I remember back in the 90s PC mags had the same issues, simple numerical ratings don’t mean shit.

The only score I follow is Steams user satisfies rating thing. the top voted complaints or praises tell me more about the state of a game than anything else ever could.

It's a useful place to find out if something totally sucks though. That's how I use it. 60+? Probably good, at least for some audiences. Less than that? Only if you're already hyped or a fan of whatever thing it's related to.

People like to simplify things and a number is really simple. It's not a lossless simplification tho.

I prefer the steam reviews and check that the guy reviewing has enough hours played.

I can't remember ever having used meta critic to guide a purchase. There is so much content both from forums and YouTube/Twitch that gives you much more accurate impressions of games. Meta critic seems rather pointless nowadays.

Well if I only have time to play a game a month, I'm not gonna play a 6/10 game. I'm not saying to blindly trust metacritic but when you seldom play games you need to filter them aggressively somehow.

I ignore game reviews and buy based off watching the trailer and reading the steam reviews. If I don't like the game in 2 hours I'll refund it.

In 99% of the situations, i couldn't care less what the metacritic score is. Reviewers can be paid, publications can be biased and/or tired, and in general, a lot of the scores don't actually represent how real players feel.

This is especially obvious, when reviewing longer games, or specifically MMOs. You cannot rank that after playing for 10 hours.

My first stop for reviews is always my friends. Based on their general recommendations, i frequently find incredibly fun games, that are otherwise unimpressive at first glance

It's kind of wild that I've seen trailers and posts for Lollipop Chainsaw's remaster, but the first time I hear about a Shadows of the Damned remaster is buried in the last paragraph of a dev interview.

I agree. I have so many games in my backlog that using this method has worked to keep myself under control lol

For sure. You're better off finding YouTubers in a given space, skim a few videos, and subbing to someone with similar opinions.

Games are like food. Everyone in the world can give a place 10/10 but if they use too much of an ingredient you didn't like who cares?