With Metacritic as the hot-button issue lately, this week’s Community Voice wants to hear opinions on those numbers that make Metacritic what it is. What do you think of review scores? Are they your be-all? Do you take them with a grain of salt? Do you completely bypass the actual review in order to get to those brain-satisfying numbers? And if so, should we reviewers even bother with the actual writing or are we wasting our time and yours? Conversely, should we abandon the numbers altogether and rate games purely with our words? Is there a happy medium? How do you feel about 5 stars versus an out of 10 system? A letter grade versus a 1-100 scale? Speak up! We want to hear your honest opinions.

What is The Community Voice? The Community Voice is your chance to make yourself heard on Spawn Kill. Yes, you can leave comments on any post that we have, but The Community Voice is a weekly feature that is notorious for encouraging discussion and fostering a sense of, yes, community. We want to hear from readers of the site, and we want to talk to you. So let us know your opinions on the topics each week and let’s get something lively going!

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I know it’s been a criminal amount of time since we have posted up an episode of the Kill Kast, but we are here to make amends and get back in the groove. Our latest Kill Kast is hosted by Stephanie (Tigresa) as she is joined by Eric (The Herp), Dave (Dave) and for the very first time Rebecca (Cuatro Chihuahuas), who has only been here pretty much since the inception of Spawn Kill…! This time we talk a little about what we were playing — the criminality of glitches in Dragon Age Awakening, and other masochistic things we’ve been up to gaming-wise, with the main entree being the topic of Metacritic — As the title says, is it good, bad, or a necessary evil? Listen in and let us know how you feel in the comments! Thanks for listening.

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Power Rankings have been used for a long time in sports. It’s a nice way to rank teams based on something other than wins and losses. This year Metacritic has put together a power ranking for video games. Although some people might not agree with the Metacritic scoring, I always like to check it out just to see what other reviewers thought about the game. Obviously I won’t simply look at the overall score, which some people might do, but it’s a nice one stop shop for reviews. These rankings were based on the quality over quantity of the games released this year. Although the Xbox 360 had the most games receiving a Metascore of 75 or higher and the Wii had the largest number of releases, it was the PlayStation 3 who took the number one spot in the power rankings.

The PlayStation 3 had the best exclusive titles this year and they really needed to. The 360 have always had a large amount of exclusive titles and Sony needed to do something to entice people to buy their console other than the price cut. So why did the PS3 get ranked number 1 overall even though the 360 had 88 games that scored at least a 75? The PS3 this year had a better overall quality in their games. They also had five of the top 10 highest-scoring titles in 2009 including Uncharted 2: Among Thieves which garnered the highest score for the year.

The PS3 had the least amount of titles released compared to their counterparts and they had the fewest percentage of “bad” titles which obviously helped in the power rankings. The PC surprisingly comes in second even though they released more titles than the 360 and PS3, I guess PC gaming isn’t dead. The 360 follows in third and took a hit from having a larger “mixed” and “bad” percent than the PS3 and PC. The Wii came in last simply because of the 362 games released and 13% of them receiving poor reviews, easily the highest among consoles and handhelds. Here you can see the complete rankings with a little more detail.

Metacritic also posted the highest rated games for any platform as well as for individual platforms. Should be no surprise what took the top spot for the PS3 and 360, but the number one rated game for PC is Street Fighter IV? Dragon Age got the same overall score but came in 3^rd. The Wii had a rough year this year for games, according to Metacritic anyways, with the number one spot held by a re-release Metroid Prime Trilogy. Other titles that took the top spots for the Wii were multiplatform games. The DS and PSP both had the same game, GTA Chinatown Wars as their top rated games. It was obvious that from the beginning of the year the PS3 was going to have a lot of big time releases and it’s about time. But the PC, 360 and PS3 all have multiplatform games that are ranked high on their list so if you have any of those consoles you’re probably still playing some of the best games of the year. As always you shouldn’t read too much into the Metacritic score but I do like the way they set up the power rankings. Check out the gallery to see the complete rankings for each system.

[Source: Metacritic ]

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Peter Moore, President of the EA Sports label, did a recent interview with Gamasutra about the importance of Metacritic scores on EA Sports titles for the Nintendo Wii. Instead of relying heavy on what has become kind of an industry-standard rating system (to keep developers in check when they make crappy games), EA Sports will now be putting more emphasis on user-based reviews from sites like Amazon.

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