ok metroid was the worst example i could give but it was off the top of my head. i just thought it was a little low for such a great game

So why not jump in a email to everyone of them and tell them to stop puting their opinions into reviews... err.. no wait here I'm being serious.

Tell them to ripp apart each portion of the game and examine how potentially fun that game is and how many parts allow it to be fun and to how many people could each part reach as fun?

You could rate a game off that I think.

Reviews are far more biased this gen. They rate games based on conssole rather than content. Most of them are getting paid to do this also. (Gamespot) The review system is broking, because everybody feels they could hand out 100s to every game that is amazing, but not perfect. Then you have the select few people who rate games too low by just seeing the cons and no pros. It's all screwed up and that is why you should look at the content of the review rather than the score.

game reviews are BS in my opinion and i dont rely on them, most of them are sellouts anyway and they always feed into hype.

One problem I have seen with the review scores is inconsistent consideration of how good a game is for its time ...

Most of the biggest games being released are sequels to games that have been on several generations of hardware; because of this reviewers (whether conscience of it or not) are influenced by the previous version of the game and the review score it received. Now, there are two ways to compare a game to its previous version, how the game "Directly Compares" to its previous version and how the game compares "For its time" ...

(Note: Just using GTA 4 as an example, not a serious critique)

When you compare Grand Theft Auto 4 to Grand Theft Auto 3 in a direct fashion Grand Theft Auto 4 is a far better game and should receive a far better score. On the other hand, when you compare the two games for their time Grand Theft Auto 3 was a revolutionary product which force everyone to see videogames in an entirely different way whereas Grand Theft Auto 4 is an incremental improvement over the formula established in Grand Theft Auto 3; therefore Grand Theft Auto 4 should receive a far worse score than Grand Theft Auto 3.

Now the reason this can cause problems is you will see reviews for games like Metroid Prime 3 which use the "For its time" argument to dock it marks, while other games Like Grand Theft Auto 4 do not receive the same treatment.

Great post! For me GTAIV was not a perfect game, not until it hits PC anyways! But anyway, it was so much better for me than GTAIII, it was a whole other world. I could actually play and enjoy it, where I hated the third one. Just the range of things, its a freedom simulator really. Its for people who want to do whatever the hell they want, its quite a release from a boring day at work. For that reason its a 9.5 game, because it means a lot to a lot of different people, in a lot of different ways.

Perhaps one of the big issues at hand is finding a few reviewers with a similar taste in gaming to yourself and then check it with friends and hype and if it sounds good, buy into it! If you get someone who likes FPS games to tell you that Halo 3 is the best game ever and you don't really like FPS games of course the game will not live up to the scores for you.

Well that's that for you. I just don't look at 1 one review. I look at how it fairs from other reviews. If it gets a fair review.. then what the heck I'm gonna try it for myself.

My favorite was Gamespot giving Twilight Princess a low score because it was too much Zelda-like gameplay. IMO, they should only give the game to reviewers who have a genuine interest in the game. It's like handing a racing game to someone who never plays them because they're not their thing, and then asking that person to do a review of it. No, Gamespot lets a 360 addict (if you watched any of his blogs) very vocal about his distaste for the Wii review its largest, most acclaimed launch title.

A lot of cons Gamespot likes to list for disliking a game are ridiculous, it's like they're grasping at straws trying to find reasons to dislike a game. Rather than going into it just looking to be entertained, they want the game to blow them too.

The problem with reviews in general is that you can't just assign a number to a game and judge it solely based on that number....using simple numbers to represent abstract and complicated concepts such as gameplay, etc.? Doesn't work so well. Actually reading many different people's opinions/reviews (assuming they are not sellout opinions) is the way to go when investigating a game before purchasing.