As a multiplayer game, yes, it has. As a singleplayer experience with a 'great story' that everyone claims it has that I've met, no, it hasn't lived up to that.

I've typically enjoyed some rougher games, now you have to balance out what you have the time to play, if you have extremely limited playtime it might make sense to stick with the best of the best. If you have a bit more an occasional, rough around the edges title like The First Templar is a pretty fun diversion. I would never claim The First Templar is as polished or great as some really good AAA titles, though I may or may not claim to have had more fun playing it (subjective).

Still, even as there's underrated games on Metacritic there's overrated games as well. I can't say Gears of War was that well done, well, maybe at the time, but if you try and play it today you'll likely be bored to tears (at least I was).

... which is, despite all it's flaws, still one of the better ways to handle it with their "bringing down to a common denominator" approach.
Staying with your example of Damnation, what would be a fair score? Individual ratings ranging from 10 to 60 (out of 100 possible) or the average of 41 out of 17 reviews?
If you add to the above PC rating those from the Xbox and PS3 which settled on an average 36 out of 35, respective 39 reviews - that "could" be considered common ground. It has about as much influence as game reviews in printed magazines back in the days. Some just settle for the score, some actually read the review and make their own decision.