SpartanFX said: Well some thing that I noticed in game rankings/metacritics is that if you go through the reviewer's websites ,,you will notice some of the UNKOWN websites are wayyy off ,,,it seems that they even didn't play the game ,,Almost like they were paid to drop the average review score let's take a look at an example for uncharted,,,which got 89.7% ,,All the reviews were above 80 except for 1 taht gave it 65/100(A/V ONION CLUB)WHAT THE HELL IS THAT WEBSITE ANYWAYS?,,,their reason: "Frustration sets in when: Roots, rocks, and waterfalls look great, but as soon as the camera focuses on a face, the whole illusion is lost. If the characters weren't written so woodenly, it would be a bit easier to overlook their rubber faces. Final judgment: A shiny, hollow bauble. " which is not true at all so it draged the META score low for no reason,,, What do I do? I only trust IGN and read their reviews to see if it makes sense

 I bet some reviewers make review scores and write reviews for games based on either screen shots or watching video footage.

Rock_on_2008 said: SpartanFX said: Well some thing that I noticed in game rankings/metacritics is that if you go through the reviewer's websites ,,you will notice some of the UNKOWN websites are wayyy off ,,,it seems that they even didn't play the game ,,Almost like they were paid to drop the average review score let's take a look at an example for uncharted,,,which got 89.7% ,,All the reviews were above 80 except for 1 taht gave it 65/100(A/V ONION CLUB)WHAT THE HELL IS THAT WEBSITE ANYWAYS?,,,their reason: "Frustration sets in when: Roots, rocks, and waterfalls look great, but as soon as the camera focuses on a face, the whole illusion is lost. If the characters weren't written so woodenly, it would be a bit easier to overlook their rubber faces. Final judgment: A shiny, hollow bauble. " which is not true at all so it draged the META score low for no reason,,, What do I do? I only trust IGN and read their reviews to see if it makes sense  I bet some reviewers make review scores and write reviews for games based on either screen shots or watching video footage.

This website(AV ONION or whatever)has obviously hasn 't played uncharted casue the faces are done very impressively and not like a shiny plastic that the websites reffers to.

Rock_on_2008 said: Game reviewers are probably paid to give reviews and do not give reviews based on merit.

 I do agree with the "probably paid to give reviews" part. If they work for a larger site or mag like EGM, IGN, etc., they better be getting money for their work.

The rest is a silly blanket statement. If you're saying there are disingenuous reviews out there, I agree. Corruption and laziness find their way into anything humans are involved in. If you think most game reviewers are taking money under the table to give good scores, you're getting pretty far out there. It seems you're especially upset with games like Halo getting good review scores, but games like that are kind of...ya know...good.

You're right, it's all a grand conspiracy against the PS3.

...

Anywho... a review, as some have already stated, is one person's opinion. Take it as you will, read what they had to say and learn from it.

Though I have a feeling that you wouldn't have such a strong opinion about this matter if a PS3 title was in the top 10 for GameRatings, MetaCritic, or GameStats. Just a thought...

Several people have already argued that review sites aren't particularly biased and that games like Mario, Zelda, and Halo really are better than Uncharted and R&C.

I happen to agree with this, but let's assume for a moment that, in some objective sense, Uncharted gets more things right than Halo does. I would argue that the review scores make sense even so. It absolutely makes sense to rate otherwise identical games differently if one is an established and popular IP while another uses unknown characters.

This is because no one reads reviews to make conclusions about games as art. It's a tiny minority of gamers that even believe that games can be art, and even fewer really care whether or not a given game is good art. People read reviews to get an idea of how much they would enjoy a game (in order to make purchasing decisions) and review scores are meant to distill all of the information in the review into an easy to understand format. Almost all of us find that average review scores correlate very, very well with how worth purchasing a game is.

So we then have to determine what makes a game enjoyable and worth purchasing. It's readily apparent that IP matters. A huge part of the appeal of Smash Bros is that it's Nintendo characters beating each other up. I wouldn't enjoy the game as much if it didn't have Mario, Zelda, and Samus in it, even if it had characters with identical move sets but different skins. Part of what makes Mario games so enjoyable is the very fact that they are Mario games, and it absolutely makes sense to factor this into a score. A big part of what made Halo 3 worth purchasing for so many people is the mere fact that it is the sequel to Halo 2. Any honest review has to consider this information.

Moving on,

Million - you've just prescribed a time-consuming process when all the average person wants to do is google the game's title, make sure it's decent, and pick it up from a store. Further, no one can do that for all games - one has to pick and choose which games to take an interest in in the first place, and at the very least average review scores provide a useful metric for this.

Rock_on_2008 said:  Do anyone notice how game reviews can be a load of nonsense? Popular games get inflated review scores such as the Halo's, Mario's, Zelda's Bioshock, Half-Life's, etc. Seriously why do review sites give out such high scores when they are not justified? Time and time again the high review scores do not always result in high game sales. The PS3 games have been harshly reviewed in comparison to the Wii and 360 games. Multiplatform games on PS3/360 have received different scores when they were identical in every way. Reviewers have been biased towards both the Wii and 360. Reviewers have been very critical of the PS3.

your best bet is to play the game yourself. many reviewrs are stupid these days.

i also agree that some(not all) offer biased reviews against ps3, but then again ive also seen poor reviews for 360 games. ie pgr4 gamespot gave it 8.5 when its a 9.0 game easily.

Rock_on_2008@- one review i thought was appauling was boomboxes review of DIRT for 360 and ps3, games are identicle apart from smoother frame rate and better sound on ps3, but somehow boombox gave the ps3 version a lower score. its this type of reviewing that pisses me off.

Rock_on_2008 said: SpartanFX said: Well some thing that I noticed in game rankings/metacritics is that if you go through the reviewer's websites ,,you will notice some of the UNKOWN websites are wayyy off ,,,it seems that they even didn't play the game ,,Almost like they were paid to drop the average review score let's take a look at an example for uncharted,,,which got 89.7% ,,All the reviews were above 80 except for 1 taht gave it 65/100(A/V ONION CLUB)WHAT THE HELL IS THAT WEBSITE ANYWAYS?,,,their reason: "Frustration sets in when: Roots, rocks, and waterfalls look great, but as soon as the camera focuses on a face, the whole illusion is lost. If the characters weren't written so woodenly, it would be a bit easier to overlook their rubber faces. Final judgment: A shiny, hollow bauble. " which is not true at all so it draged the META score low for no reason,,, What do I do? I only trust IGN and read their reviews to see if it makes sense  I bet some reviewers make review scores and write reviews for games based on either screen shots or watching video footage.

Considering the current trend where games have been heading and the "hardcores" priorities, it's understandable that you rate games by screenshots and videos. But as what it comes to topic, the rating needs a context to work, which is where metacritic and gameratings fail, since the idea of the sites is to give the rating out of context and bias. Best way to get something out of ratings, is to read reviews from reviewers that share your taste in games. People who only like shooters rarely rate anything challenging high, no matter how you'd think your favorite 55% puzzle game is the best game ever made. It would be interesting to see how people would be crying if the Singstar audience would start rating peoples favourite shooters, for their preferences, to low 60's or low 50's. There's also a lot of factors that has something to do with the bias in the rating. Usually the most popular platform gets the "better" rating, which makes 360 games getting better rating in US and PS3 in Europe. In Wiis case, the different approach seem still to cause some point reductions. Although, if the generation would have started in the current situation, the launch games would have gotten better ratings in general.