Where do you go for review scores on your latest games? Destructoid? I hope so. But Metacritic is also a handy tool. They incorporate the scores from several of the major gaming sites into a handy page you can use to determine if a game is worth your time and cash. You can also read user's submitted reviews. Thought you wanted PS3 RPG Cross Edge? Maybe not.
EA's Peter Moore is shielding his eyes from Metacritic scores, especially when it comes to Wii games. He says that Wii titles sell independently of their Metacritic scores
"The thing is with the Wii, it seems to be for the gaming sites, it's the last platform they review," said Moore. "It takes a time to get an actual review score. I would pretty much guarantee that just about every Wii game ships without a Metacritic rating because [reviewers] haven't got around, to it or they're not interested in reviewing it."
Moore likes the user reviews...more. He says that while he still wants good scores, they're less important to the Wii than they would be with the other systems.
"I absolutely guarantee you, the thing we're watching most closely now [with Wii titles] is things like Amazon - and I'll go look at women's magazines that have powerful websites, and then we look at what we call 'mommy bloggers'," he says.
[via Gamasutra]
Dale North is Destructoid's Editor-In-Chief, a founding editor, and specialist in Japanese gaming. An accomplished musician, Dale was reporting from Japan during the earthquakes of 2011. Luckily, he got the fuck out alive and is home in America now with his wife and beloved corgi, Einstein. Dale is also a co-founder of Destructoid's sister anime site
Japanator. Likes Corgis, Sega Saturn, PSP, iPhone, Photographic tools.
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Contest:
12:40 PM on 06.10.2009
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...or we call that striving for quality?
Not it isn't. Prince of Persia and Assassin's Creed both suck and have 80%+ ratings on Metacritic.
As much hate as metacritic gets I think it's useful. Individual reviews are pretty worthless for the most part aside from getting a relatively bullshit free description of a game but taking an aggregate score tends to at least put a game into a tier.
I see the usefulness of metacritic absolutely but metacritic is a gauge for consumer and not publishers or at the very least not a means for a publisher to base the quality of their game on
The reason wii games are reviewed like that is because wii does games for non-gamers and let's face it - all gaming sites have GAMERS reviewing them!
Shame there's no way to quantify text outside of numbers. And didn't I read an article here some time ago about how game reviews suck?
It hurts my eyes too! And here I thought I was the only one.
Like, half the shit on the Wii is stuff only a soccer mom would buy her kids, and when you get people who actually play real games reviewing these things, then of course you're going to end up with shit reviews. I think what he's saying is "Forget the fact that all these shit games exist, let's make our own shit game and everyone will love it!" Which, unfortunately, is the wway some companies think when the topic is the Wii.
As for Metacritic: I generally check it for the little excerpts from reviews, rather than the scores themselves. They usualy give you a better idea of what to expect from a game, rather than just relying on a number that's rarely representative of the game's quality.
The rift between pro reviews and user reviews can be chalked up to fanboy abuse and hype train overload.
Especially on flagship titles like Halo, Sony and Nintendo fanboys will post negative reviews just to lower the score. Couple that with some inflated reviews from sites riding the hype train and you've got a big divide. For big-name games like that, I usually take the pro review score and subtract 5% from it and it seems to be a good gauge of quality.