Why even ask the question. Metacritic user reviews mens absolutely nothing. Metacritic reviews as a whole has been the reason some developers end up closing their doors.
We see the stories of developer salary bonuses tied to the Metacritic aggregate for their titles. What you will never see is the user reviews materring at all oher a fan blogger site is biased against said game and wants too point out how negative the user review scores are for that title in one of their blogs/articles.
Really, I rely on my friends more than anything. I think of them to be more sensible people who don't really have any real motive to convince me if the game is bad or not.
I agree. It just a lot of rubbish about it sucked/was amazing and is put with a score either 10 or 0 by people who clearly haven't played the game. I think I haven't seen a decent user review on metacritic. I really doubt anyone takes the user reviews seriously on metacritic (and if they do and write an article about it then they are clearly fishing for hits). That area of metacritic is the fanboy mecca.
It depends on what is said. I am looking for details. If someone gives it a 0 and i know it's gibberish, i discount it. But sometimes users point out intricacies that i find more important to my tastes than reviewers do. I pretty sure we can all agree that the extreme is annoying. And for the most part, the reviews r honest because, despite the belief that pandering occurs, these reviewers know how astute we r. If we feel a reviewers opinions are too far out there, we won't read them anymore, ultimately costing them money. But, users reviews r important too. This is because many users are only playing that game and have spent alot of time with it, much more than the professional.
User reviews are mostly 10s and 0s, and most review sites are full of idiots.
The only reviewers I trust are ones that never seem to be trying to sell me something, even when giving a high score or praise. Ben Yahtzee, Jim Sterling, and a reviewer or 2 on joystiq. That's just about everyone I trust to give a truly insightful review, and not just list features off of the back of the box, give it a 9, and collect ad dollars.
Throw me some raw gameplay and I know pretty much all I need to know about the game, though.
*Is the AI moronic? [ ] *Is it repetitive? [ ] *Is there ANYTHING unique? [ ] *Does the level design make sense? [ ] *Is it well balanced? [ ]
Yeah, the aggregate score not so much, but there are usually a few here and there who provide balanced insight.
While maybe you escape the potential principle of "paid-for review," the obvious problem is in rampant fanboyism in both directions, leading to 1s and 10s.
Still, the aforementioned balanced insight can provide pretty solid ideas.
Id like to view multiple professional reviews. As opposed to a bunch of 13 year old fanboy dweebs reviewing games based on their emotional bias of "This game is the best and everything else sucks"
Neither myself. Though between the two clearly one has a real bias and the other would have no real reason to fail or praise something other than personal opinion(ignoring fanboys/trolls, though even critics are guilty of that too). Not to say critics don't have opinions that can differ from some, but there will always be that bias there. Free exclusives, friends in the industry, etc. Even if some do their best to be unbiased and some might even succeed, there is that cloud hanging over their head. At least for me.
Again though, I'd rather try out the demo and seek out the word of people I trust. That have tastes similar to mine. Unfortunately no gaming critic seems to have that and I can't be arsed to dig through the metacritic user reviews to find the nontroll/nonfanboy reviews. So I guess it all falls down to taking a gamble. Unfortunately it's a sixty dollar gamble or wait a few months for a cheaper gamble. I'm tending to go for the latter, nowadays.
I stopped trusting the majors when GTA4 was getting all those 10s, and ever since then are started looking at trends and practices and found lots of subtle biases.
User reviews are a little more reliable but you have to be able to read between the lines and weed out the good from the bad. Good user reviews are detailed, and they can sometimes relate to you as a consumer so they wont be taking off points because of pop in and screen tearing. But you also have bitter fanboys and everyone wont approach every game with the same level of interest.
I would trust the critics over the User Reviews. After what I've seen from Modern Warfare 3 and Mass effect 3 on that site, I can tell it's filled with trolls and people who purposely throw ratings out there, because they don't like the franchise, or some other stupid reason.
At least most of the critic reviews I can read... but the User Reviews are more laughable. If I want a proper User Review, I will go on Youtube. Metacritic is terrible...
Depends on the context of the game really, in Mass effect 3 and MW3's case there was a bunch of fur-fer surrounding them, thus really low scores. But take Uncharted 3 for example not much controversy there and it's sitting at 84 on the user reviews which is completely fine and normal. It just depends on the game and situation. I would honestly trust user reviews more so than critics especially on big release, because of how intertwined the games media is with games industry.
Imo the best way to go about that is a mix of 2, first of all u must find some site u trust with journalists who is fans of your favorite genre, have play anything & everything & can make a comparison between the previous & the new games & pin point all the positives & negatives accurately, second read some user comments who have play the game I am sure u can understand if they have play the game or not if u read carefully their opinion, also u can understand if those ppl r fans or haters is not hard after all, after u did all that it will be easy to decide if a game will be worth your time & money, ofc the final word will be always yours but if u dont trust any1 and cant decide even after doing all that then the best solution is rent before buying.
Pff i'll just buy games the way i always have tbh if i look at a trailer are ive played a previous game etc are ive liked the series etc i'll judge the games on my own experences.
On one hand you have to contend with the review sites that can not be 100% trusted for a fair review on a game. Then you have user reviews and the real truth to face that the fanboy war is in full swing it been there since gaming began :/ and it dominates today hense you ain't gonna find many fair reviews there either.
Best bet is to be your own Judge you have played good games you know the good game companys and series. I don't know theres a fair few games out there that are worth there salt then theres a fair few that are just plain and simple being milked or all there worth.
Its not hard to find good games now days its your money end of the day. When you look at your collection what do you see. Dust collectors are a collection of replayable titles i prefer the later.
reasonable user reviews, if its a horrible score or a 10 i generally ignore it unless theres a trend of them happening, but i usually only read the ones that give mid scores like 6-8's because theyre probably giving actual honest feedback and not just saying "MAN HALO IZ THE BEZT I PLAYZ WITH MAH FRIENDZ AND XBOX + OTHER WURDS" or "MASS EFFECT 3 IS THE SUCK BECUZ MUH FRIEND SAID SO".
i just like reading reviews from people who actually have some thoughts on a game, things like "the camera annoyed me a bit because you couldnt move it where you wanted it while you were fighting but it wasnt so bad that i put the game down, it was usually in an ok position, i just wish i could have moved it more" or the way the character moves takes a little getting used to, but after that its a very enjoyable game, there were a few problems but they can easily be overlooked, things like difficulty spikes and a little bit of grinding for them, not much, but enough for me to write about it here i guess". you know, reasonable things that i dont think someone who is being paid to review would write down
Your OWN personal opinion by a LONG SHOT. Never ever listen to Metacritic. That is just an opinion and rating system that you will not always agree with. I have found SO many games not as bad at all as they were made out to be.
At this point I don't rely on either. I play a demo or rent/borrow the game from someone who bought it or just buy it.
It's all about people's opinions, and reviewers might not be invested at all. Too many reviews start with something like "I don't normally play games like this...." and then the review shreds the game.
And users' can be too invested, which leads to either a perfect score, or a complete zero score. Neither or which are helpful.
The one that doesn't receive ad money from the companies who provide them free copies of games to review. Although user reviews aren't very reliable either. Usually either fanboys or trolls.
Either way, one of the best things you could do for the industry is not visit Metacritic. Obsidian was chopped off at its knees by Bethesda because of a Metacritic score.
Both are equally worthwhile and both are equally worthless.
Somewhere along the way most of the review sites turned just as bad and ugly as the fanboys. Possibly in an attempt to appeal to said fanboys, I have no idea.
I repeatedly see games that are good, but nothing special, or decent but with loads of issues get praised as if they were god like perfection. If it's "suppose" to be a AAA title that gets loads of praise, it almost always will, regardless of how good it actually is.
The same flaws that get ignored in the AAA title will be the subject of much mockery in another game and when that's not enough utterly subjective nonsense will be used instead.
80°
30°
20°
40°
Ad 
40°
30°
30°
0°
40°
10°
We see the stories of developer salary bonuses tied to the Metacritic aggregate for their titles. What you will never see is the user reviews materring at all oher a fan blogger site is biased against said game and wants too point out how negative the user review scores are for that title in one of their blogs/articles.
Evil
The only reviewers I trust are ones that never seem to be trying to sell me something, even when giving a high score or praise. Ben Yahtzee, Jim Sterling, and a reviewer or 2 on joystiq. That's just about everyone I trust to give a truly insightful review, and not just list features off of the back of the box, give it a 9, and collect ad dollars.
Throw me some raw gameplay and I know pretty much all I need to know about the game, though.
*Is the AI moronic? [ ]
*Is it repetitive? [ ]
*Is there ANYTHING unique? [ ]
*Does the level design make sense? [ ]
*Is it well balanced? [ ]
Pretty much all I need to know.
While maybe you escape the potential principle of "paid-for review," the obvious problem is in rampant fanboyism in both directions, leading to 1s and 10s.
Still, the aforementioned balanced insight can provide pretty solid ideas.
Yeah, I know some sites are "bias" but that's why you read multiple reviews. See if the pros and cons are consistent among multiple reviews.
I don't see how any one can take Metacritic seriously.
As opposed to a bunch of 13 year old fanboy dweebs reviewing games based on their emotional bias of "This game is the best and everything else sucks"
Again though, I'd rather try out the demo and seek out the word of people I trust. That have tastes similar to mine. Unfortunately no gaming critic seems to have that and I can't be arsed to dig through the metacritic user reviews to find the nontroll/nonfanboy reviews. So I guess it all falls down to taking a gamble. Unfortunately it's a sixty dollar gamble or wait a few months for a cheaper gamble. I'm tending to go for the latter, nowadays.
I stopped trusting the majors when GTA4 was getting all those 10s, and ever since then are started looking at trends and practices and found lots of subtle biases.
User reviews are a little more reliable but you have to be able to read between the lines and weed out the good from the bad. Good user reviews are detailed, and they can sometimes relate to you as a consumer so they wont be taking off points because of pop in and screen tearing. But you also have bitter fanboys and everyone wont approach every game with the same level of interest.
These days if it looks good i'll try it.
At least most of the critic reviews I can read... but the User Reviews are more laughable. If I want a proper User Review, I will go on Youtube. Metacritic is terrible...
As all of us should be. Why rely on someone else?
Answer, don't.
On one hand you have to contend with the review sites that can not be 100% trusted for a fair review on a game. Then you have user reviews and the real truth to face that the fanboy war is in full swing it been there since gaming began :/ and it dominates today hense you ain't gonna find many fair reviews there either.
Best bet is to be your own Judge you have played good games you know the good game companys and series. I don't know theres a fair few games out there that are worth there salt then theres a fair few that are just plain and simple being milked or all there worth.
Its not hard to find good games now days its your money end of the day. When you look at your collection what do you see. Dust collectors are a collection of replayable titles i prefer the later.
i just like reading reviews from people who actually have some thoughts on a game, things like "the camera annoyed me a bit because you couldnt move it where you wanted it while you were fighting but it wasnt so bad that i put the game down, it was usually in an ok position, i just wish i could have moved it more" or the way the character moves takes a little getting used to, but after that its a very enjoyable game, there were a few problems but they can easily be overlooked, things like difficulty spikes and a little bit of grinding for them, not much, but enough for me to write about it here i guess". you know, reasonable things that i dont think someone who is being paid to review would write down
-Professional reviewers who played the game and present an unbiased opinion
User reviews
-90% of scores being either a 0 or a 10 (nothing in between) from people who have never even played the game
I believe I will go with the former.
It's all about people's opinions, and reviewers might not be invested at all. Too many reviews start with something like "I don't normally play games like this...." and then the review shreds the game.
And users' can be too invested, which leads to either a perfect score, or a complete zero score. Neither or which are helpful.
If they could somehow implement that into metacritc before allowing a user review to be published, I'd much prefer user reviews.
As of now, 'professional' reviews are the lessor of two evils.
Either way, one of the best things you could do for the industry is not visit Metacritic. Obsidian was chopped off at its knees by Bethesda because of a Metacritic score.
Somewhere along the way most of the review sites turned just as bad and ugly as the fanboys. Possibly in an attempt to appeal to said fanboys, I have no idea.
I repeatedly see games that are good, but nothing special, or decent but with loads of issues get praised as if they were god like perfection. If it's "suppose" to be a AAA title that gets loads of praise, it almost always will, regardless of how good it actually is.
The same flaws that get ignored in the AAA title will be the subject of much mockery in another game and when that's not enough utterly subjective nonsense will be used instead.