The Best of 2009

[Hapimeses]

The said:

@Hapimeses Thanks for your answer. I'm glad you're open to civilized discussion. You certainly understand when it comes to add-ons/expansions, they're rated of course because it's obvious players of a certain game will be interested to know if such add-on is good or not, worth their money or not, just like any game. However, since these "extra chapters" can't stand on their own without the base of the original game, they can't be considered full games (not like they intend to, anyway).

Example: When Listing PC RPGs, you wouldn't count "Shivering Isles" or "Knights of the Nine" as two titles, when it's perfectly clear these are expansions for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

Add-ons are strictly marketed and directed towards a very specific group of customers: those who bought the original game. Developers don't pretend to catch new customers by exciting them about new add-ons of a game they don't own. I could go on even further. Since there are no demos for GTA4, I could mistakingly buy the Lost and the Damned thinking I might as well pay $20 and see if I like it before I pay full price for the original game. That would be useless, of course.

Nope, nothing to really argue against there; you're pretty much correct. There is much I could add, but not really anything I can counter with. That all said, I reckon The Lost the Damned will give quite a lot more gaming time than Flower, so does it deserve to be relegated because of this?

Regardless of whether it does or not, I'm sticking with the original remit of the thread: the best of the year according to Metacritic. The Lost and the Damned is included in this because, put simply, it has reviewed very well indeed, is generally regarded to be awesome, and is listed on Metacritic with at least 10 reviews.

As I said before: it's good enough for Metacritic, so it's good enough for the OP.

That said, I will mention this issue in the 'End of Year Roundup' post, as it deserves attention. After all, as you say, expansions are not (normally) full games, and need to be singled out.