I pretty much do this in combination with games that REALLY interest me otherwise and I can buy for cheap. I have so many games from 8 generations now that I haven't gotten around to playing yet. I'm not going to spend good money and time on a middle-of-the-road title unless it is absolutely "my thing" content-wise.

I haven't played Dead Cells yet, but what didn't you like about Enter the Gungeon? I played it on Switch, but that was way way after launch, so the performance issues must have been ironed out by then. 

I admit that the rogue-like genre is a bit flawed in that the randomness can sometimes screw you over. But that's kind of like criticizing rpgs because they have turn based battles. 

Well I'm sitting at work with nothing to do all day, so I kind of do research games extensively. If Days Gone winds up being something I fall in love with, I'll adopt that method over using aggregates. Interestingly enough, most games that fail to score within my cuttoff point weren't things I was interested in anyway. I think user reviews are probably the worst thing on the internet. The only exception would be steam, since people have to have at least bought the game in order to review it. I dream of one day making a user-review website that asks for your XBL/PSN/Steam accounts, and then only lets you review a game if you have earned at least 25% of achievements/trophies for said game. And even then I would limit people to giving one 10 per year, five 9's, five 8's, one 0, etc. That way there are way less user reviews that read like "10/10 IT HAD JUMPING AND CLIMBING", and "0/10 IT DIDN"T HAVE GUNS!"

Review aggregators are great if your taste is the same as everyone else's.

For a highly subjective medium like video games aggregators completely defeat the purpose of reviews. The point of reviews is to get the opinion of people you trust and know have similar tastes as you, so you are better informed. Adhering to people I don't trust or don't care about is absolute disinformation and I'd be advised to not listen to them if I want to make an informed decision.

Caring about game reviews scores will only hurt your game experience in life.

People who think that 7/10 games aren't good just haven't played any bad games.
I'm sure there exist people who only played legendary games and once they start playing 9/10 games they will complain how shitty they are. At the same time there are kids who grew up with nothing but Carnival Games, Deca Sports, Game Party and other Wii shovelware and they will go ape shit once they play a game like Days Gone.

So yeah, 7/10 games are good and fun but with a few flaws. 5/10 and 6/10 games are very much playable but will certainly be boring after a while.
Everything below that has major issues.

The reason why 7/10 is considered bad is because the general quality of games is pretty high. A 7/10 game is nothing special. Gameplay not as good as comparable games, may not be as impressive looking as other games, story has been done before etc.. That's why many games receive a score like that. Something under 5/10 is a lot rarer because most companies would cancel a game like that way in advance or invest more time and money to get it above 5/10.

Most games are decently functional these days so they should be getting at least a passing score which would be a minimum of a 7 like in school/college. It's only everything after that is much harder to get and it makes sense. If a game has little to no glitches, decent pacing, decent gameplay that's functional and fun (doesn't need to be amazing or anything) has at least ok production values either based on art or graphical proficiency a minimum of a 7 it should get.

But that being said it feels like this generation in the 80s are where it's at. I'm enjoying far more games that hit in the 80s than the 90s.

That's a flawed logic to go by because unless you personally try a game to see if you like it, than basing everything off a score is obsolete.

Iv played games in the 80s and 90s which I never really liked yet iv played games in the 60s and 70s and liked them.

There are a lot of gamers on this site who actually enjoy Days Gone (72) to say you don't like it based off its rating is well.. wrong.

I loved playing Homeworld Deserts of Kharak which sits on a 79, it doesn't need to be a 9 to catch my interests and if I went with a similar logic to yours, I would have missed that gem.

What a load of tosh, the guy above me is somewhat right.

If it's below 9.8, I don't play it.

That's how to read metacritc

9.7 - crap
9.8 - somewhat good
9.9 - good
10 - very good.

Yeah, I don't think I've ever played a truly bad game. Being spoiled all day with 8/10's and 9/10's will do that. 

I've also played games in the 80's and 90's that I never really liked. I'm not saying that something in the 80's and 90's is a must buy for everyone. Depending on the genre you might not like it. For example, I'll never like Forza or post Reach Halo. 

I don't know whether or not I like Days Gone or not. I haven't played it. I said earlier in this thread that I'm going to buy it and try it out. 

I was never interested in Rage 2. Not one bit. FPS games hardly interest me anymore. I think I've bought 5 FPS or 3rd Person Shooter games in the last ten years. And that's counting games like Splatoon and Splatoon 2. I hate FPS, but I was willing to give Nintendo's take on it a try. 

Oh, and games with FPS elements but other factors are fine for me. Fallout and Dishonored are fine. If it's a pure military or adventure FPS though I almost certainly won't be interested.