OMG! NMH 9/10 Gamespot AAA confirmed

[Dodece]

Somewhere along the line AAA has received a new definition and I was not informed? I always thought the definition referred to three key factors hype, budget, and quality. I wouldn't consider No More Heroes a AAA game regardless of the scores. While it might be a fantastic game its hardly had the hype or the budget to fork over a AAA accolade.

A example I suppose would be Tetris a fantastic game by all rights, and one that if released today at a budget price of ten dollars would easily sell over ten million copies in its first year. The game would receive perfect reviews, and yet it could be done for under twenty thousand dollars, and would have had zero anticipation or hype before its release. Honestly would anyone say it was a AAA title. More likely we would refer to it as a sleeper hit.

Over time I have become increasingly less enamored with game ratings in general. To me the standards always seem to be lowering, and more to the point we usually have a ten point scale where half of the scale is almost never used which means we have a capped five point scale from most reviewers. Honestly I would rather the garbage games get relegated to the title of not recommended period, and receive a score of zero thus giving us a real ten point system.

Sometimes it seems any game of decent quality is assured a rating of 7.5 which would be the new average. Thus any game of decent quality or above must jockey for a position within 2.5 points thanks to the the perfect ten hard cap. The problem often being that a game that gets perfect tens only looks marginally better then a game with a nine. Even though the perfect game might be light years beyond it on all fronts.

Think about it this way if No More Heroes were to get a average rating of nine that means its very close to being as good as say a Mario Galaxy. Like a silver in a Olympic race that lost, because of half a step. I doubt this game is that close given the range in scoring so far. Though some reviewers have little standards, and the standard should be the absolute best game for the console, and how the new games stack up compared to that. Remember they are the ones working in a capped system if they need more room to keep scores high then maybe they should go to 11,12,13.

Anyway enough with that semantics. I honestly don't think the score this game receives will matter one way or the other. While its good that its not garbage, and that will help. I just don't think the market in general will respond positively to this title. I have my doubts about the hardcore, and core markets on the Wii, or owners looking for those kind of titles for that particular platform.

That said I wouldn't expect the kind of sales that a highly praised game on the other platforms might receive, and more importantly I think Smash Brothers is going to bleed off interest in this title. The result is that it will struggle to make back the developers investment. The ratings just don't seem to factor into the equation. Not to be all negativity this is a great chance for Nintendo.

This is their chance to prove to developers that great third party hardcore, or core games can be successful on their platform. Going on a year and a half there has been no proof to the effect that they can. That should be of interest to this community far more then the score itself. This game could prove the naysayers right or wrong. Finally a proof with no strings attached. The game isn't a port, isn't budget priced, and isn't from Nintendo. With a modest advertising budget only making the sales more noteworthy.

I will be watching the sales with great interest.