There are 26 and 37 opinion samples for the PS3 and XBox respectively. Given the small sample size and the subjectiveness of the evaluation, I would imagine that the margin of error is much higher than 1 point.
Based on the reviews I saw yesterday only the Escapist was willing to even criticize the game and give it less than a 90% (they gave it 70%). Everyone else seems to have toed the line on this one.
(OT) Today I learned that I've been doing this wrong. I always assumed "Tow the line" as in help to keep things moving in the same direction or slavishly and mindlessly do as ordered (or something). I guess I never saw (or noticed) it written down before....thanks!
> Some of the most appreciated games of generations are deeply flawed. An example is Deus Ex, which is a very mediocre shooter
Deus Ex, deeply flawed? I think a lot of people would disagree with you. I suppose you could come to that view if you considered it to be a shooter, but it's really RPG first, FPS second. You can complete the entire game without firing once. I don't think Warren Spector set out to create a FPS, so I wouldn't judge the game on that basis.
If anything, I think Deus Ex has got more appreciated from a critical perspective as time has gone on.
Even as an RPG it was much worse than many competitors at that time. It is (basically) linear, your choices don't influence the ultimate ending (you get a final pick), which, at that time, some pure RPGs already provided.
But you basically reiterate my point: Deus Ex did enough great things to cover the bad things. So it's perfectly fine to give it > 90%, while you can still find strong critique in almost any part of it, without even nitpicking.
It just came out, so there is considerable room for this to go down. Not saying it will, but if there's anything I learned from following game reviews in the past, it's that they frequently change drastically after the first week.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-grand-theft...
According to them the versions are nearly identical, with a very tiny advantage to the PS3 version.
In this light, it's interesting that the PS3 version got 97% while the Xbox360 version got 98%:
http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-3/grand-theft-aut...
http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/grand-theft-auto-v