Topic: Predict The Metacritic Scores (Launch Window)

If the review is more important, it's important to note the review was more abysmal than the score.

Ignoring metacritic is great and all (so is burying your head in the sand for any topic) but metacritic does have real world implications.

It's not like we're using metacritic to form our own opinions (that naive line gets tossed around endlessly). I've already put 30+ hours in the game, so have many others. Nobody is looking at the score and saying 'omg 97 well now I don't like it'.

Yet people will continue to say 'the only thing that matters is how you feel bruh.. deep inside yourself.. you gotta look within'. Like ok thanks, not relevant but thanks.

@BiasedSonyFan Never heard of renting games before I came to these forums, must be a US thing I guess!

Nobody said review scores should be an exact objective measure.

You're creating an argument that doesn't exist to go on your anti-metacritic tirade. Edgy, but not relevant to my initial post of someone using their 'subjective' opinion to create internet traffic.

If I'm writing a professional review (of which real life implications will be derived such as funding) and I give the new Mario game a 1/10 because I take issue with all the jumping, I rightfully deserved to be blasted. It's a platformer. That's not an issue of 'well everyone has an opinion and all opinions are equally right and beautiful'.

With your line of thinking, every user review on Metacritic is just as valuable as the professional reviews because they're all subjective and all opinions are equal.

I know for certain that I'll always prefer reading reviews and watching a bit of gameplay footage to determine if I'll enjoy a game than driving somewhere and renting a game, lol. To each his own, though.

@Octane
You didn't grow up renting games?! My gosh... that was my whole life when I was a kid, going to the video store with my parents: they would rent a movie, and I would get to rent a game. Darn Hollywood Video NEVER had Turok on the N64 lol

@rallydefault Renting VHS cassettes was definitely a thing when I grew up, but I've never seen or heard of renting video games. Always had to buy them, so you were glad when a friend got a new game, meaning you could try it out at his place first. As cool as some of the covers on the games looked, they were never a good indicator of quality!

@Octane
Oh man, yea I'm sure that lead to some misguided purchases. When I was a kid, most of the games I played and beat were rentals from the video store. My parents would maybe buy me one game every year for Christmas, but not always.

Renting was pretty cool in lots of ways. With SNES and N64 stuff, all the save games from other renters were on there, obviously. Sometimes people would even leave funny messages in their save game names (if the game allowed), and if you only had the game for a 1-2 night rental, most people tried to contribute to a single save file that was far along in longer games like the Final Fantasies and stuff. Very fun!

@rallydefault Don't think I could ever do that, continue someone else's save file!

I bought a lot of bootleg GameBoy games back in the day. Not knowing the difference, they were the cheap option. I still have a decent amount of them. Those were absolutely rubbish, but I was mostly glad I got a good deal on a game than anything else.

On the metacritic stuff, I don't think the specific number matters much. I've never looked at it like that. In general I look at metacritic ratings in blocks of ten.

90s? I should look at getting it even if I wasn't that interested. 80s? It should be a decent game to get but it's probably not a "must have" unless you like the series/genre. 70s? If you like the idea of it you'll definitely have fun with it. 60s? You won't like it unless you were waiting in line for it before the reviews. <60... probably not worth the money.

97 vs 98? Who cares. But feel free to criticize those who made clickbait reviews. Just not on their sites because that's what they're after.

@skywake
Honesty time: I've never visited Metacritic.

But also, based on what you guys are saying, it's pretty sad what's going on with the user reviews and (apparently) a couple of the "pro" reviews; giving poor reviews out of spite or for attention or whatever. But yea, really not much to say about it that we haven't known about internet culture for a long time. People want to be the center of attention, and their individual agenda is all that is good and holy in the world.

Uhh. But I just... okay.

You're right man, I had an extensive career in the video game industry but I guess I'll hang it up. Maybe I'll look at the whole science thing.. always thought being a doctor would be cool!

Review aggregates are useful but only if you take them as a yardstick measure. There are always going to be people who only give scores of 1 or 10 or controversial reviews for clicks. Good review aggregates will take that into account. They'll also do things like give less weight to reviewers who consistently score away from the average. But even then, the specific numbers don't mean much. However they are still a good starting point.

For example I don't own a PS4, I don't know much about the PS4 library and especially not the exclusives. But if I go to metacritic I can look at the best reviewed games. If I was to get a PS4 those would be the games I'd have on my shortlist for purchasing. In other words:

GTA5, The Last of Us Remastered, Metal Gear Solid 5, Uncharted 4, Journey, Blodborne, The Witcher 3, INSIDE, flower, Diablo 3, Overwatch, Shovel Knight, Rayman Legends, Fez

Using metacritic I can make the assumption that that's a good place to start. Having played some of those games on PC, Wii U and 3DS? Yeah, I think it's pretty close to what someone who did own a PS4 would probably recommend. And for that Metacritic is useful.

In music reviews, records are given to journalists who understand the genre perfectly and know it inside out. You don't give a metal record to the country music expert, otherwise you'll get a 600 word piece on "guitars too loud". For the same reason, you don't give a punk record to a classical musician.
This is the only way to have fair criticism. Opinions are irrelevant - you can ask random people on the streets if you want to know "opinions".

I don't agree with this at all. A great album, like a great game, will appeal to people who don't usually like that genre. What review aggregate sites try to do is average out all of those biases. That can only work if some people reviewing it don't like the genre and others love it. You need that guy who likes Death Grips reviewing pop because sometimes albums like this come around...

But to be clear, I think there is a difference between that and clickbait reviews.

It's metacritic guys...i think we all know that when it comes to this kind of games the clickbait review is gonna come sooner or later. And that's why i base judgements only on my experience. Reviews just need to be a kind of help to decide if a game is worth a buy or not. That's not about: reviews are good then game is gonna be good. If is there people, and i'm sure that there is, that buy a game just based on a score, it's just that kind of people that at first thing that they dislike the game is gonna be dropped and categorized as bad, just for not saying some bad word. And this are kind of gamers that in my opinion don't even deserve a minimal consideration. As i said: there will always be clickbait reviews. So who cares?

For as much crap as Jim is probably getting for his "good but not THAT good" review, I find myself agreeing with his annoyances at the game. I think the words match the score. And it was well written out
It wasn't a poorly worded excuse to give a poor score, which is all that it really needs to be.

I can agree with a lot of his claims tbh. I sort of wrote out a list of issues I had with the game, and he basically stated a good chunk of what I wrote out.

I can have you sit down and listen to the top-10 best Death Metal records ever and after 5 minutes you would want to stab me in the left eye. Music has different languages with different mechanics and if you don't know them inside-out, you should not be a "critic".
For example, metal is extremely formulaic and this is what metal fans tend to appreciate in that music. It's very much like classic JRPGs, with random battles, grinding et al. I would be a terrible JRPG reviewer as much as I would be a terrible metal reviewer, or blues reviewer - because I simply can't stand repetition. For example, some branches of electronic music are based on calculated tension and release (such as the mid-70s german e.m.), something I understand very well but personally doesn't do much for me, while some people enjoy it immensely. I'm a big fan of free jazz music - something that to most people sounds like random notes - I understand the inner workings of it, so I can speak about it and evaluate it properly.

In your example, Fantano is a good guy who has decent knowledge of moder alternative music, which today is mainly hip-hop and mild punk-pop. I wasn't familiar with the names you mentioned so I had to listen to them and they sound both like variations on the hip-hop formula - one is infused with industrial music, the other with soul/r'n'b, but they didn't sound to me like two separate spheres. Now, if Fantano started reviewing John Coltrane or Dream Theater I would be impressed, but he's not going to do it because it's probably an area he doesn't know much about. I have seen him review classic records and he's not very good at that. Still, he does a good service to the modern audience, so I'm okay with that.

All of this just to say that people who review games should be aware of what they are reviewing. You wouldn't want me to review a Madden game, or a JRPG because I probably wouldn't understand and wouldn't appreciate what makes them so good.

As for Breath of the Wild, I don't really care much. I mean, a lot of these 100s are probably as much of a clickbait (or a "thanks Nintendo for sending us a free console and free games") as the reviews that gave it a 60.

You missed my point. What I said was that truly great albums that deserved critical acclaim? They'd be appreciated by people who usually aren't into that genre. Just because that particular sub-genre doesn't float my boat shouldn't mean that I'm completely incapable of giving it a score. If I like it AND metal heads like it? Then it deserves a higher level of praise.

As an example with music and metal specifically. Again, I'm not a huge fan of metal. I tend to listen to a lot more psychedelic/shoegaze/experimental stuff like some of the stuff in my signature. But a couple of years ago I stumble across these guys and they're pretty good. If I can stretch my tastes to enjoy music from genres I don't regularly consume, why shouldn't reviewers?

You're not good at sarcasm.

Not much better at deciphering my initial post, but sarcasm proved to be exceptionally difficult.