Top Critic Average

The Top Critic Average is OpenCritic's headline score for a game: a simple, unweighted average of numeric reviews from publications it designates as top critics, converted to a 0 to 100 scale.

OpenCritic takes every numeric review of a game written by a top critic, converts each score to a 0 to 100 scale, and averages them without weighting. Reviews without a number are left out. A game needs at least 3 numeric reviews from top critics before a Top Critic Average appears.

The average also drives OpenCritic’s four labels, which are set by percentile among all games: Mighty for the 90th percentile and above, Strong for the 60th to 90th, Fair for the 30th to 60th and Weak for the bottom 30 percent. OpenCritic says the cutoffs currently fall at 84 and above, 75 to 83, 66 to 74, and 65 and below.

Beside it OpenCritic shows Critics Recommend, the percentage of reviews with a positive verdict, which can include reviews that have no score.

The Top Critic Average and the Metascore for the same game can differ, because the two sites use different lists of critics and Metacritic weights its average. Our guide to how Metacritic and OpenCritic scores work compares them in detail.

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