One of the best things about the American mentality is the habit of using statistics in everything. In Italy and in the Mediterranean in general, it almost always ends up arguing for impressions, in every area. And the more a sector is related to art and entertainment over the opinions seem based solely on personal considerations. Which is fine, for heaven’s sake, because no one knows better than we do our tastes.
It should be less well. When trying to figure out if it’s worth spending the money to buy a new game, a famous book or go see a movie at the cinema.
Here, in this case we try, almost always on Internet reviews, opinions and rankings. But what are the best sites to find rankings of games, movies and books? Here, for each sector there are sites and circuits more or less authoritative, but broadly there are a couple of sites that you can trust. Do not blindly, though, because the rankings by each may be materially different. The best rankings of games for the Xbox 360.
The three best sites, those with the best rankings of games for the Xbox 360 have very different rankings, at least in the top 5 positions. In theory there should be between 5 and 7 different games in the three charts are 13 :
- The Walking Dead
- Person 4
- Ultra Street Fighter IV
- Dark Soul II: Crown of the Old Iron King
- Dark Soul II: Crown of the Sunken King
- Batman: Arkham Asylum
- Bayonetta
- Bioshock
- Blood of the Werefolf
- Braid
- Mass Effect 2
- Portal
- The Elder Scroll V: Skyrim.
It happens to the best rankings of games for the Xbox 360, but it also happens for all other topics: the rankings of the best films and the books, not to mention the music.
Well, it all depends on the method used to compile the various classifications. Metacritic uses an ingenious and complicated: it combines the feedback of critics, the players, the public and the press. But not in a mechanical way but giving a different weight to the vote of the other reviewers, and the different times of award of the vote itself. Probably the Metacritic rankings are the most objective possible, at least in the field of gaming and film.
Their strength is also their own weakness: eliminating the votes too far away from the media tend to give an evaluation of the games that is very similar to a commercial rather than artistic evaluation. But it is also true that if a game is not commercial but nonetheless, collects very high ratings among critics is likely to climb the rankings.
The attempt to Metacritic to assign an objective value to the various games is not the only way of understanding the issue. In the ranking of the best games for Xbox 360, Game Spot is taken into account two values similar to those considered by Metacritic, similar but not identical.
Instead of considering all the reviews presented on the main sites Game Spot relies on our critics to give a judgment is tied to the value of the game itself that the gameplay and the degrees of connected entertainment. All this not alone, because in addition to the score of Game Spot is also scored on the assessments of the players. What then are nothing more than commentators of the site.
The problem is related to the amount of comments and votes given by visitors to the site. We often hear of tens of thousands of votes, but there are also cases of a medium made of a few hundreds of opinions expressed. That is a risk, though typically Game Spot media the rankings to avoid bias due to too few votes cast.
Games Radar solves that problem at the root by avoiding taking into consideration – at least not explicitly – the judgment of the players. The choice is not a priori be criticized because of the good reviewers may still be able to ensure the opinions and advice. Much is related to the skill of the authors of the charts: on Games Radar work well so you can view their charts as reference points.