http://www.giantbomb.com/

This is the new site of the ex gamespot review writers.  They appear to rate games using 5 stars which to game rankings equate to 20% so 3 stars though it seems decent is counted as 60%.  Just ran into them while checking out gamer rankings which I do on occasion as I like for reviews for games I am interested in especially if they are available before the games release.  Was looking at how well soul caliber was doing until I saw a 60% the lowest score on there for soul caliber and followed the link.   After looking at some of their reviews it seems pretty much in line with other review site though the translation of 3 stars being 60% at gamer rankings doesn't seem right after reading the review they seem to see 3 stars as average so more like 70-75%.  Just curious if people will start to take them serious now that they are not part of gamestop.  I personally don't care as I just like reading reviews to get more information on a game I am interested and they seem to write quite a bit which is nice.

yeah. i've been listening to their podcast. their web site is okay. although the social aspect of it is pretty nice.

i'm glad they started up Giant Bomb, since these guys were the best part of the podcasting part of Gamespot. the Gamespot podcast lost all its good personalities to Giant Bomb. i still listen to Gamespot, but it's just not what it used to be.

I used to listed the their podcast, but their 20 minutes of energy drink reviews every episode was just too much.

Stars do not translate well into percentages for Metacritic. More sites are going to letter grades or star rating from 10 or 100 point scales, so the problem is getting worse.

3 stars is an average game on a 5 star scale. A 60% game on a 100 point scale is bad.

A 4 star game is a very good game, while the translated 80% is average.

A 5 star game is great, while a 100% game is perfect.

A jump from 4 to 5 stars make a game go from average to perfect on Metacritic.

The review scores are horrible. Soul Calibur 4, UT3, GT5P get 3 Stars and Condemned 2 5 -.-

Hm, the best way to rate a game is by numbers 1-10.

Agreed.  That's why I tend to not listen when people use sites like Metacritic to back up their arguments.  Since the system is not unified it's not possible to accurately aggregate the scores.  People should read the actual reviews instead of just looking at the score at the end.

80% is average? I'd say 70%. Giving a game 80% is saying it's a very good game but lacks something to make you remember it in several years.