I think they are virtually useless. For the following reasons:

1. You cannot see the actual average rating when sorting by ratings in the catalogue.

2. You cannot sort reviews by rating.

http://xkcd.com/937/

Seeing low rated reviews is often more helpful than seeing high rated, as these reviews will detail the problems that 5 star reviews won't.

Yes and no... some of the low ratings here are just plain stupid and have often nothing to do with the game itself.

Still sorting them would be a nice thing... I normally prefer to read longer balanced reviews myself.

I know how you feel, it definitely needs work. But I'm still glad we have them. It's at least better than Steam's case which we have just the glowing reviews, often from extremely obscure sources, those certainly don't tell me anything. GOG's reviews kept me from buying Runaways 2 the other day and told me the third is the best place to start. So sometimes they're useful.

Some of the high ratings are also stupid. It's not really a reason to leave it out.

Steam links you to Metacritic, which I find way more useful than anything GOG does.

For many games on GOG a metascore would probably be rather useless. A game that was great 15 years ago might have aged horribly, while another one feels just as fun today as it did back then.

I know, but I'm big on Indie games or older games for their good value and it feels like those never have a metacritic link.

Metacritic is a joke. It's nothing but paid scores. It's not a review aggregator it's a marketing site.

I fucking hate negative user reviews of metacritic on really good games. read these guys on Metroid Prime:

"There is no freedom."

"No I cannot say good-bye Halo you stupid moron, where is the multiplayer Biznotch. Wheres the game of the year award. The game is incredible but nothing compared to the classics like Grand Theft Auto 3, Vice City, or Halo. But really the only problem with this game is that the controls are wierd, but since the Gamecube controller is not designed for FPS I congratulate nintedo on the effort. Great Game, the zero is just to get the attention of the itiot who said it was better than Halo. "

"I don't see what all the fuss is about. Crappy controls, less than par graphics, no multiplayer, and a boring story. Anyone who says it wasn't 'made for multiplayer' is just making up an excuse as to why it doesn't have it."

"I didn't like the scanning in Prime, even though you didn't have to do it, I don't like the idea that in order to get 100% you have to scan every stupid thing in the game. The enemy AI was extremely **** They missed like crazy, and generally as long as you continued moving they won't hit you. And if they DO manage to hit you, oh well, they still have to hit you about 400 more times to kill you. The game was just way too easy. The controls were absurd compared to other FPS games of the time. The exploration wasn't real. They would set up a few little platforms and maybe a grappling point, and all you need to do is traverse the room. Terms like "exploration" and "puzzles" imply that you need to look around and figure out what to do for yourself. Instantly seeing what you need to do and simply carrying it out is not exploration. The game made me feel like a rat in a maze, rather than a person exploring an unknown land. I also hated the way they started you out with all this great equipment and then they take it away from you. It gives the player nothing to look forward to. You've already experienced items like the charge beam and morph ball, so obtaining them once again isn't really satisfying. It feels more like a job"


Hey this game is not Morrowind dude, what fucking kind of freedom and exploration do you want?

Dude, he asks for multiplayer in a Metroid game and seems to be a Halo fanboy. What do you expect?

Well he got his wish in Metroid Prime 2 it has Multiplayer and it sucked.

Luckily it did not take away from the single player.