Did You Know Gaming (DYKG), a YouTube channel known for its deep dives into gaming trivia and history, has challenged the legitimacy of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time's long-standing perfect score on Metacritic. The 1998 Nintendo classic holds a near-perfect 99 aggregate score on the review aggregator, a position it has maintained for years. However, DYKG asserts that the calculation for this score is flawed, potentially invalidating its top spot and some associated Guinness World Records.
Metacritic, established in 2001, compiles scores from approved publications, averaging them into a single score out of 100. Ocarina of Time, released before Metacritic's inception, had 22 contemporary reviews aggregated for its score. DYKG's investigation, prompted by research for a retrospective, uncovered two primary issues with Metacritic's compilation of these scores.
Firstly, DYKG noted that Metacritic did not appear to pull scores from all its usual approved publications. While scores from outlets like EGM and Famitsu, which awarded Ocarina of Time perfect scores, were included, other publications such as Game Informer and Nintendo Power, the latter giving the game a 95, were seemingly omitted. This selective inclusion, DYKG suggests, could be interpreted as cherry-picking, although it's also possible Metacritic lacked access to these specific back issues over the past quarter-century.
The second point of contention for DYKG is the inclusion of less definitive scoring entries. This includes written reviews that praised the game as "perfect" without providing a numerical score, as well as retrospective pieces published well after the game's initial release that were treated as contemporary reviews.
Based on their own calculations and auditing of Metacritic's methodology, DYKG estimates that Ocarina of Time's score should be reduced from 99 to 98. This would be achieved by rounding down from an adjusted score of 97.6. Such a decrease, while seemingly minor, would demote Ocarina of Time from its singular top position, tying it with other highly acclaimed titles such as Grand Theft Auto IV, Super Mario Galaxy 2, and Soulcalibur. DYKG conducted a similar audit on Soulcalibur, another pre-Metacritic game, and found its score to be accurate despite facing comparable data compilation issues.
While Metacritic serves as a useful starting point for understanding critical consensus, DYKG suggests that its influence should not overshadow personal taste derived from critics and outlets that resonate with individual players. The channel implies that an aggregate score, particularly one derived from potentially incomplete or inconsistently applied data, is not an infallible measure of a game's true critical standing.