Although we’ve found Metacritic a userful resource for game reviews, many folks have gone on a user submission rampage to discredit games that haven’t even launched yet. Their first attack was on LittleBigPlanet followed by Resistance 2, now their hitting Gears of War 2.
While Gears of War 2 has a Metacritic score of 94/100 the user’s have reviewed it to be a 3.5 out of 10, with a bright red box around the user review due to its low nature we’re sure. Although users are free to give their own honest representation of the game from their perspective, Gears of War 2, as of the review dates, hasn’t been released yet – these reviews are bogus.
This style of attack was popularized in Spore, when Amazon got nailed with poor reviews of the game because Spore’s “Draconic” DRM made people angry. However, it’s more reasonable for people to voice their opinion on a known issue with a game; Gears of War 2 review spamming is just mean.
We use Metacritic as guidance when we do our gaming podcast to understand what games are rated in the industry, but we don’t use user reviews as our main guide. There are plenty of folks out there that may utilize these reviews in more seriousness because they may feel journalists reviews are tainted by advertisers or “the man” and want the common gamers opinion.
The common gamer cannot possibility be reviewing Gears of War 2 before the title has arrived. This is bogus. Metacritic has this to say:
“My advice for our faithful users is to focus your attention on the Metascore for this game and not the thousands of user votes, most of which have been submitted before said users have played the game. This is a gaming community, and if people want to stuff the ballot box, there’s not much I can do at this point. When we upgrade the registration requirements for participation on the site in the near future, this type of thing won’t happen. We’ll post the full legitimate user reviews upon the game’s release. As always, thanks for using the site.” (1up)
So, to those looking for holiday gaming gifts, keep this in mind while you start hunting down games you’ll want to buy.
Hi Guys.
Thanks for this episode, even if i am not so much into Resident Evil, it was interesting to listen to your thoughts about it 🙂
I played the last RE on PS4 … it was 7? Dont know exactly 🙂
I finished Hollow Knight, Detroit Become Human and Monsterboy and the cursed Kingdom … made it to 97% without any walkthroughs 🙂 Yesterday i started with Kingdom Hearts 2.5 because i want to play through this until i start KH 3. And of Course: a lot of Magic The Gathering Arena!
What do you guys think about all these new-old games coming out besides RE? Like Monsterboy or all these HD Remakes of this and that? Do you like it or do you like the original feeling of the old games and do you want to play only graphical blasts in 2019 (like Last Of Us 2, Anthem and such Triple A titles)?
For your question of the week: i want a remake of Metroid (the original one on NES and Super Metroid for SNES) as well or some GameBoy Games like Gargoyles Quest or Simons Quest 🙂
There are some Non-Video Games from my childhood (C64 and Amiga) i would love to see as a remake: Apydia, Turrican, Moonstone, New Zealand Story or Baldurs Gate. On the other side maybe these games were good back in the days but would not be good anymore today even with better graphics? 🙂
Please stay as you are and keep going with the good work.
Greetings from germany,
Ralf