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[Vooduu]

Thanks to the mixed reviews i actually got curious about the game. Might check it out in the future.

The Polygon review is really harsh though..

The guy who reviewed it doesn't even like Killzone. So it never really had a chance. Plus it's Polygon, so what do you expect?

This is the same website that went back to several games to do a post review and scores are still above a 5.

Halo 4 scored a 9.5 yet look at the community for it now.

They also just gave TLoU an 8.5/10 just to say they aren't apart of the 9/10 and 10/10 crowd.

I stopped reading Polygon reviews because they just aren't *gasp* good.

 

[Bad_Boy]

People need to read this. If what he says is true, this game will be fantastic and likely the last time I ever even look at reviews from the majority of these sites. They simply just don't get what makes a good game anymore.

So CVG, Giant Bomb, and Game Informer are all waiting until they have more time with the game and all the features. Kudos to them then. Will be interesting to read/watch their reviews.

I think it's also noteworthy to say that I'm interested in what happens this generation with the "basement" youtube reviewers. Not that this is anything new, but it's a whole new ballgame this generation with twitch and ustream becoming bigger. These will be the guys without early access and fancy hotel perks. These will be the guys playing the genre's they enjoy and spending their own money, like any gaffer would. Instantly to me, giving them more credibility.

 

[Vooduu]

So CVG, Giant Bomb, and Game Informer are all waiting until they have more time with the game and all the features. Kudos to them then. Will be interesting to read/watch their reviews.

Excellent.

 

[Vooduu]

Kotaku Review

Killzone: Shadowfall - Great Visuals, Same old FPS Gameplay. No

Knack - Great Visuals, Same old Platforming Gameplay, Yes

"Same old FPS Gameplay"

What did Kotaku give CoD or Battlefield?

Wtf reads Kotaku anyways.

 

[ChuckNyce]

The guy who reviewed it doesn't even like Killzone. So it never really had a chance. Plus it's Polygon, so what do you expect?

This is the same website that went back to several games to do a post review and scores are still above a 5.

Halo 4 scored a 9.5 yet look at the community for it now.

They also just gave TLoU an 8.5/10 just to say they aren't apart of the 9/10 and 10/10 crowd.

I stopped reading Polygon reviews because they just aren't *gasp* good.

7.5/10 actually

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

Let's break down the Polygon score using scientific methods and how data is typically handled in scientific study.

Quick math lesson - 95% of all numbers in a data set fall within 2 standard deviations from the mean. Scores/Data that fall outside 2 standard deviations from the mean are typically deemed "outliers" because there is less than a 5% chance that it is a "true" data point. This is why in any scientific paper the "gold standard" for proving that something is likely to be true is to look for a p-value of less than 0.05 (i.e. you can say with 95%+ confidence that your conclusions are accurate based on the data).

Using the scores at the top of this page, including the Polygon score, gives us the following:

Total Scores: 13
Mean: 7.769
Std Deviation: 1.179

Gies score lies 2.35 standard deviations away from the mean, meaning that there is less than a 5% chance that his score is a "valid" piece of data.

If Metacritic was smart, it would use this method, throw out all scores more than 2 standard deviations from the mean (on both the high and low end) and use the mean of the remaining data that as the Metacritic score. If we do that here, it rejects Gies score of 5 and gives a mean of 8/10, which seems about right. I won't quibble if it's really a 7 or 9 out of 10, but certainly not a 5.

Being 2.35 standard deviations away from the mean does not mean there is less than a 5% chance of being "valid data". It means that it is 2.35 standard deviations away from the mean. If I scored an IQ of 137 that does not mean my IQ is an invalid piece of data even though it's more than 2 standard deviations above the mean. I'm also unclear on how you have made a connection between p thresholds / t-tests and bell curve distributions. It's not really abnormal to have a small number of datapoints more than 2 SD away from the mean, and in fact we should expect around 2.1% of all data points to be 2.5SD away from the mean or more, by definition. This is all of course based on the completely unjustified assumption that video game reviews follow perfect normal distributions, and are not actually just a scattershot of bullshit because it's 100% subjective. You certainly didn't plot your whopping 13 datapoints (lol) to show this. Trying to have reviews excised on the grounds of being statistical outliers is mind bogglingly silly. This isn't science, it's video game reviews. The idea that there is a "true" score that you can obtain by determining the means of all reviews is nonsensical.

I repeat what I said earlier in this thread: just ignore Gies. Don't get angry. Don't get upset. Stop thinking about him and his review. Stop writing angry tweets, stop trying to dredge up your misremembered stats 101 procedures, deal with the metascore being what it is, and don't waste one more brain cycle on scumbags and the shithouse websites they run.

 

[Sweet Ivy]

Let's break down the Polygon score using scientific methods and how data is typically handled in scientific study.

Quick math lesson - 95% of all numbers in a data set fall within 2 standard deviations from the mean. Scores/Data that fall outside 2 standard deviations from the mean are typically deemed "outliers" because there is less than a 5% chance that it is a "true" data point. This is why in any scientific paper the "gold standard" for proving that something is likely to be true is to look for a p-value of less than 0.05 (i.e. you can say with 95%+ confidence that your conclusions are accurate based on the data).

Using the scores at the top of this page, including the Polygon score, gives us the following:

Total Scores: 13
Mean: 7.769
Std Deviation: 1.179

Gies score lies 2.35 standard deviations away from the mean, meaning that there is less than a 5% chance that his score is a "valid" piece of data.

If Metacritic was smart, it would use this method, throw out all scores more than 2 standard deviations from the mean (on both the high and low end) and use the mean of the remaining data that as the Metacritic score. If we do that here, it rejects Gies score of 5 and gives a mean of 8/10, which seems about right. I won't quibble if it's really a 7 or 9 out of 10, but certainly not a 5.

Personally I think it makes perfect sense and something like this can be applied to basically any field.
Logic always apply even though we're Humans and not Vulcans .

I do thing some score sites do use something like this anyway, I don't know exactly but
I remember imdb has its own "method" for averaging scores.


And to show that the logic applies, let's see it in these terms: opinions may be opinions but for a game to get a 5 score it should be basically unplayable as in: "plagued by bugs, frame-rate issues" and so on.
If something works maybe it won't shine but a 5 means "insufficient".

If you make an English essay that doesn't say anything brilliant but it's written in good English you still get a 6 or 7. You will never get a 5.
So, basically, giving 5 to a game such as KZ even if it is the worst in the series it's just plain silly.

Can't wait to play Shadow Fall, because I love the series and, really, there's no score or average that would make me not get and play it .

 

[x-Lundz-x]

The score really doesn't matter man. That polygon score is really what's making it seem like less than stellar game. I don't take reviews seriously anymore. After I played Beyond Two Souls I was done with the review system.

Yeah I know scores mean little. It's easy for a few low scores to drag down a games average. I'm just saying it's still probably going to be a ton of fun to play. That is what matters.

And I still need to get to Beyond, Heavy Rain was one my my favs from this past gen so I'm still looking forward to playing it.

 

[Bad_Boy]

I repeat what I said earlier in this thread: just ignore Gies. Don't get angry. Don't get upset. Stop thinking about him and his review. Stop writing angry tweets, stop trying to dredge up your misremembered stats 101 procedures, deal with the metascore being what it is, and don't waste one more brain cycle on scumbags and the shithouse websites they run.

I agree with you. But having said that, why are guys like these not banned from gaf? I mean if everyone is in agreement that their tactics are shameful and benefit no one, would it not be a very loud statement to the gaming community if a forum as respected as gaf does away with people/sites like him?

My memory is hazy, but IIRC Kotaku was once banned. What started it? What removed it?

 

[codhand]

Let's break down the Polygon score using scientific methods and how data is typically handled in scientific study.

Quick math lesson - 95% of all numbers in a data set fall within 2 standard deviations from the mean. Scores/Data that fall outside 2 standard deviations from the mean are typically deemed "outliers" because there is less than a 5% chance that it is a "true" data point. This is why in any scientific paper the "gold standard" for proving that something is likely to be true is to look for a p-value of less than 0.05 (i.e. you can say with 95%+ confidence that your conclusions are accurate based on the data).

Using the scores at the top of this page, including the Polygon score, gives us the following:

Total Scores: 13
Mean: 7.769
Std Deviation: 1.179

Gies score lies 2.35 standard deviations away from the mean, meaning that there is less than a 5% chance that his score is a "valid" piece of data.

If Metacritic was smart, it would use this method, throw out all scores more than 2 standard deviations from the mean (on both the high and low end) and use the mean of the remaining data that as the Metacritic score. If we do that here, it rejects Gies score of 5 and gives a mean of 8/10, which seems about right. I won't quibble if it's really a 7 or 9 out of 10, but certainly not a 5.

omg no, what a waste of time to spend endorsing censorship. he didnt like it, you might

 

[Vitor711]

Sessler and Gametrailers mentioned the MP but that was probably in a LAN reviewers vs reviewers setup. Game Informer are waiting for the PS4 servers to go live before they put out their review

As everyone should do.

MP is a HUGE part of the franchise. And now that it runs at 60FPS (and possibly at a more constant rate than the new COD or BF), it could be a big game changer.

I would like to see Polygon take that into consideration and update the review accordingly. If there are server issues, knock it down further. If not, boost the score to reflect if it does add significant value to the package.

Let's face it, GTA5 would not have had anywhere near the (over-inflated imho) perfect review scores it had if people had taken the broken and dull MP into consideration. Such a feature can add, or detract from a game. Can't understand why people would ignore it.

 

[semiconscious]

I repeat what I said earlier in this thread: just ignore Gies. Don't get angry. Don't get upset. Stop thinking about him and his review. Stop writing angry tweets, stop trying to dredge up your misremembered stats 101 procedures, deal with the metascore being what it is, and don't waste one more brain cycle on scumbags and the shithouse websites they run.[/b]

& that's the name of that tune ...

 

[zoukka]

I agree with you. But having said that, why are guys like these not banned from gaf? I mean if everyone is in agreement that their tactics are shameful and benefit no one, would it not be a very loud statement to the gaming community if a forum as respected as gaf does away with people/sites like him?

My memory is hazy, but IIRC Kotaku was once banned. What started it? What removed it?

People would only want overly critical sites banned and we would still be left with the overly positive shit sites. So forget about and get over it.

 

[BakedSardine]

omg no, what a waste of time to spend endorsing censorship. he didnt like it, you might

I'm just trying to think of ways to improve a site like Metacritic (truth be told, I never go there, but game industry execs swear by it for some reason). It seems perfectly reasonable to toss scores more than 2 std deviations from the mean for the actual Metacritic "score" and then those that were tossed can still be linked within the details of of each game.

 

[Bad_Boy]

Let's face it, GTA5 would not have had anywhere near the (over-inflated imho) perfect review scores it had if people had taken the broken and dull MP into consideration. Such a feature can add, or detract from a game. Can't understand why people would ignore it.

To be fair, SP of GTA5 was already great enough to warrant the scores. And MP was released many days after release of the game. That is an iffy thing to analyze.

Now GTA4 on the other hand... what a royal fuckup on every reviewers part. Hype got the best of everyone.

 

[Bad_Boy]

People would only want overly critical sites banned and we would still be left with the overly positive shit sites. So forget about and get over it.

I'm not talking about critical sites, or overly positive sites. I'm talking about reviewers who review games they were never going to like in the first place. Reviewers changing scores after the fact to save face. Reviewers who don't even play the game. Just plain out shit reviewers who shouldn't be reviewing games in the first place, as ThoseDeafMutes said.

 

[Tom Penny]

Shooters should get and overall score then a SP / MP score. Honestly 75% of the shooters I've played SP is like a 5 at best and I don't care about it. I would certainly buy a game that had a 5 SP and a 9 MP over a 9 SP 5 MP score.

 

[Trey]

I'm just trying to think of ways to improve a site like Metacritic (truth be told, I never go there, but game industry execs swear by it for some reason). It seems perfectly reasonable to toss scores more than 2 std deviations from the mean for the actual Metacritic "score" and then those that were tossed can still be linked within the details of of each game.

No it doesn't. It makes sense to collate the data from noteworthy review establishments that people visit.

You take Gies' review away, you take PSNation review away and you still end up with a 7-8 game.

 

[zoukka]

I'm not talking about critical sites, or overly positive sites. I'm talking about reviewers who review games they were never going to like in the first place. Reviewers changing scores after the fact to save face. Reviewers who don't even play the game. Just plain out shit reviewers who shouldn't be reviewing games in the first place, as ThoseDeafMutes said.

Good luck keeping track of the thousands of game journos who fall in that group then

 

[mrklaw]

Whether this game is good or bad, Sony should have never made another Killzone game. There's too much baggage associated with the franchise. Like Resistance (hopefully) it needs to be taken out to pasture.

why though? What is so fundamentally different about KZ that it should be put out to pasture Vs CoD, or Halo? Maybe the campaign isn't fantastic? (not that many FPS have good campaigns these days); maybe the MP isn't that great? (KZ2 was well received for the MP and Shadowfall looks promising too); Setting? (I think the setting is fantastic, and many reviewers seem to like the premise at least); Storyline? (again, to criticise the storyline when you have stuff like CoD seems unfair)

There does seem to be something about KZ that people just seem to turn their noses up at but I don't know why

 

[JB1981]

Any jetpacks in this game? Jetpacks were a lot of fun in KZ3.

 

[Ricky_R]

Any user impressions yet?

Any jetpacks in this game? Jetpacks were a lot of fun in KZ3.

They removed them from MP as well as Exoskeletons. Not sure if they removed them from sp too, but I think they did.

 

[BakedSardine]

No it doesn't. It makes sense to collate the data from noteworthy review establishments that people visit.

You take Gies' review away, you take PSNation review away and you still end up with a 7-8 game.

Exactly and I never said any different.

 

[thelurkinghorror]

I repeat what I said earlier in this thread: just ignore Gies. Don't get angry. Don't get upset. Stop thinking about him and his review. Stop writing angry tweets, stop trying to dredge up your misremembered stats 101 procedures, deal with the metascore being what it is, and don't waste one more brain cycle on scumbags and the shithouse websites they run.

I mean, I love the last SimCity but I find his review completely wrong, even annoying. Fuck, how can you hate the ideas of a person when they are the same ones that you have?

 

[Fistwell]

Quick math lesson - 95% of all numbers in a data set fall within 2 standard deviations from the mean.

Review scores are not generated by a Gaussian process.

 

[Bad_Boy]

Good luck keeping track of the thousands of game journos who fall in that group then

I'd rather get rid of the smelliest ones rather than to just ignore the stank all together. And I'm not sure about thousands. Really, there are only one or two off the top that really deserve such treatment.

 

[Tratorn]

Why doesn't metacritics (and gameraninks) update anymore? There are more reviews out already which should be in the list.

 

[crazygambit]

Being 2.35 standard deviations away from the mean does not mean there is less than a 5% chance of being "valid data". It means that it is 2.35 standard deviations away from the mean. If I scored an IQ of 137 that does not mean my IQ is an invalid piece of data even though it's more than 2 standard deviations above the mean. I'm also unclear on how you have made a connection between p thresholds / t-tests and bell curve distributions. It's not really abnormal to have a small number of datapoints more than 2 SD away from the mean, and in fact we should expect around 2.1% of all data points to be 2.5SD away from the mean or more, by definition. This is all of course based on the completely unjustified assumption that video game reviews follow perfect normal distributions, and are not actually just a scattershot of bullshit because it's 100% subjective. You certainly didn't plot your whopping 13 datapoints (lol) to show this. Trying to have reviews excised on the grounds of being statistical outliers is mind bogglingly silly. This isn't science, it's video game reviews. The idea that there is a "true" score that you can obtain by determining the means of all reviews is nonsensical.

I repeat what I said earlier in this thread: just ignore Gies. Don't get angry. Don't get upset. Stop thinking about him and his review. Stop writing angry tweets, stop trying to dredge up your misremembered stats 101 procedures, deal with the metascore being what it is, and don't waste one more brain cycle on scumbags and the shithouse websites they run.

It means it's very likely your true IQ isn't "average". Of course if I have to explain this to you then it probably isn't 137 either... Oh burn!!!

Spoiler

Sorry ; ) Please don't ban me

 

[Huggers]

Let's break down the Polygon score using scientific methods and how data is typically handled in scientific study.

Quick math lesson - 95% of all numbers in a data set fall within 2 standard deviations from the mean. Scores/Data that fall outside 2 standard deviations from the mean are typically deemed "outliers" because there is less than a 5% chance that it is a "true" data point. This is why in any scientific paper the "gold standard" for proving that something is likely to be true is to look for a p-value of less than 0.05 (i.e. you can say with 95%+ confidence that your conclusions are accurate based on the data).

Using the scores at the top of this page, including the Polygon score, gives us the following:

Total Scores: 13
Mean: 7.769
Std Deviation: 1.179

Gies score lies 2.35 standard deviations away from the mean, meaning that there is less than a 5% chance that his score is a "valid" piece of data.

If Metacritic was smart, it would use this method, throw out all scores more than 2 standard deviations from the mean (on both the high and low end) and use the mean of the remaining data that as the Metacritic score. If we do that here, it rejects Gies score of 5 and gives a mean of 8/10, which seems about right. I won't quibble if it's really a 7 or 9 out of 10, but certainly not a 5.

Lmao this is why I love Neogaf

 

[Nymphae]

I repeat what I said earlier in this thread: just ignore Gies. Don't get angry. Don't get upset. Stop thinking about him and his review. Stop writing angry tweets, stop trying to dredge up your misremembered stats 101 procedures, deal with the metascore being what it is, and don't waste one more brain cycle on scumbags and the shithouse websites they run.

Excellent advice. It's extremely hard to do considering how much of a douchebag the guy continues to be, but it's probably for the best.

 

[angrygnat]

I'm looking at these reviews and what I've read so far is the graphics are great. Really great. The gameplay is good in parts and confusing in others. The frame rates are great. The innovations to the genre are mixed. The multiplayer is serviceable. That's a vanilla description of what I've gathered. I know to ignore the PSnation reviews. They are always going to be sky high. What puzzles me is the super low reviews. If a game looks great, has some redeemable game play and the multiplayer is ok, how in the hell could it rate a 50? Busted buggy games that you can't enjoy get 50s. That stinks of someone who hated the game before they even played it. Not every game is for everyone, but these reviewers are supposed to be able to rate games without prejudice. Are they carrying the water for COD? BF? XB1? Who knows but a rating that low on a title like KZ is telling me someone's grinding an ax. Or maybe it sucks. I'm going to find out here in a few hours and if it's at all playable the 50 ratings will be officially busted

 

[BakedSardine]

Review scores are not generated by a Gaussian process.

No data is, necessarily, but we put them into a "best fit" Gausian distribution to be able to analyze the data with some degree of confidence.

 

[boredandlazy]

I repeat what I said earlier in this thread: just ignore Gies. Don't get angry. Don't get upset. Stop thinking about him and his review. Stop writing angry tweets, stop trying to dredge up your misremembered stats 101 procedures, deal with the metascore being what it is, and don't waste one more brain cycle on scumbags and the shithouse websites they run.

Very true. However I do feel we should have some sympathy for Arthur. Whilst we've all got the option to simply ignore him, Arthur Gies is stuck being himself for the rest of his life. With that knowledge it should be just that little bit easier to let it go and get on with our own lives.

 

[Conor 419]

Let's break down the Polygon score using scientific methods and how data is typically handled in scientific study.

Quick math lesson - 95% of all numbers in a data set fall within 2 standard deviations from the mean. Scores/Data that fall outside 2 standard deviations from the mean are typically deemed "outliers" because there is less than a 5% chance that it is a "true" data point. This is why in any scientific paper the "gold standard" for proving that something is likely to be true is to look for a p-value of less than 0.05 (i.e. you can say with 95%+ confidence that your conclusions are accurate based on the data).

Using the scores at the top of this page, including the Polygon score, gives us the following:

Total Scores: 13
Mean: 7.769
Std Deviation: 1.179

Gies score lies 2.35 standard deviations away from the mean, meaning that there is less than a 5% chance that his score is a "valid" piece of data.

If Metacritic was smart, it would use this method, throw out all scores more than 2 standard deviations from the mean (on both the high and low end) and use the mean of the remaining data that as the Metacritic score. If we do that here, it rejects Gies score of 5 and gives a mean of 8/10, which seems about right. I won't quibble if it's really a 7 or 9 out of 10, but certainly not a 5.

What the fuck is this?

 

[bob page]

Killzone: Shadow Fall rocks! I definitely recommend it after ACIV:Black Flag as a PS4 launch pick up. KZ review airs tomorrow! #plusgorgeous

https://twitter.com/Victor_Lucas/status/400998415934693376

 

[Demon Ice]

I'm amazed people are still talking about the Polygon review. It was written by Arthur Gies. This is a person who has not even attempted to hide their ties to Microsoft. He gave Halo 4 a 9.5 and that game is almost universally regarded as a failure.

It should be surprising to nobody that he was unreasonably harsh for a PS4 Sony 1st party game.

I only hope you guys haven't been giving his site clicks throughout this thread.

 

[flyinpiranha]

What the fuck is this?

Math, bitch. Get your 'learn on'.

 

[MaLDo]

What the fuck is this?

 

[Triggerhappytel]

I have a feeling that this is a game which will get really good user feedback once it's out in the wild, much like Killzone Mercenary did.

 

[poisonelf]

I'm amazed people are still talking about the Polygon review. It was written by Arthur Gies. This is a person who has not even attempted to hide their ties to Microsoft. He gave Halo 4 a 9.5 and that game is almost universally regarded as a failure.

It should be surprising to nobody that he was unreasonably harsh for a PS4 Sony 1st party game.

I only hope you guys haven't been giving his site clicks throughout this thread.

Yeah, I've been amazed with this as well. Not only talking about him, but his review managed to somehow set the tone about how this game is supposedly perceived by the press, when most reviews are at 7-9, and some (like Game Informer) seem to be loving it.

Not to mention that MP is the game's strong point and it's not even been properly reviewed yet.

I have no idea personally if it actually is a good game or not since I didn't play it, but a couple of hyperbolic-ally biased reviews, especially one by someone who twitted that he hates the series beforehand, and who spent 12 hours laughing at the PS4 with lines like "Sony doesn't produce new IPs" or "It's a machine that will only matter if you're a pixel counter" (paraphrasing, but it's all in the polygon feed thread), managed to create a huge impression. And more so in a forum in which the majority constantly laughs at gaming journalism, not to mention pinpointing and calling out obvious bias and bullshit in the press and their sometimes PR-like articles and opinions.

It's weird.

 

[jmood88]

I'm not talking about critical sites, or overly positive sites. I'm talking about reviewers who review games they were never going to like in the first place. Reviewers changing scores after the fact to save face. Reviewers who don't even play the game. Just plain out shit reviewers who shouldn't be reviewing games in the first place, as ThoseDeafMutes said.

I really don't understand the criticism for changing review scores. It's not like it was some secret thing that they did without telling anyone, it's part of their review system and it's not a bad thing to update scores once new things happen to a game.

 

[Maxrunner]

Looks great tech wise, but on the other hand it has a very uninteresting look for some reason....

 

[codhand]

I really don't understand the criticism for changing review scores. It's not like it was some secret thing that they did without telling anyone, it's part of their review system and it's not a bad thing to update scores once new things happen to a game.

here's why i think it's bad

i bought Sim City as a direct result of reading their glowing 9/10 review

when i downloaded it, it was a broken mess of frustrating BS.

then the game gets "updated" to a 3/10

forever fuck Polygon for this, until they pay me back for the cost of Sim City.

when i go to bed a game is a 9/10, when i wake up it's a 3/10 due to obvious things that anyone can see, in this case, id already invested hours trying to get in games, login etc.

their job is to help the consumer decide, and well,.. it feels like they bait and switched me, and im sure they feel EA / the game did the same to them, well,... then id argue Dont review an online game, until it's online, but hit panderers, gonna hit pander

 

[Trey]

I'm amazed people are still talking about the Polygon review. It was written by Arthur Gies. This is a person who has not even attempted to hide their ties to Microsoft. He gave Halo 4 a 9.5 and that game is almost universally regarded as a failure.

It should be surprising to nobody that he was unreasonably harsh for a PS4 Sony 1st party game.

I only hope you guys haven't been giving his site clicks throughout this thread.

It has a high 80s meta critic. The critics received Halo 4 well, not just Gies.

 

[stevil]

polygon dude is just not very smart and likes to be told what to do. That is what I took away from the review.

 

[Kade]

Let's break down the Polygon score using scientific methods and how data is typically handled in scientific study.

Quick math lesson - 95% of all numbers in a data set fall within 2 standard deviations from the mean. Scores/Data that fall outside 2 standard deviations from the mean are typically deemed "outliers" because there is less than a 5% chance that it is a "true" data point. This is why in any scientific paper the "gold standard" for proving that something is likely to be true is to look for a p-value of less than 0.05 (i.e. you can say with 95%+ confidence that your conclusions are accurate based on the data).

Using the scores at the top of this page, including the Polygon score, gives us the following:

Total Scores: 13
Mean: 7.769
Std Deviation: 1.179

Gies score lies 2.35 standard deviations away from the mean, meaning that there is less than a 5% chance that his score is a "valid" piece of data.

If Metacritic was smart, it would use this method, throw out all scores more than 2 standard deviations from the mean (on both the high and low end) and use the mean of the remaining data that as the Metacritic score. If we do that here, it rejects Gies score of 5 and gives a mean of 8/10, which seems about right. I won't quibble if it's really a 7 or 9 out of 10, but certainly not a 5.

This would be a great idea if reviews were objective. Too bad they aren't. If you want objectivity, read the Wikipedia entry or the promotional website of a game and base your purchase off that.

I'm amazed people are still talking about the Polygon review. It was written by Arthur Gies. This is a person who has not even attempted to hide their ties to Microsoft. He gave Halo 4 a 9.5 and that game is almost universally regarded as a failure.

What about the 13 publications on Metacritic that reviewed the game higher than Polygon/Gies or the handful of publications that gave it the same score? Are they in Microsoft's pockets too?

 

[codhand]

here's the chart they should've used

 

[NeoUltima]

I feel like this game has basically been reviewed as a single player game with a multiplayer mode. Rather than as a single and multiplayer game. I mostly blame Sony for that though.

 

[dragonbane]

Jesus. I hate Polygon, but this call for censorship is madness. It's a shit score, sometimes it hurts, sometimes it affects things, but ultimately it's better to just move on. Banning a site is not going to improve anything.

 

[BakedSardine]

Jesus. I hate Polygon, but this call for censorship is madness. It's a shit score, sometimes it hurts, sometimes it affects things, but ultimately it's better to just move on. Banning a site is not going to improve anything.

Who is calling for censorship? I think there is a valid argument to be made from a consumer research perspective to omitting "outlier" scores from something like Metacritic. The omitted reviews can certainly still be linked on Metacritic - I don't think anyone is sayin they should be scrubbed from the internet.