20 million sellers for the wii!

[Gnizmo]

Critical review of games is in its infancy at best and has not been accepted as the best way to judge a games quality for decades. With most mediums there is an easy and definable set of standards you can apply to any given work that exists in the field. This does not apply to video games however. Multi-player cannot, and should not exist in every game. Epic single player stories are the same. Online play is another spot where some games would benefit from it massively, and others it would be meaningless. Highly detailed graphics is not necessary for a game to be great either so long as the art style is strong enough to pull it through. If any of those areas are found lacking however critics will lower the review score.

The video game medium does not lend itself well to critical review over all, and the entire industry around it is still in its infancy. Metroid Prime 3 has gotten a lot of flack for not having a multi-player mode, but Twilight Princess lacks it as well and no one complained. Online multiplayer only games like Warhawk get judged solely by what it is like to play online, but games like Wii Sports get knocked down because it is not so fun single player. Woe be to the game that supports multiplayer but does not attempt online regardless of whether or not it would actually be any fun.

Even if we were to assume for whatever reasons the above are all incorrect or terrible examples we still have one gigantic flaw in this arguement. People will not continue to buy crap. It just doesn't work that way. You can say it is devoid of all these great and amazing qualities but that is irrelevant. At the end of the day the consumer decides what is or is not good. There is nothing more important than profit for any buisness. Thats just the way the cookie crumbles on this one. If a game is selling extremely well then it is good, regardless of anyones opinion. That includes yours, mine, and every reviewer that exists. The sooner you accept that, the sooner your arguements can make some kind of sense.