I trust other people playing the game way more than the people who make the game, sell the game, or get paid to review the game.
If everyone I know with similar tastes to mine says something sucks, there’s a 99.9999999% chance I will independently think it sucks anyway; so I might as well listen to others who have played it and save myself some time and money.
I’ve actually been surprised but how many gems I’ve found in games with a 70% rating or a 82% rating. Sometimes ratings can be impacted by feelings about a company or a media incident when the actual game is rock solid.
I wouldn’t say those numbers are for games that suck, anyway. That’s a decent, just not mind-blowing game. Anything that’s 40% or lower is what I would say almost universally sucks. But I would also take into account review bombing for things beyond the scope of the game itself, as it is very often reported on when it happens.
Open critic has a handy chart available for scored titles that compares it with the rest of their database. This offers some insight into the score distribution:
- a score of 50 places in the 6th percentile
- a score of 60 places in the 15th percentile
- a score of 70 places in the 40th percentile
- a score of 80 places in the 79th percentile
- a score of 90 places in the 99th percentile
So a score of 70 is already pretty mid, and 60 or lower is going to be dire.
My favourite is when you have a friend, or known reviewer, going on about how something sucks, and you realise that it sounds right up your alley.
I specifically rented The One, because of Roger Ebert’s 1 and 1/2 star review in the newspaper, trashing Jet Li’s The One (just to totally date myself).
That’s why I went and saw Dude, Where’s My Car in the theatre. Because Siskel and Ebert had given it their worst score ever and I thought if those chucklenuts hated it, it must be good.
Yeah there are some absolute gems like Astral Chain which got positive reviews like 8/10 but in reality are close to 10/10 for me personally. One of the best games on the system.
Then there are a few infamous examples like Godhand and Deadly Premonition which were completely slated by many reviewers but I found to be very strong titles. 8/10 personally.
Suda suggested that one reason is publishers and developers focusing too much on Metacritic scores, and deciding to play it safe and stick to what is conventionally known to ‘work’ instead of taking risks with new ideas.
I think most people are missing that they’re talking about them from a dev and publisher standpoint, not consumer / gamer.
And from that perspective it is problematic whenever things that are supposed to be used to assess something become targets to shoot for. Oscar bait, teachers teaching the test and not the subject, etc.
They’re well informed lemmings who read the title only.
But for the topic at hand, it seems that it’s similar to how the movie industry operates. When hundreds of millions can be on the line, a sure bet is better than a risky bet.
Although from a consumer standpoint it’s true a well. Official reviewers are often bought (directly or not), pressured in other ways, operate on nonsense scales, and are infamously not actually that good at video games. Player reviews are a Little better, but you have to be adept at weeding out whinging from people who suck at games or just suck broadly.
Streamers/YouTubers are the only real option, imo, as they actually show what they’re doing (no lying!) and have to build up an actual reputation of some kind to be noticed.
But they aren’t pointless. Most times they aren’t as helpful as you’d like, but I think that’s baked in, with less than fully honest reviews counted among the ratings. But otherwise, they show ranges and a base with which to judge through your own preferences. One example was when I used to read Nintendo Power. I understood their scores were inflated, especially for Nintendo’s own games, if you weren’t already a super fan. You could accurately remove a solid point from their scores and figure that would be another way to view it. Or, as a fan, I didn’t mind the inflated score because it probably captured my excitement/future experience with the game having similar preferences.
The rest of the time I see a sea of mediocrity with many many games residing in the 7 to lower 8s range of scoring. With 8.5, 9, 9+ games also out there, a statement like this developer is making only makes sense if your game is heavily discounted. So, in the end, I think an accurate score does mean something. The next Far Cry to immediately drop to 20 bucks, or Assassin’s Creed, and there are many others like this, just goes to show the lack of care and what should be lacking scores. Some of those games probably received more than they deserved.
The point (well, not his, which is about the absurdity of publishers using it as an actual official measuring stick) is that different people like different things. For some people a visual novel or walking simulator can be a 10/10 “game” for the story. For me, it will never be better than a 0, because I cannot enjoy a game without compelling gameplay mechanics. That’s an extreme example, but the point that different people put massively different value on different elements, many of which many players literally don’t care even a little bit about.
An 8/10 isn’t objectively a worse game than a 9.5/10. It’s the average of a small handful of opinions, mostly from people who played the game at surface level and not like an actual player would, that’s heavily and inconsistently influenced by a variety of practices by publishers trying to get their grades pumped up. Game reviewers are almost never actual journalists with journalistic ethical standards. They’re not being “less than honest”, but they’re inherently influenced in ways outside their awareness that break the core premise of a score.
Most reviews (including games) shouldn’t include scores at all. They should break down the different elements of a product, the strengths and weaknesses of each part, and let people draw their own conclusions.
I liked what you said about breaking things down by elements. That might be a better way of judging things.
I’m people, and I don’t care at all about metacritic scores and therefore this guy is wrong.
My county has a food safety rating Needs Improvement/Ok/Good/Excellent and when I see Chinese, Teriyaki, or Thai restaurant with Excellent i stop in. Always been the best food I’ve ever eaten. I mean the rating is based on health inspections, but there’s a corelation that has yet to fail me.
The correlation that failed you is the one between your anecdote and the topic of the article 🤣
