4/10 for Prey due to 'technical issues' that most people don't have is not a problem with IGNs review, but another indictment of scores as a metric of any value. That said, we live in a world where Metacritic exists and only takes the first score you give it. In that situation, with the amount of influence and weight IGN has, I'd have held off scoring the game until I knew more about how widespread this savegame bug is before putting a permanent blackmark on a games reputation. The bug and performance issues IGN had are not common or widespread. The port runs brilliantly for the majority of people and that bug does not occur. Other reviews on PC did not suffer it, Gen beat the whole game with 100% completion with none of these issues, plenty of other outlets have reported the same. The PC platform is a tricky thing to deal with because of how many different configurations and potential problems there are. Developers should be encouraged to release their games in the best state possible and the game should be judged on its current state not a potential future state, however damning a game for all time with such a low score due to a tech issue that most people didn't have doesn't sit well with me. It's what's made port reports and any performance related critique such a touchy subject and something I'm pretty much afraid of giving now. The solution, as always, is to do away with scores. They are a terrible metric and this incident just proves yet again that they are awful quantification of what is opinion mixed with technical fact, that in this case isn't even fact for the large majority of players. Scores need to die, outlets would do well to phase out this useless, damaging tradition and place the emphasis firmly on what the review actually says, not the imaginary babynumbers at the end.

The other alternative is for consumers to stop taking Metacritic ratings and scores in any way seriously. That'd work too, but if the internet freakout everytime an unusual score comes around is anything to go by, that will absolutely never happen. Better that outlets take responsibility, that's actually somewhat achievable, rather than try to change the nature of human behavior