MEA scores higher than GTA5 and the dangers of online reviews

GTA is a lot more than just killing and sex. There is depth to those games that never get the credit it deserves. Those games at their core is actually social commentary but everyone is so caught in killing things they don't see it. 

It is a train wreck.  I'm not saying it's a horrible game but it is was a buggy one and it feels unfinished like big part of the game was left out,  which is understandable given the hell it took to make. I really do like this game but I can't just blindly defend it.

I think it is a 8/10 game post patching, and a 6-7/10 Bioware game because expectations are so much higher. Def not a trainwreck. Not like, say, Aliens: Colonial Marines.

Yeah, the patching did nothing for me. I didn't take the bugs and glitches into account when I first played it. So the patches came as expected, as something we were entitled to get. They didn't add anything to what I thought this game lacked at release. I never revised my judgement and this time round I'm in accord with the magazines rating this game. 72 to 75 is where I'm willing to go. With or without patches.

The basic problem is thus - you're saying that the low scores for MEA are justified, and they're not for GTAV. Your argument for this rests on the user reception of MEA, where the scores were low. Effectively you're arguing the scores are legit for MEA because MEA was a bad game, because it got low scores - i.e., a circular argument.

The underlying problem here is that scores only have any worth if there's some kind of reason for them to be accurate i.e. someone's credibility is on the line etc. This by and large keeps the professional reviewers on the line (although not always, though I think the majority of professional reviews - i.e. 70-80 range - were pretty much bang on). Unfortunately, user reviews are just a number. There's no cost to giving a game a stupid score and when a high-profile game comes out that isn't living up to the high 90s of it's predecessors, it doesn't take much for the trolls to snowball. There was clearly an agenda going on as people were spamming memes and complaining about things that had been fixed, and a huge number of those duff scores were posted minutes after the metacritic page opened.

It's the same thing with GTAV. The only difference here is that there's a different agenda behind the score. The score is still a load of shit.

As I said, it's a question of credibility. I'm not going to pretend that MEA is on the level of the OT but believing it's a 60% game because the trolls said it was isn't far off taking up that telephone offer you got from that guy at the Nigerian Centre of Commerce.

I get where you're coming from. Patching massively improved my personal game play experience in MEA though, and I always score games post patching these days. I've not encountered a game in a long time that didn't need patching post release. They are so big and complex compared to even 5 years ago I give time for things to be addressed release. Though MEA was a little more than not perfect. My pre-patch score would be pretty low if I gave it one. 


I don't think someone's score tallying with those of a magazine or professional reviewer gives it more credence if I'm honest.

lol yup

Ah - that makes sense. In that case yeah, the impression I had was the OP was pointing out that if agendas are being pushed in user scoring then user scoring is effectively worthless as yardstick of a game's quality.

But absolutely, the agendas behind the scoring of the games are clearly very different to each other.

 Just a quick stop by to glance around and...yep, everyone is still arguing about the same things they were a month ago. I still keep an eye on this place looking out for any DLC news that might come over the transom, but being strapped onto the never ending merry-go-round with the international dudebro coalition was just too tiring.

It's likely the DLC is going to happen after a previous Twitch stream said future content can't be discussed yet (referring to DLC), but they have to wait for marketing to give the go ahead.

So true. I kind of  like that in this case they took away people's fun for no good reason and consumers are actively protesting against it. And plenty of gamers might really think that the mod tool made the game more fun thus taking away the ability to use it would technically bring down their experience  of the game. Skyrim I think is one that got rated better by PC players because of mods. 

Andromeda user score on Metacritic is actually 4.8. Critic score is 71.