The Best Website for Entertainment Reviews

With the current economy, most of us have less money to spend on entertainment. However, most of us still need to find something new occasionally, whether that means renting a movie, buying a couple of used CDs, or picking up a book. The best way to put your hard-earned money to work is to spend a little time beforehand and figure out what you're going to enjoy the most.

This is when many people turn to a print or online review. It's true that reading a review can be helpful, but it's problematic in that it's just one person's opinion. Yes, it may be a more "professional opinion" because the person reviews things on a regular basis and has a lot of experience, but the fact is that everyone has his or her personal biases; if you're looking for a rock CD to check out but the review you read is written by a man who can't stand rock, you're probably not going to get a fair sense of what that CD really sounds like.

You can overcome this obstacle by searching for different reviews of something at different websites, but that can take up time. Even worse, when you're searching for reviews on the internet you run the risk of finding a whole bunch of amateur reviews by people who either love something and exclaim "omg this is the best movie ever!!!" or people who can't stand it at all and rant "this album is super dumb and would only appeal to losers!!!" Either way, you're not exactly getting a thoughtful, analytic review of an artistic work.

The answer to this problem? www.metacritic.com.

Metacritic takes multiple reviews and puts them together, giving you a much more objective look at entertainment. Because they give you the combined average of many different reviews, you end up with a much less biased view of a work of art than you would with just 1 or 2 reviews. The reviews used are all from reputable media sources, so you don't have to waste time wading through the glowing praise and scathing rants of rabid fans on the internet. Whether you're looking for a CD, film, DVD, TV show, video game, or book, Metacritic has you covered.

They take multiple reviews (at least three, but there are almost always more, usually more than 10) and use them to determine a numerical score, called a Metascore, from 0 to 100. While most items reviewed on the site have a few very positive and a few very negative reviews (it's not at all uncommon for a single thing to have both a 0 review and a 100 review), the combination of all of them allows for a wide variety of scores and is generally effective in giving you an idea of the quality of whatever item you're looking at.

The simplicity of this Metascore system is very easy and quick to use, and Metacritic also posts quotes and individual numbers from each separate review (for example, they may list The New York Times as giving a CD a 90, while The Onion may have given the same CD a 73). There are links to the full reviews as well, so if you want to read an individual review in its entirety, you're free to do so.

The one downside of Metacritic is that it won't be able to help you when it comes to more independent fare, for obvious reasons. If a piece of entertainment isn't widely known enough to have at least a few professional reviews written about it, Metacritic won't have enough reviews to generate its Metascore.

When you're trying to decide what to spend your precious few dollars on for your next entertainment fix, whether it's a video game, DVD, book, or CD, let Metacritic take the guesswork out of things. You'll be glad you did.