I don't expect reviewers to adore any game they review. But the whole idea of having 'professional reviewers' who contribute to aggregate sites, is so the average consumer can get a general idea on the quality of a title. Not so they have to try and weigh every reviewer's personal bias/frustrations with any given title.

The logic of 'every person has their own subjective view' is the same dumb excuse used when Jim Sterling dropped Breath of the Wild's Meta, in a rather blatant act of attention-seeking showmanship, yet people will still defend it. When a score/review is that much of an outlier compared to almost every other reviewer, there's clearly a disconnect, and they're likely not doing their job properly.

If you want to post opinionated views on games for everyone with your particular mindset, put it on your blog and the people who care will read it. If you're gonna contribute to an aggregate site as a professional reviewer, then be a professional. Is that too much to ask?

Better than expected considering how janky the gameplay looked. One of my most anticipated titles for a long time, glad its getting good reception.

Because the more sources that can reliably judge the quality of a game, and the more you have reaching a similar outcome, the more you should be able to trust that you're getting an accurate assessment.

It's not about everyone 'copying' eachother. That would be counter-productive. Obviously every reviewer should be independant. But if they're all doing their job correctly to judge the objective quality of a title, then they should all be delivering scores and points within a certain value to be accurate. Or are we going to have the argument now that 'objective quality isn't a thing'?

When 38 reviewers give it at least 90+, five more give it 80-85, and one gives it 78.. then those scores of 60 and 70 are big outliers. At least with the grading system Metacritic is judged by.

Saying 'they use their own grading system' only makes the matter worse. If you're gonna judge games by your own standard rather than the one that's universally recognised on the aggregate site, then you're only further muddying the data. You're not helping the average consumer.

I find GamesBeat's review to be particularly informative for someone like me who hoped (foolishly) for more depth and being it closer to tabletop experience, though I find that 3/5 stars doesn't translate well to 100 point scale, aside from (most likely) being a bit too harsh.

This game clearly isn’t a 94+ metacritic game - the sign of true greatness. In order to get 94+ far more reviewers should have given the game a 100 rather than a 90. It’s not like this is the only universally acclaimed game that has ever gotten a 70 60 50 or even 40 score from some reviewer.

You have a problem with Gamespot, but not publishers that tie bonuses to an arbitrary congregated score???

I've actually read the Gamespot review as well as Games beat and PC gamer and they make valid well constructed, backed up points to explain their scores. Yet not to 'screw' devs out of a bonus (which is not how CDPR works btw) they should get in line with the yes men and alter their scores?

Any site giving this game a perfect score, 100, in the state the game is currently in, is part of the problem. None of those even expect the day 1 patch to address all the issues, not any time soon after release. For example from one of the 100s, "but it’s not without fault. It’s let down by elements that should have been better; not the bugs, in particular (because they will be fixed), but things like the melee combat, the explanation of systems, the oppressive influx of side quests." Perfect score!

Let's blame the ones that actually reflect their impressions in a (still meaningless) score.

There was a glimmer of hope for reviews at the start of this gen when it briefly looked like we were getting a reversal from the bloated scores. It's worse now than ever with tons of small sites pushing out a 100 score asap for clicks. Leaving the ones with more realistic scores open to abuse.

Eurogamer had it right to get rid of scores and simply go with recommended, which isn't even based on how good the game actually is, just whether the reviewer would recommend it. Still you get the endless nonsense in the comments why one game got the one badge and not the other. Just read the text and decided for yourself what you find important. (Not that I'm saying you don't but people put way too much value on an average score)

A computer system can't judge the human elements of entertainment or art, which is why we're meant to have reviewers with the necessary education, experience and wisdom to judge them to a certain degree.

But if everything is subjective, we may as well just grab 100 random gamers off the street and pay them to review every game. If there's no objective way to define the quality of a title, what's the point of even having 'professional reviewers'?

By your logic, nothing a majority of reviewers say will be helpful anyway. Makes me wonder why someone with that mindset would even look at aggregate scores or come to these threads. Why not just find one who directly shares your mindset and only listen to them.

Doesn't matter.

Don't you realize how wrong this sounds? The problem lies 100% with the publishers. Efficiency bonuses tied to efficiency make sense, as well as sharing part of the profit with the employees (as CDPR does). Buyers are the ultimate critics in the end. It wouldn't make sense to tie a bonus to how some arbitrary reviewers judge the quality of the paper printed by your dad.

Plus it's Metacritic's fault for not aggregating scores in a balanced way. Either they should stretch all the 50-100 scores to a 0-100 scale, or compress the 0-100 scores to the 50-100 scale. Then you have the 1 to 5 star reviews, how do hey handle that.

Basically you're asking to put any integrity aside in fear of developers missing out on a bonus. How can any reviews be trusted anymore when this practice exists. What is the point of a review nowadays. Not that journalistic integrity is still a thing ugh.

Anyway now more than ever it doesn't make sense to buy day one anymore, let alone pre-order. You get a still unfinished product with rushed reviews that can't tell you how the game actually is in the long run. We went from slamming games for day 1 problems to now assuming that everything will be fixed asap. There's only one thing certain, you can't tie a score to a game on day one. The times of games being complete and static from launch are long gone.

Metacritic is only good for list wars, nothing else :/

Ha, weighing the 'alternative' score heavier. I can see why putting different weights on less trusted sites but that's a whole other can of worms I used to visit gamerankings up to a  couple gens ago, I see they closed last year. I don't know how they dealt with the influx of new review sites. Back then you mostly had big sites coming from actual magazines like Edge making up the combined scores (Are they gone as well?)

It's all a bit of a mess nowadays with who knows how many goty awards and every new game there are new review sites I've never heard of before lol. For example, when half-life 2 came out
https://web.archive.org/web/20041117043434/http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpages2/914642.asp
The average review ratio for all 13 editorial reviews has been 97.6%, which went up to 24 selected reviews by the 20th (97.4%)
There are 81 reviews on Metacritic for half-life 2... No way to tell which are original.

It is what it is, 46 'reviews' already for Cyberpunk and another 18 pending and the game isn't even out yet, and that's just based on the PC version.
The last of us pt 2, 121 'critic' reviews LOL Things have gotten out of hand, that's over double the reviews compared to the biggest blockbuster movies.