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Metacritic stops assigning a video game "universal acclaim" after it goes below a score of 90
- Thread starter The Artisan
- Start date
I like how games need numerical scores to be critically acclaimed. I guess sites that don't give out numbers don't matter.
You gotta draw the line somewhere, and I'm sure people will argue until the sun explodes as to where that line goes. I'm sure some people will come up with wildly convoluted measurements that have little-to-no applicability but will also capture their most beloved pet games that are sub-90 so they can feel validation that their favorite game is loved by all.
I have completely stopped using metacritic. Pick a few reviewers that you've seemed to share taste with in the past and read what they have to say. Then make an informed decision based on that. If I followed that score I would have skipped a lot of games in the past that I ended up loving.
90 is fine and at the end of the day it doesn't really matter.
Yup it's bullshit, then again a majority of people don't actually read reviews more than the final paragraph and score. Video reviews tend to hold attention spans better but if a score is upfront people tend to ignore those too and sites like metacritic just fast forwards people not actually reading reviews
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This makes sense but are you sure this is the case? Some video games will have like over 70 review scores and still managed to grade above 90
I agree with it and think it's a great line to set considering the generally inflated nature of video game scoring.
I'm amazed something as well-executed as Dreams is below a 90 on Metacritic. Even if you set aside the potential, the quality of what is already there is astounding.
Games on average are rated way too high. If you call a game "critically acclaimed" when its score is 85 or whatever then most of what AAA publishers put out would be "critically acclaimed", which would make that phrase meaningless.
Scores are actually useless. Smaller AA or niche games like Dreams seem to have a cap at around the 80s for some reason, so I wouldn't put any weight into that at all. Look at general feedback, and then look at fan feedback and figure out yourself if you fit within the niche audience.
Open Critic shows it as a 91, with 96% of Critics recommending.
https://opencritic.com/game/8786/dreams
https://opencritic.com/game/8786/dreams
Metacritic is only valuable if you want to go and see a list of who's reviewed a thing, and then go read some of those reviews and make your own opinion of whether you might like a thing.. The agregate score they provide is essentially meaningless.
It doesn't bother me, but it's the dumbest shit ever.
Far from the only dumb shit about MC, mind you.
Far from the only dumb shit about MC, mind you.
Once you set 89 as "critically acclaimed" then what about games there scored 88? It's a slippery slope situation.
So set cutoff and applies it for every game. it's only fair.
So set cutoff and applies it for every game. it's only fair.
So we've gone beyond caring about review scores, and now we're on what label a game is given, based on said scores.
Ok.
Ok.
I don't care if it's critically acclaimed or not, but in don't buy games that score under 75 unless it's a personal favorite series of mine. You all might be fine spending money in whatever but real/dolar rate doesn't allow me to do so, so I'm pretty selective with what I buy. So yeah, metacritic is good for me as it is for a lot of people in a situation similar to mine.
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The cutoff is 90. I proposed 86. I probably didn't word it properly. In the OP I wrote 86-99 should be critically acclaimed.
The thing about that is that it feels now that Metacritic is now in some ways encouraging this behaviour now, their is so way they don't know how their site is used and, how does an arbitrary label help anyone besides those who care way too much about their site which will guarantee more toxicity, more anger about scores and more hate towards critics and reviewers.
At least it's not as bad as Rotten Tomatoes attempt like that infamous incident with Justice League (they decided to withhold having the review score up for the movie because the want to use it to promote their podcast and reveal it there, the stunt was kind of a mess and failed and I'm so glad it did, can you imagine if it succeeded and they turned big movie scores like they were Smash character announcements?)
OP keeps writing "critically acclaimed" which isn't even the label used by metacritic. It's "universal acclaim". You have to draw a line somewhere and 90+ for universal acclaim seems... fine? Why does this matter at all lol.
These labels aren't new though are they? And sites have done the whole label thing for review scores since time began.
i'm confused. is OP saying something has changed about metacritic's labeling system? cuz i don't think it has.
The number on metacritic means nothing to consumers except those poor fools who get some sense of ownership having high scoring exclusives on their platform of choice, and the that title even less so.