Is metacritic good or bad for gaming?

Yeah, it's good.

Puts all the reviews in 1 place and makes a general score.

I think that it’s good myself. I like having reviews at my disposal as another tool in making my decision to purchase a game.

Bad, because publishers make their deal around MTs.(For example bethesda made a deal with obsidian to give them bonus if Fallout New Vegas gets 85+ score but due to 84 metacritic score they didn't.)

And most of the times the game that has a better score doesn't make it necessarily better that another game with lower score.

Bad for movies, OK for gaming.

It is good for me since I can avoid spending money on trash like sea of thieves.

MC is a neutral entity.

They are there if you'd need them to save you the leg work of finding the critical average of games.

If you don't care about reviews then you don't have to use them.

SIMPLE.

So, they are good because they serve the purpose they were intended for and hurt no one in the process...

Remember, MC isn't the one who actually REVIEWS the games!

If you're upset with MC for serving their purpose then you should probably stop looking at reviews all together.

Neutral-ish, they do determine the weights of different publications in their scores

Good.

And....how is that Metacritic's fault?

Dumb argument is dumb.

I use it for games, movies and tv....I think its good.

Overall it's good. Mistakes are made , but we are all well aware of the overhyped / nostalgic type scores and can adjust for that. We've all seen the Rockstar , Nintendo , buggy Bethesda , etc shenanigans over the years.We smart.

Exactly. The only time people really care is when their games that they're hyped for don't score well. Then reviews don't matter. I read a lot of reviews but they don't necessarily have a huge impact on what I end up getting. I play mostly JRPG's so I have no problem picking up a 6 or a 7 if it's my type of game.

@valgaav_219: I tend to avoid less than 7 scored jrpgs because most of them tend to be trash, I've been playing jrpg since the 90s and unfortunately the reviews tend to be accurate.

BUT the rpgfan website do more accurate and less biased reviews for RPGs and they are my main source when deciding to get a new one of the genre.

@valgaav_219: Same here. For me reviews are just another tool for me to use so high or low scores aren’t the only deciding factor for me.

All review aggregate sites are good (Metractic, Gamerankings, Rotten Tomatoes for movies, etc.).

I'm past the point of caring about reviews. Gaming is far larger than what this dying Journo's make it out to be.

Where only high productions values and "how friendly" the game is makes you get 9s ... meanwhile they seem to miss all the big changes in the industry... scoring mobas and survival games low despite absolutely erupting in popularity..

Praising short games that look "good for thier time" despite the gameplay not being any sort of focus or improvement.

It's a small world relying on this crap.

Dont think its a bad thing, dont really dictate what games I play, movies its pretty good tho

It's not more reviews though.

It's usually a poor summary of reviews that often lose their context when converted to a 10-point scale.

It can be useful, with all the appropriate grains of salt.

Bad. Metacritic is trash.

It's only bad when things don't go your way.

Reviews in general are nothing more than the perspective of the independent person who wrote it. All Metacritic boils down to is a culmination of limited perspectives, a culmination of perspectives that would be different if you switched those people who reviewed a game with say a different 110 people reviewing a game. With one set of 110 reviewers it could score a 91, with another set of 110 reviewers it could score a 78, it's completely arbitrary.

People focus too much on this arbitrarily derived number rather than researching games, trying them and then deciding for themselves what they think of it. Why this makes Metacritic or sites like it bad is due to the attachment people form to its importance, they write off games entirely because of a number decided by a total process of randomization. Bear in mind these are games they could possibly enjoy greatly but due to it not being scored X or Y numerical value they dismiss it.

They serve function as nothing more than a pedestal for fanboys to argue over, not anything of value.

some people get too obsessed with the MC score, even trying to prove it's wrong

I agree.

For me no 2 games can claim to have the same amount of reviews by the exact same reviewers, not only that there are reviews done by sites that have an affiliation with MS, Sony & Nintendo, and also some reviews don't get put up on the site either.

In the end I will still call it metashitic because that's what it is.

It's good. I'm lucky to play through 3-4 games a year. I don't want to waste my time on trash.

Bad, because all too many people take Metacritic scores as objective facts. I've seen a debate between two of my friends, where one of them derived his argument from a Metacritic score to support his case, as opposed to his own opinion. Why? Something can be good to you that is not necessarily popular or well regarded.

What I like about the Metacritic is that the user score is near the review score. It helps to know what the common player thinks about the game, against the "pro" reviewer. Sure, there are many trolls and bots, but in some games the scores are sky and earth difference. Like in Dragon Age 2.

So yes, Metacritic is a great thing.

I treat metacritic (video games) the way I treat rotten tomatoes (movies): bad for more negatives than positives.

It's a good point of reference but it shouldn't be gospel. A game doesnt have to be the highest game of all time on MC to be good... somewhere along the line people seemed to have lost track of that concept.

Absolute trash.

Only good for finding some new review sites.

@undefined: Its very good.

The perfect balance is constant slight imblance.

In metacrids case , troll user ratings and uneven at time mutilplat ratings.

I never played a 90 and above rated game that was horrible from a technical veiw. Most kids are just raised to think self prefrence factors into the potiential of things.

Some games are better depending on the mood your in. For instance i had a little anxiety before playing uncharted 3 and couldnt stand the slow start.

Played it months later and enjoy it overall. Its just hard top part 2 tho. Everything was just right when i played it. And there was no game around on its level

alan wake 83, max payne 2 86, spec ops 76, mafia 2 77, dead space 86, shenmue 2 88, command and conquer generals 84

tony hawk's pro skater 2 98, tony hawk's pro skater 3 97, nfl 2k1 97, littlebigplanet 95, nfl 2003 95, nfl 2002 94

so i'm gonna say.... bad

Metacritic is good if not for anything else but being another quick and dirty list of most games that are out there.

It's good because I can't be arsed reading.

It's bad because in a gamers mind anything under 80 is a fail.

Is ok because you can summarize the score of all credible reviewers and have a total score. If i want to check a score i always going for metacritic score ( long ago i was with Gamerankings ).

Not that i agree 100% with the scores though, there are numerous games in the past i think their meta score was absurd to say the least.

At the age of 45, having been gaming since Pong in the 70s, I know what I like to try in terms of gaming. And that's how I buy games. I read reviews at times but I already made up my mind if I am buying something a ways before. Scores are ammo for places like SW imo. That is all.

Damn dude.. you are the Kratos of this forum.

Not just that but the scores are weighted. A site like gamespot which is a sister site to MC carries more weight in the score than others. Like the human beings here are nobles and others are peasants.

LOL nice. But to quote Yoda, "no.............there is another". ;)

I get lemons sometimes but to me that's part of the fun of life. I pay to see a shit movie sometimes also. I value the experience most of all I guess.