It's not like you guys doesn't know, but I find it absurd that nobody at Metacritic cleans up this mess. I've been looking at the site for COD Ghosts user reviews, and some of the reviews are around 8-9/10, but most takes the 0/10 route. Wii U version is at 3.1 average, Xbox 360 at 2.1 and PS3 is at 1.8.  At this rate they should remove the user reviews.

Example:

Reviewers are getting PAID to give 80 and higher people! It's a disgrace to gaming and media as a whole. Ex-IGN employees actually admitted they get paid to give high marks! EA is also notorious to pay reviewers. Metacritic needs to get rid of these false reviewers. Welcome to 2013 where big companies pay reviewers so they make more money and we play uninspiring games. Meanwhile NSA is spying on their people, their allies and the rest of the world to steal information.
PS I've played some single player Ghosts and it's CoD4/6 but with dogs. A disgrace to gaming. How are they getting away with releasing the same game over and? Don't buy it.

The game was awarded a 0/10 score by this user.

just by looking at the ps4/ xb1 version you know matacritic user scores are meaningless.
people give only a 10 or a 0. ps exclusives get 0 from xbox fanboys and xbox exclusives get 0 from ps fanboys.
Look at games like diablo 3, simcity, company of heroes, Rome: Total war II. user scores are a joke

Agreed. I mean, quite a number of the reviews with a bad score seem to be rants about something and some of the extremely high scored reviews can consist of real fanboyism. At the same time there's good high and low scored reviews, but it doesn't help the messy concept that is Metacritic's User Score.

just wait for the "it's sub 1080p, how can anybody play this game on the shitbox" reviews

It depends, I think you cant rely on them now that a new generation of console war has started and for games with so much attention as COD, but Ive trusted some user scores on less known games and it has turned out good for me.

User scores gauge the general reaction of the public that visits the website to a certain game. Its not supposed to be an accurate review of the games. Actually, they shouldnt let them give a 0 to 10 grade as people will always give those values in an effort to have their opinion be heard. They should adopt the system of recommend, dont recommend and average.

To be honest, the same should be said about commercial reviews.

Metacritic scores in general are a joke.

I think the user ratings are probably a better indicator of game quality on many games than the actual MC score, like older titles and more obscure ones.... Similarly titles on a Nintendo system (ignoring early Wii titles as there was quite a bit of HD vs. Wii crap)

High profile games and ones that are major talking points are probably more of a joke than the MC score.... the 'reviewer' you picked out does have a point, but blanket 0 score reviews are not an answer.

Don't look at the exact userscore, look at the ratio of positive/negative reviews.

(Number of positive reviews)
---------------------------------
(Number of positive+negative reviews)

= Relevant score

tl;dr
Metacritic user scores = rottentomatoes

EDIT: Just done the math for COD: Ghosts, would still be 1.7/10....

Fanboys rule the internet, it's been like that for a long time. I remember the new DMC game had a horrid user score because they didn't like his hair... It's like that for a lot of other games as well. Again, nature of the beast.

Absolutely. Metacritic user reviews are a joke, if a game prior to launch had some controversy attached to it, it will get alot of bad user reviews, if a game is from series that is generally hated on the internet it will get tons of bad reviews, if a game is a big exclusvie to one platform it will get 0s from the fanboys of opposing platforms, while at the same time getting 10s from the fanboys of the platform. It's never about the game it's about the companies behind the games and how much you love them or hate them, or how much you think they fucked up.
The only case where I would consider saying that user reviews can be representative of the quality of a game is with small games without much hype surrounding them.

Also just for the fun of it, here's a user review, can you guess about which game it is?

I have 5 reasons I hate this game
1. Another zombie game in which zombies can hear the slightest sound miles away(exp. a gun bullet falling to the ground)
2. Awful story and bad voice acting
3. Some of the worst lines/quotes
4. Bad controls
5. The human AI's don't fear guns and for some reason have unlimited ammo but no once can you take their weapons

0/10