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.
7-11 getting into the 
Hi guys.
Thanks for the episode 🙂
Even if I don’t play that much since my partner died, I still like to Listen to your podcast. I hope that’s ok for you if I comment anyway, even if I can’t say that much to the topics you talk about.
I still played a lot Pokémon go and tried the new TCG Lorcana. It’s really fun and I did not know that poGo is that complex!
Do you guys know more mobile games like ingress and Pokémon go? Does anyone of you play one of these both?
Besides these I don’t play that much mobile games, so I sonst care about Apple Arcade being shut down 🙂 (I know there are games not only for mobile, but for me it feels that way).
I still plan to play BG3 when it gets a little bit cheaper and I feel like playing such a massive game 🙂
I am really looking forward Silksong which hopefully will be released this year!
Stay healthy guys and keep on the good work.
Greetings,
Ralf