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Game review aggregators turn selected reviews into summary scores, but their labels do not all mean the same thing. Metacritic’s Metascore is a weighted average of professional reviews; its User Score is separate. OpenCritic displays several measures, including an average, a recommendation share and a percentile rank. None is an objective measure of how good a game is for every player.
How does Metacritic calculate a game’s Metascore?
Metacritic says it gathers reviews from selected critics and publications, converts their scores to a common 0–100 scale, and combines them using different weights for different sources. It describes the result as a weighted average. In its support article, “How do you compute METASCORES?” (updated October 19, 2023), Metacritic puts it simply: “To put it simply, a METASCORE is a weighted average of reviews from top critics and publications for a given movie, TV show, video game, or album.” Metacritic’s About Us page also describes its approach as curated, weighted aggregation.
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For games, Metacritic says the publications supply the scores; Metacritic does not assign them. Its public explanation does not reveal each publication’s weight or a complete formula that would let readers reproduce a game’s Metascore. The site discusses normalization in its explanation of movie and music averages, but its game-specific explanation does not establish that the same normalization step is applied to games. Metacritic’s explanation of weighted averages distinguishes those descriptions.
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Are user reviews included in Metacritic’s critic score?
No. Metacritic says visitor votes and comments do not contribute to the critic Metascore. Audience responses appear separately as the User Score, so the two figures summarize different groups’ opinions and should not be treated as interchangeable. Metacritic Support explains the separation.
What do OpenCritic’s score and ranking labels mean?
OpenCritic’s game pages show several distinct summary measures. Its Inside page displays an OpenCritic Rating, Top Critic Average, Critics Recommend, the number of critic reviews, and a percentile rank. These labels answer different questions: a score or average summarizes review ratings, a recommendation share indicates how many critics recommend the game, a review count gives the sample size, and a percentile places the game relative to other scored games on the site. OpenCritic’s Inside page provides an example of the displayed measures.
A percentile rank is a relative position in OpenCritic’s comparison set—not a percentage score for the game’s quality. The cited page does not provide enough methodological detail to independently reproduce the exact formulas for every OpenCritic label, so a precise calculation should not be inferred from the names alone.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How to compare aggregator scores responsibly
Before comparing two games or two sites, check what each number represents and what reviews feed it. A bigger review count can make a summary less sensitive to any one review, but it does not make the underlying judgments objective.
Quick Recap
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- Check the release and platform. Confirm that the page refers to the same platform or edition you are comparing; review sets can differ by release.
- Identify the metric. An average, recommendation share, audience score and percentile are not equivalent. Compare like with like.
- Check whose opinions count. Metacritic’s critic Metascore uses selected professional publications, while its User Score reflects visitors. Keep critic and audience measures separate.
- Look at the review count. A score based on a small sample may move more when another review is added. The count describes the sample; it does not certify quality.
- Consider how sources are handled. Metacritic publicly describes selection, common-scale conversion and unequal weighting, but not the exact weights. For OpenCritic, the cited public page shows multiple labels and the count, but does not establish all calculation details.
- Use rankings as context. A high percentile tells you where a game sits within a site’s scored-game distribution, not whether its genre, mechanics or price suit you.
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