So a mediocre score of 5.5 by users on Metacritic. I read many of the negative reviews and a large number of them state that this was the best game they had ever played, "gaming bliss" one review said.
Then the framerate issue reared its ugly head. Then the patch hit and broke more stuff while failing to fix the frame rate. Then people started getting sick of Bethesda's lack of response.

And i whole heartedly..........disagree!

Well, with some of it.

The game is fantastic, when it works, and i feel that has to be taken into account. With the bugs, i feel it warrants at least a 6.5-7 out of 10. For a game this broken, thats quite an achievement. The user score on MC of 5.5 is an achievement considering the state of the game.

I realise people are trying to alert people to Bethesda releasing what in many people's opinion, including mine, is an unfinished game. However a game this good, and all the hard work that went into it, does deserve some recognition.

I wish there was a developer/Publisher review site where we could give the game and the company behind it marks out of ten. While the game would be nowhere near a 10/10, due to its performance issues, it for me would still get at least a 7.

Bethesda on the other hand would get a virtual kick in the balls for releasing such an amazing game in such an amazingly unfinished, buggy state and ignoring the fans like they did. 0/10 Bethesda, 0/10.

I actually have been so frustrated with the performance of this game at times that if Todd Howard were standing in front of me i would give him a REAL kick in the balls followed swiftly, by an atomic wedgie.

Anyway, whats your take on the scores. Do you think, due to the bugs, performance issues, Bethesda's handling of the situation, that score of 5.5 is fair?

A game that is unfinished doesn't deserve a rating higher than that of a finished game. Even the worst finished game deserves a higher rating than an unfinished game, simply on the basis that it is playable from start to finish. This of course, is just my opinion.

Metacritic is unreliable because Trolls could inflate the score low or high. Dragon Age 2 is an example of this although that game deserves it's low score.

User reviews aren't worth the bandwidth they use. People will rate a game 0 even if they think it deserves a 7, only because they believe the score it's got right now is too high and they want to influence it as much as possible. Hopefully I don't have to tell you why this is a flawed strategy.

This is especially true since the review tradition is more like the traditional school grades (7 is mediocre) than a logical scale where 5 is mediocre. This means a score of 0 by a troll affects the perception of a game more than a rating of 10 by a really devoted fan does.

Anyway this is only for the PS3 version, the other 2 have good user scores (not that user scores matter, as I already mentioned).

Well, I would have given it 8.5 out of 10, but my game isnt broken, just unfinished and buggy.

I'm seeing a user review of 8.5 for xbox and 8.3 for PC.


Where is the 5.5?

It's become "hip" to hate games of late. Hellgate London was the first one I really noticed the destructive force of a hateful group. It was really a good game, but the hate was palpable. Just about every game since has had small groups of haters which plague internet sites like this forum and metacritic which really distort the reality of the game. This game is as finished as a sandbox game needs to be. It's got a ton of stuff to do, and yet is open enough for expansion. But haters got to hate. I wish people would simply learn to ignore them.

Why do people still bother with ratings in a gaming industry, where anything below 90% is considered terrible?

That is true, anything not overhyped is bad and gaming journalists' opinions are bought and payed for anyways. I seek the opinions of friends and game store employees when I want to know about a game.

I wish people would stop using the term 'haters'. It really undermines whatever point it is they're trying to make.

If the 5.5 score is for the PS3 version, it seems fair.

For the xbox, I'd probably give it an 8. (-1 for bugs, -1 for other faults.)

For the PC, an 8.5, because it's moddable. (-1 for bugs, -1 for bad optimisation, -1 for other faults, +1.5 for moddability.)

I don't understand why the common man and reviewing press have a hard time understanding this but

The review scale, for all intents and purposes, is pretty much based on the american school grading scale in how most people determine how good something is

I.E.

90-100 = A

80-90 = B

70-80 = C

60-70 = D

Less than 60 = F

I facepalm everytime I hear someone from reviews press or someone else [censored]es about how we don't treat 5-6's as "average", and therefore they aren't "bad".... it's pretty obvious that people globally percieve 0-100 scales to happen in the same manner that the school system determines scaling. If you have a C or lower in a class, it's not considered good no matter what subject you are learning. Not bad, but not good. Anything less than a D is considered bad. It's simply a matter of such a scale being a globally accepted standard. Gaming review scores are not "exclusive" to this



Now that said, I'm pretty sure in this day and age, after people started doing Amazon.com rating bombings a few years ago, nobody takes user reviews seriously anymore. I've made a topic on a popular gaming website concerning this as a matter of fact, and I can pretty much conclude the vast majority of the internet doesn't take user reviews seriously when 90% of the votes now a days are just a bunch of entitled and spoiled kids with an agenda, trying to "bomb" scores instead of voting legitimately.

America is global, now? Ohreally. If reviews want to use that scale, fine, but then they should point out that that is the scale they're using.

Metacritic folks are known to be hipsters. Just look at what happened with MW3 vs BF3.

Sorry, but with any popular game that's surrounded in conflict, you're much better off trusting the critics and not the MC user reviews.

I give Skyrim a K=Z.L-2 rating.

As a 360 user I'm giving this a straight 10. I can see how PC/PS3 users might feel differently about it though.

It's like giving a little kid just one lick of a delicious lolipop. Sure, he DID get a really delicious lolipop and after all, it is better than nothing. That one taste is probably more satisfying than a whole normal lolipop. But that child is going to be pretty pissed if you don't let him enjoy the whole thing.

It's because it's the PS3 version and it's broken for a fair number of PS3 users.

Just because it always happens doesn't mean we shouldn't complain about it. Basically it makes half of the scale totally worthless because unless a game is totally unplayable it's going to get at least a 50.

metacritic is a hypocrit site

Well, giving the game 0 is totally immature.
Just give the game your REAL score
Not a 0, only to make the user score go down faster.
The user score in the front page DOES NOT affect my personal score. Other people should think like that too.


The game is laggy? But after what? 60 hours of gameplay?
Which game offers that?

User reviews on metacritic mean nothing. Hell the Battlefield trolls demolished the Modern Warfare 3 score, and I don't like MW3.

It helps a lot of consumers who unlike us, aren't aware of these problems. They look at the game's reviews, and see near-perfect scores across the board. Until they see the mediocre score for PS3. They see something is wrong and won't get it for PS3. Maybe they will get it for another platform or maybe they will just get another game. I don't see anything immature about that.

It is.
Imagine Skyrim. When you put a high amount of time in this game, you might get lag/crash/freeze problems
Metacritic is something above 8.

Then users realize that the game might get problems and the score should be changed.
So they all start giving it 0, just to make this score go down.

I'd like some honest reviews there.
I'm sure those people wouldn't give the game a 0.


And the user score will always be there. Just look at the user reviews. You'll see a bunch of 5 and 6.
Should be that instead of a bunch of 0.

This. Are you really stupid enough to think those are actually Representative scores?

I`d give it a zero too if I spent $60 dollars on a game that does not work.


Yes because it`s for the broken PS3 version.