Topic: metacritic

Do you use it? How important do you think metacritic score are? Do you trust metacritic scores as indicators of quality games?

I personally use it but don't put too much weight behind their scores. That goes for movies too. For one I often don't agree with many of the sites they use for their scores. A lot of games or anything I like have niche appeal and mainstream critics won't get.

I'd personally like to see a similar site out there that used a much larger pool of critics and had a feature that would let you only pay attention to critics you want.

Not a big fan of numerical scored reviews, but I do check metacritic sometimes if I want to read about a game since it lists every review available. If only for the read, don't put much weight behind the score itself.

i mostly read the most critical reviews. but it helps me decide if a obscure game is worth my time and money

I use it and have done for years, to get an idea how the community rates it, but will then link to individual reviews so as to find out more. I read some from the top, and some from the bottom, so as to find out the truth or laugh at there ineptitude.

It's nice seeing NintendoLife on there these days.

I use it to gauge how good most rate games and films, but I look at the review scores from the individual reviewers that are listed, because a lot of the opinions are from places I've never heard of, and most scores are dragged down by some random website giving whatever it is 20% or something randomly lower than everyone else. It could also do with using a wider range of sources - like seemingly every US newspaper is used, but no British ones, which seems odd seeing as they do use our magazines.

I use it basically b/c it has links to most if not all the reviews.

agreeing with Devil_Hunter_Dante. Metacritic doesn't just collect numbers, it links to the reviews if they're available on the internet and shows excerpts of reviews from magazines I don't get (Nintendo Power, Game Informer, etc.). I've been checking Metacritic for years now before buying games, and I'm glad to see Nintendo Life's reviews showing up there now too. :3

Of course! If one review says a game is great or crap, then there is a good chance you may disagree with the reviewer. If 20 reviews have a similar outlook on a title, then odds are the game is probably pretty close to what they're saying.

I don't use it. I like to read the actual reviews.

@MetalMario: if you click the 'read full review' link beneath the text Metacritic excerpts from each review (unless it was from a magazine, in which case it'll give you the date and page number), it takes you to the website where you can read the actual review.

I use it if I am on the fence about something or if I want to find out if there are any ridiculously well reviewed games that I missed out on. I don't remember any games that I skipped over after looking at Metacritic but I do know I picked up Geometry Wars and Professor Layton after seeing them high on Metacritic. Obviously I was interested and had a look at a sample of reviews Metacritic linked to first (the top review, the bottom review and something in the middle) but I wouldn't have stumbled across them if it wasn't for Metacritic. I think for that sort of thing its kinda handy.

And for when the TV throws a random movie I have never heard of at me. Its not games but I can quickly see whether or not the movie being shown is garbage without having to sit through it.

I don't use it and I don't care about the scores on it.

I sometimes use it as it's an easy way to find lots of different reviews.

I do see its use in compiling reviews however I'm not a fan of the "Metacritic Score" and the amount of importance some place on it and the fact that publishers and such take that score into consideration. To some, games with the highest scores are simply "the best" and since multiple reviewers are taken into consideration the score must be right.

Of course opinions on something are personal and some games (and media in general) appeal to some more than others. A high score really means or should mean that a product has wider appeal than others but doesn't mean it is actually best no matter who you are. Some games get a lot of hype and praise before release than see fairly low metacritic scores. Some games a smaller niche appeal yet reviewers for commercial sites have to write to their audience who adore Halo and whatnot.

So I have no problem with metacritic overall and use it myself I'm not too fond of categorizing culture by score. Also, I've always preferred rotten tomatoes for movies for some reason.

I only use it for laughs for example check their sexy poker score, and people though N-life was easy on it.

It's a decent database of reviews, and can be used to pick up the general opinion on a game, but the overall score is the more worthless and uninformative "score" you can find on any game website. Reviewers using different-scaled scores, reviewers using different type of score meters (does a 5/5 score equal a 100/100 score? Hardly), reviewers putting particular focus on particular aspects of a game, reviewers comparing a game to current games on the same platform or not, and the odd review with a much higher or lower score unbalancing the final score.
To put any kind of trust in this number is laughable.