A Note on the Previous Post
I should have mentioned the review scale in the previous post (and didn't), so let me mention it now.Is there really a 1-100 scale for reviews?
No.
Of the 756 games from last year in the Metacritic database, there were none rated below 20, and only 2 rated below 25. Sure, there are occasionally individual reviews below 25, but they are very, very rare.
In other words, it's not a true 100-point scale. It's a 75-point scale, at most.
Which makes the numbers, actually, even worse. Getting a 70 out of 100 when you can't score below 25 is even less impressive than it originally seemed.
Something else that these numbers really emphasize is that it's very difficult to make really good games. Even with 25% of the scale not being used, only about 20% of the games are getting 80+ scores from Metacritic. And there are plenty of games in the 80-89 range that I wouldn't characterize as "really good."
The popularity of gaming has exponentially increased our choices. With no return policy, though, the percentage of money we waste will be high unless we use rentals and demos.
<< Home