First off, don't ever try to use the user score from Metacritic to make a point. We all know that is nothing raging internet idiots releasing their pent up anger. Most of the people raging about how bad Call of Duty is have never played a truly bad game in their life. Go play Ride to Hell: Retribution and then tell me how Call of Duty is such a terrible game. Now that that's out of the way... I haven't purchased a Call of Duty game since the original Black Ops. That being said- from what I can tell there are two camps people typically fall under when discussing CoD: 1) The game at its core still has the same solid, tight, fast gameplay that fans have enjoyed since Call of Duty 4 six years ago. True, it doesn't have the most stunning graphics and they don't always take a lot of risks from iteration to iteration, but that core experience is still very well done and makes it a quality title. These are generally the type of people who find games fun even if they don't turn a genre on its head. 2) The core gameplay is still solid, yes, but it is gameplay that has only been slightly refined over multiple games. The very core of the game- the tight controls, the fast action, the solid shooting mechanics- has been around for 6 years now and should be seen not necessarily as a boon to the game, but as the bare minimum standard. With that in mind, it takes more to make the title compelling than just a few tweaks on an existing though admittedly solid formula. These people typically look for newer, never-before-seen experiences and accept nothing less. Neither way of thinking is wrong. I find myself to fall in the middle. If I got the chance to play Ghosts somewhere and still find it as fun as I found Modern Warfare 1 or 2, I would seriously consider buying it. Until then I'm indifferent towards it because I know Infinity Ward hasn't taken many risks or done all that much to improve the series- at least, not as much as Treyarch has. Now as for those scores... I'm not at all surprised. Some people want more innovation out of a new title. Others are okay as long as it's still fun. Clearly the Destructoid reviewer felt the former of Ghosts while IGN's reviewer felt teh latter. Surprise! People have different opinions. Also, the Metacritic page has 23 of 39 reviews in the range of 8, and the next most populous score are in the 7 range. I don't know how those are "bad" scores.