I don't understand why people think an 8.5/10 isn't a very good score.
I would honestly be very sceptical if all big games are starting to get 9+ from all outlets.
I always thought some people were exaggerating when I read/heard that metacritic is bad for games, but I am honestly starting to think there is some truth to it. I tend to watch reviewscores for some games as I think it is a good starting point to have an idea of how good a game is, but I almost never look purely at the score and at least check out the closing thoughts of some of the reviews (next to watching EZA's full review if they have done one).
The whole "you are lowering the metacritic score" thing is also really weird to me. Let people do their job, if you don't like certain outlets/scores, stop looking at them. Who cares that a metacritic score is an 88 instead of a 90 because of one or a couple reviews.
I also know that I have really liked some games that don't get good scores (and I am not talking about an 8.5, but more like a 6 or lower).
I almost never felt the need to comment on a score because of how subjective those are. The only time that comes to mind is EZA's The Last Guarian score (I'm sorry Blood to mention this again) and I have never thought Blood was "wrong" with his score (since it is subjective).
I can not imagine how tough it must be to do reviews on some games (especially on highly anticipated games) when you know you will get flack for just giving your opinion and doing your job (it probably doesn't even matter what score you give it). That's just ridiculous.