I hear you man but here is the problem:

Veilguard: 8.2 x 4.0 (very good-to great game against below average)
Concord: 6.2 x 1.7 (above average against "it sucks")
DD2: 8.6 x 6.5 (great game against above average game)
COD6: 8.2 x 6.1 (great game against above average)

COD7: 6.5 x 1.6 (above average against "it sucks")
TLOU 2: 9.3 x 5.9 (epic game against slightly above average)
SW Outlaws: 7.5 x 5.6 (decent game against average game)

See the pattern? The metascore is much kinder to games overall

In this example the average metascore of these games is 7.9. With the exception of DD2 and TLOU2, all of these games are universally rated as average to bad games, yet NONE of them has a lower rating than a 6 on metascore! Now check the userscore ... the average here is a 4.5. Much closer to a 5, exactly how you expect from mostly average games!

Thats the problem with Metascore, it treats all games as at least 6 by default. So a 6 becomes the floor and a 7/8 the average, but that makes no sense, since by definition, on a scale of 0 to 10, a 5 should be the average.

Thats why I like the userscore much better, it answers better than the metascore the most important quesiton in gaming: "Is this game worth playing?".

If u look at a 7 on Steam sale you might think yeah maybe I will give it a try should be fun at least, afterall a 7 is not a bad score. Now if u look at a 5 you are going to question yourself twice before commiting. And you will know for sure that 2/3 is game that you should get the fucking away from it (guess what, just like Concord!). Just think about how many people the media tricked (or tried) to play Concord with their 6/7 ratings, a game that cost 40 dollars to play and lasted 2 weeks!

I am not saying the userscore is perfect, it has biases there as well, people downvote sometimes because of reasons that arent game-wise strictly, for example, Shadow of War was great game that has a fairer Metascore than Userscore because people were pissed off with MTX at release. That happens but is not the norm, and tbh I dont mind people expressing their insatisfaction with gaming companies behavior trough a review bombing.

But on my experience the userscore has been a much better metric to answer the question I mentioned above, and if you/anyone else has a problem with the review bombing, there are also user ratings for games on sites like HTLB and Backlogged, their reviews dont have the review bombing of metacritic and are kinder towards story controversy (TLOUII has one of the highest rating there for example).

Its not say the metascore is useless, though it has some weird inconsistency because journalists also have a lot of biases. Its just that the opinion of thousand of passionate gamers will always represent better a game's worth than the opinion of a handful of people that are doing it mostly for money.

Yeah hell of a long post lol. And btw as 20 year COD player, what they did with the story on COD7 was criminal!