Jim Sterling said:
Metacritic Isn't the Problem
Oh you poor, sad little cretins. You are all so wrong. Always. Forever. Jim Sterling illuminates your path, but what good does that do when you refuse to open your eyes? Oh, he's so much better than you.
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Very good points.
Though I see it as only a very small bit like 20% that is the fault of publishers on this subject , I see it as 70% a problem created by as you said it OCD Fanboys. These people don't understand how to give a review and a reasonable review score for the situation.
Dragon Age 2 is a good example. In my opinion, the only flaw was the repeat dungeons, so I only take a point off for that, so I gave it 9 out of 10.
Now, all the things that people were bad mouthing the game for(other than the repeat dungeons), the slight change in the inventory system, the overhaul of the skills system, the dialogue wheel that just makes dialogue clearer so that people don't have to guess what will happen when they say something, and the slight change in combat(seriously, the only thing they changed was that they gave the player control over their normal attack instead of making it automated, oh and the player can actually run and move instead of walking at a snails pace), in reality are things that only effect gameplay slightly. The game still runs and the graphics are a good bit better, and if one plays every piece of content out for the game, it is easily a 50 to 60 hour game.
But these fanboys of the first game, instead of looking at any of the possible good points that they don't mention and they must have been good since they didn't bad mouth them, they just state what they didn't like about the game and then give it a zero.
A zero? A zero to two is for a game that is so bad that it can't be completed/beat because it is incredibly glitched up. Whether the game gets a zero, one, or two depends on how far the player was able to get in said glitched game. Three to five is for a game a player that didn't like a game but it still functioned. Six to Seven is for mediocre to okay, and eight to ten is for good to great.
One reason that the fanboys give the zeros is because they pathetically think that the developer will think that they made a big mistake somewhere and change the game back to what the first installment use to be, though any smart developer will just laugh at the whiner that doesn't give a reasonable score because said whiner is just crying for attention, "Boohoo, I wasn't able to customize my character right down to the shape and color of his toenails!"
Lastly I do lay 10% of fault on Metacritic. They could easily remove problem reviews that abuse the system because the reviewers weren't being rational. They could also remove the "professional" reviews that don't actually take a professional stance and act just as like those OCD fanboys and throw temper-tantrums like two year-olds and throw undeserved bottom scores. The reason I think this is import is because these reviews do influence people(though people that don't look closely). My example goes back to DA2, and a fellow Escapist user that went sometime without buying it because they saw the user review scores were so bad on Metacritic, when he finally tried the game, he found it was really great and wished he hadn't waited so long to get it. So such user reviews and unprofessional "professional" reviews are harmful, and Metacritic should take that into account and at least do some regulation on what get's put up and added to the review total.
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