Glad to see that everyone's not lost their minds.

With enough reviews counted Metacritic gives a good ESTIMATE of how good a game will be. As long as people don't take it as the "word of God" then no, it is not bad at all.

I use two types of average review sites. Gamerankings and Metacritic, and I utilize the later more.

Honestly, I like Metacritic. What I try not to focus on is that a game needs a 90% or above to be considered good or noteworthy. Like when people start preaching "It has an average of 81% and that means it is crap".

The majority of the titles I own/enjoy are 70% + type games.

i have 1 main issue with metacritic:

in ANY scientific experiment, and believe me id know...anomolous data is excluded.
this is because it can skew the data and conclusion of an experiment when there obviously a data point which is not representative of the norm.
anomolous data CANNOT be included because of the chance that the data point was externally influenced or contaminated. therefore it is not accurate and cannot be considered.

look at the metacritic selection for Muramasa.
HOW ON EARTH can the review of 30% be included, from a very dubious review, when there are 49 other reviews rating this game 60% and above.
This review score should be documented, of course for completeness sake and fairness, but excluded from the conclusion and final result as it is obviously contaminated. (and terribly reviewed imo :))
its criminal that the average is skewed by an anomolous figure.

Therefore i do not trust the average scores, as i do not trust that the data isnt contaminated and quality controlled.
i build my own average from what i read in the selections listed.

My god, if scientists worked in the same way metacritic does, we would have suffered some huge medical catastrophe by now, and if i operated like it at my work, id get fired!

other than that - its not so bad :) id just like that one thing changed about it.

Metacritic is better than using a single review site. Legs (not 1st week) sales are also a good indication of quality.

There are several games in the 50-70 range that are really good and show review scores can't be trusted, and some games >90 I hate. Some reviewers (almost to the point of conspiracy) seem to have an agenda on a few games. More often they give unfairly low than unfairly high scores. This is also more obvious when sales have long legs and exceed the relatively low score.

I think Metacritic is fine if you accept the fact movie scores = not game scores and review scores = not how much u will like it

Sales and scores don't reflect quality at all.
personal experience does.

Most reveiws are based on personal experience of the reviewers.

Most longs legs (after the advertising dies down) are based on personal experince based on word of mouth that is based on personal experience.

So, yes, at least indirectly, sales and scores do reflect quality.  Otherwise, games that ranked <30 on metacritic would typically sell as well as games that rank >70 if either of those were not related to quality, much less both.  It's debatable how much they reflect quality, but to deny a corelation is to be a bit naive.

I wonder if videogames will ever get a REAL basis of criticism like those other forms.

Probably not.  The internet kinda makes it hard, since basically anyone can have an opinion.