Metacritic, an aggregation tool used in equal part by forum trolls and multi-billion-dollar publishers, has long dominated the review world. Now there’s a new site that hopes to take its place.
Meet OpenCritic, a sleek new website that hopes to replace Metacritic as the world’s most trusted game review roundup. Unlike Metacritic, OpenCritic is designed to be personalized—you can select from a dropdown menu on the top right to filter out websites you don’t trust or want to see. It’s a nice-looking website, too.
Sadly, OpenCritic insists upon using review scores—you know, those arbitrary numbers that offer zero value to readers, kill thoughtful discussion, and encourage the quantitative comparison of games that can’t be compared?—so it’s hard to get too excited, even if they do include websites that don’t use scores, like the one you’re reading. (For Kotaku, they put our YES/NO/NOT YET, which is appreciated.)
But if you’re looking for a review aggregator and you don’t like the ways Metacritic affects the game industry, here’s a new option.
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You can reach the author of this post at jason@kotaku.com or on Twitter at @jasonschreier.