It seems these days that we can't agree on how to rate games, or what certain games' ratings mean.

Fifteen years ago, a 7 or above was considered a pretty decent game. Even legendary games such as Deus Ex or Diablo II didn't break the 9.0 barrier on this very site, and yet we all know how awesome they were/are.

Yet nowadays, you can't hardly be considered for purchase by a large % of gamers if you can't score at least an 8.5 or a 9.0.

I myself find a great sense of disparity between ratings and my personal feelings, such as Fallout 3 recieving as high as a 100/100 on some sites, compared to a much lower average of 8.0-9.0 for Fallout: New Vegas, which I earnestly felt was a far superior game.

I won't go too far into the "buy your ratings" trend that seems to go on, but I will say that for a high budget game from a big studio to recieve a bad ratings takes a truly terrible game, and that I'm not even sure a truly great game from an unknown company would dare be allowed to score in the upper echelon, no matter how well it was made.