Forgive my ignorance, but what exactly is it that's wrong with Metacritic? Everyone in this thread seems to consider it a necessary evil at best, but no-one's really spelled out why.
Aside from the scoring not being repesentative of the reviewer's intentions, there's also some selectivity in terms of which sites currently make it onto Metacritic. Seasoned indie reviewers, for example, are not well represented. Our expectations should scale with the budget and manpower underlying the game.
Many magazines used to allot the 50-70 category as "for fans who will still enjoy this". This practically no longer happens on Meta due to inconsistency between scales. Not being able to vote on which critical review(er) users find helpful. Launch date reviews versus patch. etc.
