Are Game Reviewers unable to Review Wii Games?

[Bodhesatva]

This is an honest question, and I don't think it's a ridiculous one. I'm going to make the case that the traditional reviewers are simply not set up to review a good deal of the most popular DS/Wii games, and if anyone disagrees, please feel free to explain why.

I've felt that many Wii games have gotten lower scores than I would give them, particularly games like Wii Sports and Wii Play (I wouldn't be surprised if Wii Sports ends up being considered the most important game of this generation). Games that are light, easy, and completely devoid of graphical intensity seem to be getting much lower scores than I believe is merited.

Simply put: video game reviewers are by and large hardcore gamers; thus, games that specifically target casual gamers simply may not appeal to their palette. This isn't just guess work on my part either -- by simply browsing metacritic, you can see criticisms of Wii Sports such as "For the hardcore there’s not much here that you’ll be playing for more than an hour," and " Its appeal and flaws lay with its simplicity." Moreover, one can see how user reviews are almost uniformly higher for Wii games than the critics give: Wii Sports, for example, has a 9.1 user rating compared to a 7.6 critical rating. The user rating for Wii Sports is actually a higher rating than that for any PS3 game currently available.

The second major issue are the controls. As is true in any artistic/entertainment venue, any profound change in design is usually met with scorn from the traditional critics -- and in the cases where the changes aren't scorned, they are at the very least discomforting. Many of these game reviewers have had a game pad in their hands since they were 5; it's much more difficult to immediately accept a sweeping revision of the traditional game pad if you've known and loved it for decades than if you've never played games before now.

I think the best description of the conflict the Wii causes for critics was given by Dan Hsu, executive editor of EGM, in his review of Wii Play: "Play is for people who don't really play games, and as someone who really does, that's a problem."