I decided to take a look at X-Play Scores versus the MetaCritic Average. I took their list of Latest Games. Out of the 35 games listed, X-Play reviewed 9. The table lists the MetaCritic Score, the IGN score, the X-Play Score, the difference between X-Play and MetaCritic and whether or not X-Play gave the lowest score of all reviews.
|
|
MetaCritic |
IGN |
X-Play |
Xp/Meta |
Lowest |
|
Mushroom Men |
73 |
79 |
40 |
-33 |
yes |
|
Rygar:BA |
54 |
61 |
20 |
-34 |
yes |
|
Tenchu:SA |
74 |
80 |
40 |
-34 |
yes |
|
RRRabbids:TP |
73 |
70 |
80 |
+7 |
- |
|
Castlevania J |
47 |
75 |
20 |
-27 |
-1 |
|
Skate It |
71 |
85 |
80 |
+8 |
- |
|
Anim. Cross:CF |
73 |
75 |
80 |
+7 |
- |
|
TalesSymph:DNW |
69 |
67 |
40 |
-29 |
yes |
|
Average |
67 |
74 |
50 |
-17 |
|
The result wasn't quite what I expected which was a constant bias. Not true, but instead something I consider even worse. X-Play seems to treat Wii games in one of two ways. If they like it they give a very reasonable, even slightly generous score. If they don't like a game they stick it with an absurdly low score, about 30 points off average and with a single exception, the lowest score of all reviewers. In that single exception they were next to the lowest.
I think this is a deliberate effort to completely trash the MetaCritic average on any game they dislike. That really sucks. When I was a kid we called this torpedoing and even then we knew it was a lousy unfair thing to do.
THIS IS WORSE THAN BIAS BECAUSE YOU CAN'T FACTOR IN A CONSTANT ADJUSTMENT, YOU HAVE TO FIGURE OUT WHETHER THEY ARE ACTUALLY REVIEWING THE GAME OR JUST PLAIN F**KING IT OVER.
I wonder if they do this to PS360 games as well. I leave that for someone else.
UPDATE: OK, I couldn't stand so I took a quick look at PS3 and XBox 360 for signs of the same pattern. Looking at all low scoring games (yellow or red), X-Play reviews were consistent or slightly higher than MetaCritic. Apparently this SCREW JOB is reserved exclusively for the Wii. Way to go X-Play.
