The Metacritic Scores?

from Elemental Forums


Oddly enough, there are only 12 scores on Metacritic for Fallen Enchantress, while Elemental:War of Magic had 19 critics. Why is there less interest in reviewing the sequel?

Also, there seem to a be a few reviews to which Island Dog linked in the News section that never made it to Metacritic. Why?

Interestingly, while FE scores nearly 25 points more than its predecessor, the difference between user score and critic score is almost identical, if inverse. For WoM, users gave the game a higher rating, while for FE, it was lower. Personally, I think the difference is a bit too small to draw any conclusions, but I find a score roughly anywhere between the two for FE (73 and 77, respectively) to be fair, and respectable, for this sequel.

8,533 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Frogboy commented that it was a bad time to release FE for review exposure, supposedly lots of games were released at the same time. Reasonably, only the largest websites can cover every game released.

 

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

WoM was released in August: not much competition at that time of year.  The Oct/Nov/Dec timeframe is the best time of year for game sales, but also provides the greatest number of releases to reviewers, as Heavenfall mentioned Frogboy pointing out.  Lots of games fall by the wayside, especially long, involved turn-based strategy titles that require a lot of work to dig sufficiently into.  Much easier to review the latest action title, or arcade, or FPS.

 

 

 

Star Control: Origins
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top


Also, there seem to a be a few reviews to which Island Dog linked in the News section that never made it to Metacritic. Why?
End of quote

Metacritic only tracks certain review sites/publications. I would guess it's either a traffic/popularity requirement, or they have to register and possible pay a fee to get their reviews listed. Either way, a lot of the dinky little one-man sites/blogs that release reviews don't get tracked by sites like metacritic or gamerankings.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Short answer: NEVER release a game in October unless you're Activision or Electronic Arts.

Also, for reasons I cannot explain, European publications tend to have a lot more metacritic validated sites.  A lot of our reviews have come from sites that aren't listed on Metacritic.  I don't think there's any bias, I think that European game magazines do a better job on making sure they get listed.