| Grampy said: 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.
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. |
Both comparisons were what I was asking about. And that does seem like a suspicious pattern.
A flashy-first game is awesome when it comes out. A great-first game is awesome forever.
Plus, just for the hell of it: Kelly Brook at the 2008 BAFTAs
