no? :)

check gameplay videos or streams

Oh... I forgot to add that game site reviews are usually useless to me. I avoid them as much as possible.

Like some others posted, the 7-10 range is to a large extent subjective.

Anything below 7 should start to trigger red flags.

Overall, assuming you haven't found a single source with whom you tend to really agree, it's a more stable indicator of the average consensus as it's an aggregate result that takes several sources.

Another cool things it does is that it gives you an aggregate result for a whole bunch of critics and an aggregate result for a bunch of users which allows you to discover bias critics might have.

People like to bash on game critics, but most of the time, the aggregate critics score and the aggregate user score are pretty close which indicates that what critics say is a decent predictor of the average among non-critics.

I usually check the aggregate score on metacritics (both for critics and for users) before buying a game here, mostly to filter out those that are rated less than 7.

EDIT:

As I pondered about it, something else occured to me: Not all bias in a rating system is bad.

For example, a strategy games will be mostly reviewed by users who have at least a casual interest in strategy games.

Assuming you know yourself enough to know that you enjoy such games, you probably don't want low review scores from people who don't like strategy games polluting the average, because what you're really interested in is knowing what people who have at least some interest in strategy games are saying.

No

It's a useful tool to sort out the trash. If you stick to greens, you'll probably always get a good game. But there's no guarantee that you'll enjoy it. You'll need to read a few reviews or watch some gameplay videos, to find out whether it's your cup of tee or not. But you'll safe some time, because you are going to have to check a smaller amount of games to score a hit.

It's useful to guage the critical reception, it's most likely what game developers and film makers first look at (Not metacritic but things like Rolling Stone or The New York Times reviews, after sales of course. I tend to agree a lot of the time with reviewers in terms of general quality and overall production values so it works for me.

Isn't metacritic where the games are rated months before they are out too? I forget...

Then again game award shows are giving 'game of the year' and other awards to games that won't be released for at least a year...

I don't know... Worse is those who post reviews usually get attacked if they don't post at least a 9 on anything and don't bother reading the review of why they gave it that review. I'm reminded of Nick (Rev3Games) who talked about him reviewing Stick of truth for that...

Nah, Metacritic is site that keeps a sum of scores from the other sites. They don't rate themselves. The point of criticism is that the other sites' ratings are pretty much unreliable which makes the sum unreliable too. But it's much better orienteer than the individual scores.