this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2023
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There are nine reviews on metacritic from various outlets that score the game 100/100. I would love for every single one of those reviewers to look me in the eye and with a straight face, repeat the claim that Starfield is perfect and there is absolutely nothing in the game that could possibly be improved on. If you want to know who's not conversing honestly, that'd be a good kicking-off point.
Well, they wouldn't, because not all of the nine thought the game was perfect. A 100 on Metacritic only means the game placed in the top score for a given publication (4 out of 4 stars in WaPo's case, for example).
In games criticism, a top score doesn't always mean a perfect game. It can mean the game met or surpassed the current benchmark in its genre, or it simply was good enough to be in a top tier.
Slight tangent.
Maximum score (4 stars, 5 stars, 10/10, 100%, whatever they're calling it) not meaning the game is perfect is not at all a problem to me. There are games I absolutely love and would recommend to just about anyone and even then I don't think they're "perfect".
The thing that bothers me most is how average scores specifically for games are basically never used, and below average scores are just a handful of the most broken things ever.
It's so absurd that on metacritic for games, "average" goes from 50 to 74%. In movies it goes from 40 to 64. I don't know for everyone else, but I don't consider 7 out of 10 an "average" mark. And a game so broken it almost doesn't run at all doesn't deserve 5/10 (really, I've seen some).
Anyway, review scores are silly. Read the guys' opinions, see why they like it and why they don't. Someone's absolute favorite masterpiece is someone else's most unplayable shit.
It feels a lot like scores have been artificially inflated for a long time. Like you said, games that can barely run will get a 5, or a 4 at the lowest. It’s like half the possible scores have been lopped off, so there’s no real way to tell what a score actually means. A 7 should be a perfectly serviceable game, but it’s treated like you’ve called a game complete trash for anything below a 8.
Some publishers have been known to threaten publications that give "bad" (ie. even average) scores, mainly with not giving them preview copies anymore in the future.
@Ashtear Exactly. The 100% rating is often misunderstood. It does not mean perfect game, plus every publication has their own standards. Therefore one 100% is not comparable to another 100%. And like in your example conversions from 4/4 to 100% (because it can only be 0%, 25%, 75% or 100%), is done so an overall Metacritic score can be calculated.
For the longest time I think Metacritic is a bad for the gaming industry, if they lean too much towards (in example bonuses for developers, if they reach a certain rating).
I don’t think that we need to continue to “think” it’s bad for the games industry. It IS bad for the industry. Period. Very famously, obsidian got less money and lost out on a bonus from the initial release of fallout NV because it didn’t hit 80 on metacritic. We need to stop pretending these scores are objective or reflect anything about user enjoyment of a game. Users maybe, but the critic score is worse than useless. It’s downright misinformation to aggregate critic scores.
Like the entire point of critics is to provide different perspectives on a game. Why would I want their average? The average of their opinion is not the average gamer opinion and it also isn’t the average of the individual readers opinion.
I need no further proof than go look up the last 5 games you played on metacritic and try to guess the critic and user score and get within 5 points each time.
I have serious questions for anyone who gives a game, any game, a completely perfect score, especially one that is known to have some technical issues.
To me, a perfect score doesn't (or shouldn't) mean a game is literally perfect. It means "I recommend this game without reservation. Everyone with the slightest interest in the genre should play it."
Granted, even by that standard a lot of these perfect scores are pretty questionable
And that's why comparing different people's ratings is so difficult. 10/10 can mean "absolutely perfect and impossible to ever improve upon", it can mean "the best possible execution right now", it can mean "the best expected result with no major flaws", it can mean "I had a good time and would recommend this to anyone", and so on. All of these definitions are valid.
Aggregate scores paper over those differences. That automatically makes them less accurate.
Also, the problem with "perfect" as your standard is that it doesn't exist. Everything is inherently tradeoffs. There are games with better gunplay than Starfield. There are games with better story telling. The games that do that are a lot smaller and more contained. As good as BG3 is at writing and presentation, even that's not perfect, and what they did do was only realistic because it's a CRPG and the story is the overwhelming majority of the development work. There are games that are bigger in terms of absolute size of the universe you can discover and land on, but they don't have the same depth of character development and combat options, the same quality or amount of hand crafted story content, etc.
You're always going to be able to point to games that do some specific element better than a given game, and the more ambitious a game is in providing a huge scope, the more things you'll be able to point to and say "X did this better" (because there are more elements to nitpick). Not every game is for everyone, but looking for failings is a bad way to explore or evaluate a game. It dramatically limits what you see.
Did you ask the same question when Witcher 3, Legend Of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, etc etc the same question?
It's sort of dishonest when Starfield get this sort of treatment when metacritic score has been inflated for ages, no thanks to both gamer, journalist, and publisher.