What do you think about Metacritic?

[JackandTom]

After looking at the good/average reviews of Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D I noticed the user score was only 4.9 (it's since gone up to 5.4). A lot of user reviews were from people who hadn't even played the game and many were just complaining about the one save slot and the inability to delete your saves. I still plan to buy the game, but i've not yet as it's not quite out in England.

So people of The Escapist, what are your opinions on Metacritic and other similar websites, especially the user scores? Do they put you off buying a game, or do you try the game for yourself first? Personally, I try to ignore them but when the user score is that low it's difficult.

 

[Nichael Bluth]

Hate it.
It's like democracy: everyone gets to be heard.
And there are some opinions that I just really don't want to hear.

Also it's plagued with 1 star protest votes, which I can't stand.

 

[Araxiel_1911]

I ignore it. Easy as that.

 

[bob1052]

User reviews will never be worth anyone's time.

Using metacritic as a hub to find various reviews, if you plan to actually look at them and not just their score, can be great.

 

[Reaper195]

The are useless. I base my opinion on something on what I think of it. And having a full-time job allows me to spend money on games or movies that I don't enjoy. And with games, I can usually get a refund!

 

[Lukeje]

I think that the reviewer average is useful, though the comments that go along with them are generally even more useful (finding out in a short snippet why someone hated or loved a game tells you infinitely more than a number between 1 and 10). I never pay attention to the user scores.

 

[Project_Xii]

I ignore it. Means nothing, and is too easily manipulated by cry babies who one star things (ie The Witcer 2/Dragon Age 2 fiasco). Why anyone would trust that place is beyond me.

 

[BanicRhys]

I generally just look at various reviews and base my decision on them.

But we seriously need a better rating system than 1-10.

 

[Romblen]

I like it, though I admit few user reviews are worth reading. It's almost always "THIS IS THE BEST GAME EVARR!" or "THIS GAME SUCKS ITS JUST A RIPOFF OF HALO/COD!"

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

I don't care about the aggregate score.

I usually just read a few of the reviews that gave good scores, and a few of the reviews that give bad scores and see if the good in the game would outweigh the bad for me. The great thing about Metacritic is that all the big reviewers are already on there so I don't have to go searching for the reviews, they're already all there on one page.

So yeah, I like metacritic.

 

[zombiesinc]

I use it to get an idea of what the general consensus is from critics, and absolutely ignore the user "reviews", most of them being plagued with one-star protests from people who either haven't played the game, finished it or touched it. Same goes for Rotten Tomatoes, and various sites of the like.

They aren't enough to push me in either direction when deciding whether or not I'll buy/rent something though.

 

[DarkRyter]

It's rotten tomatoes for everything that's not movies.

And it also does movies.

 

[WayOutThere]

I think about it exactly what Jim Sterling said about it in The Jimquisition. (Strange, that show's actually been getting good.) However, about user scores, they're pretty much worthless. I'll stick to reviews that are actually profesional, thank you.

 

[Zanez]

Hate it.
It's like democracy: everyone gets to be heard.
And there are some opinions that I just really don't want to hear.

Also it's plagued with 1 star protest votes, which I can't stand.

More true words were never said, Metacritic is garbage. Any site that ranks The Book of Eli over Sucker Punch can't hope to spawn anything good.

Sounds like someone has found one specific critic he likes and refuses to believe anything except what he says...

Book of Eli was WAAAYYY stronger movie than Sucker Punch, from just about every perspective.

Remember guys, if you get too far up a single reviewers ass, you will go into movies with a bias. You will WANT to love/hate it.

BTW, MovieBob is garbage.

 

[onewheeled]

It's a handy way to see a bunch of critic and user reviews of movies/games/music/television shows. That's all I see it as. I don't trust critic reviews, and I don't trust user reviews, though, so I don't really care much about it.

Hell, the main reason I usually go on it isn't so I can get a scope of how good/bad stuff is, it's to laugh at how insanely different reviews can be for the same thing. Like when a game gets both an 85 and a 16 out of 100, such as with Duke Nukem Forever. Sometimes they're even more polar than that.

 

[Sir Rammington Steel]

I think that Metacritic is a useful tool if used the right way. It takes a variety of opinions and brings them all together. I'd even say that the user reviews can be just as useful as the critics. I like to take a few reviews from both sides of every general score level and compare and contrast. The numbers are pretty worthless to me. I prefer to read the substance behind them. On the whole if you're willing to take some time to see what is actually being said about each game then metacritic can be an exceedingly useful tool.