Ghostbreed: Should I use Metacritic as an un-biased guide to future purchases of video games and movies?
The idea of Metascores being based on unbiased reviews is very VERY wrong, particularly in case of video games. Still, I think Metascores can be a good indication of a game's overall quality. I tend to enjoy niche games and that automatically means that many of my favourites score something in the 70-80 range while many 80+ or even 90+ games aren't interesting to me at all. However, admittedly few games I really enjoy have a score lower than 70. In my experience a Metascore beneath 70 is usually a valid indication that something's seriously wrong with a game and one should be skeptical and do some extra research before getting it, more so in case of games that only got into the 50 range or lower. So yeah, I do recommend checking a game's Metascore before buying it.
It's very different with movies, though. Many movies I adore score ~30 while many 90+ movies I've seen are utter garbage in my opinion so Metacritic is perfectly useless to me when it comes to those.