@siamesegiant: Metacritic's fine if you recognize it as a gathering of individual opinions. It's when they try to conform different scoring scales and methods as a form of consensus that it falls flat. The readers that look at this and identify outliers (typically on the low end) as "biased" or incorrect are failing to understand the nature of reviews and opinions.
why is everyone reacting to this review like "Giant Bomb" is Rolling Stone of the gaming industry? Have a look at sites like metacritic that factor in all scores. It's sitting at 79 as an overall average which is pretty good. Yes, every critic is entitled to their own opinion but this particular review is in a very small pool, an anomaly, outweighed by significantly higher averages from other more reputable sites. Anytime someone's view on something is vastly different than the average, this usually implies some sort of bias. Gamespot's review, for example, it's clear the critic had a score in mind before playing the review copy. Some people want to be different. Also, why would anyone expect a single player 10 hour campaign would live up to the hype? Kudos to Remedy for trying to give us something different and to Microsoft for supporting it. You don't break new ground by doing the same thing like the Tomb Raider or Uncharted series. If that means an average start to a new genre to later get a major breakthrough, then lets have it! Statistics separate the objective science from opinion. If you want a subjective opinion, then keep coming to Giant Bomb. The STATISTICS recommend that you play this game.
There is no such thing as an objective opinion.
I hope someone appreciates the restraint I'm showing by not posting this in all caps.
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