What's With Wii's Low Review Scores?

[Bodhesatva]

Edouble24 said:

Bodhesatva said:

Edouble24 said:
I don't think Wii has many games worthy of good scores, and apparently a lot of reviewers agree. The console just isn't made for the type of games many people like, namely more hardcore gamers, who are the people reviewing games.

This statement is pretty much the entire argument the original post made. Reviews aren't just for hardcore gamers, unless games criticism is intending to be a niche. It is quite apparent that a huge mass of people don't agree with what you happen to like, and are buying the Mario Parties and Wii Sports and Wii Fits and not 360 or PS3 games. These people are clearly the fastest growing demographic in gaming, and their wants and desires are effectively being ignored by games criticism.

A review of Rambo by people who love violent, testosterone driven movies: A+++! Brokeback Mountain: F-----!

The same can be said about any medium. Look at hollywood, where movies like Date Movie and other ridiculous nonsese make millions and millions of dollars yet are complete crap according to reviewers(as well as myself).

Casuals don't pay much attention to reviews, they don't really matter much at all in the movie industry and that's what's going to happen in the game industry. I honestly think that's a great direction for things to go in.

 

It's quite apparent that you don't know very much about critical theory. Every major film reviewer I know of (Denby, Kael, Ebert, even Travers) applies it to their reviews, which is exactly what game reviewers are not doing (according to this article, and according to me). They are simply giving their own opinion about what they like based on their own tastes, which isn't how professional criticism works.

In other words, film criticism is exactly the opposite of the games industry in terms of applied critique. It is, in fact, one of the best examples of why games criticism is broken. The fact that you used it as an example to support your position is, again, emphatic evidence that you haven't done much reading on critical theories.

There's a reason why film criticism is generally taken seriously and gaming criticism isn't, why video game "journalists" constantly complain about lack of respect from the critics in other mediums, and it isn't that the big, bad, conceited establishment hates those gosh darn video games.