ONM writes: When we post a review and give it a 70-79% review score, we often see comments from readers who think that it's a bad score. Take our LEGO Batman 2 review for earlier this year, for example. We gave it 78%, saying that fans will have a blast. Yet in the comments, we were accused of being hard on the LEGO games. That can't be right.
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I don't know where the scoring system turned to:
100% = Must Buy
90% = Got to try
80% = It's ok
79% or below = FAILURE!!!
I personally think the numbers game needs to die alongside it the metacritic and unethical journalists.
<80 - FAILURE
81-90 - average
91-95 - good game
96-100 - overrated piece of crap
Important thing to remember for the modern gamer:
Build your own opinion because it should be the only factor that decides if you're buying a game or not.
a 70% score on a game may end up being higher or lower to the individual based on their own appeal.
Scores used to be simple yet effective gauges to say whether or not something was worth looking into.
That was back when the main focus of a review was about the control, content, sound and graphics from a non bias view. Those reviews would generally save personal opinion for last.
Now it seems all reviews are filled with personal opinion from start to finish. As if the old way was boring and people wanted more of the sensationalized aspect instead of the standards that were once in place.
Kind of like the news nowadays. The phrasing and delivery are the focus instead of the story.
Buy It, Rent It, Forget It.
No numbers.
Thus 70-79 = C = Average
60-69 = Below Average
50-59 = Fail
It's completely asinine, but many people are in school or just out of school so they gravitate towards that....wrongly.
Technically 50 is supposed to be middle of the road or average. Depending on how big a plus or minus you give average, you could say anything in the 40's is still basically average.
Bad games are supposed to be 39 or lower.
This is also why X-Play's original 5 star ranking (or that of movies) is superior, because it gets the ranking out of the 'grade system' and also makes it so you actually understand the difference. Each star means something, whereas each 10 point notch doesn't, and you have 10 of them, or even 100. In grading systems often less is more, and what we have in game ranking systems is too much so everything becomes subjective and ambiguous.
Metacritic isn't that bad, it just depends on HOW you use and interpret it. If you use it as a place to find aggregated info, it's quite good.
But to think the number it shows means something is quite different. You have people that over and under judge things. Since so many people think like the grading school system, most people will have things at 7-10 but if you hate on it and give 0's, it has twice the weight of a 10. Since a 10 will bring up a score around a 7 less than a 0 will bring it down. That's one reason why you get these 3-4's for some pretty good games, because so many people will give 0's. The numbers are a popularity contest.
But it's good because you get a bunch of user reviews, that often times tell you alot of detail that professional reviews don't say, and you'll find links to most online reviews in a convenient spot. So I don't wish metacritic die, I just think people need to learn how to use it correctly.
Common sense. Anyone who has a basic understanding of the number system and ratios understands this.
It's not the score per se, it's that the system is flawed, we can make the scores be better, if the number of variations were smaller and taken out of the 'school grade' comparison.
Yet still any score is a shortcut from actual specifics of a game. It's best to read reviews, professional and user to determine if it has the aspects you like or find intriguing. Looking at pics and video....especially of actual gameplay. All these are much better tools than a score itself.
However, for a game or franchise that's not considered to be AAA like the Lego games, that aren't expected to have the same high production values, I agree that a 70-79 is a pretty good score.
The sad thing is, people's bonuses and salary are based off these things, which make it even more crazy. Alot of major decisions are based off a flawed construct.
It doesn't happen, because 70% is not "good". At best, it can equate to "above average."
This doesn't mean that all games who achieve those ratings are necessarily judged accurately, but these scores have inherent meanings. The real issue here is that gamers shouldn't be so afraid of above-average or average scores... it's most certainly not that the entire rating system is flawed.
Cause I can point out this site, or even ign actually where 70 is a good score. Just look right next to the number, anything from 7 to 7.9 is called "good" on ign's scale.