good as this did, the whole internet was full of people lying in such an obvious way it was so embarrasing, even pretending to finish the game in the first 2 or 3 days, it was fucking sad.

And no, it isn't riodiculous at all because something called "context" exists, he always hated Mario Kart, he said several times he is not into that kind of games at all, but now an enchanted port of mario kart is "the first good thing Switch has to offer"... wether he is inconsistent as fuck with everything he says or this score was a simple way to have all the people in his coment section with the "but I thought jim was a hater" rethoric. He is not a hater, that was never the point, he is a sensationalist that doesn't care about the truth as much as he cares about the attention he gets, and if he needs to exaggerate something to the point it barely resembles the truth in order to get this attention, he will, he has already done this several times.

I always feel a bit depressed when i see people with that attitude (in regards to effectively anything). Everyone has preferences, but i can't imagine letting one dominate my identity to the point i have to either control the limits of other people's subjectivity, or consistently question deviations from my internal narrative. It seems exhausting. Not as exhausting as having to breath the same air as people who disagree with me though, bloody heretics.