I disagree. A game might not be outstanding to everyone, but if it has a niche that it is outstanding to, then it can be so. I think Heavy Rain is outstanding, even if others feel otherwise about, and no one will ever convince me that it isn't. I can accept that it isn't for everyone, but for those who it does appeal to, it's in a league of its own.

And I'm not quite sure what you are trying to say with Wii Sports. Should it have been given a higher score out of popularity? Because that's what we call corrupting the system. I think Wii Sports sucks, and I don't have any expectations of it being up to a certain standard in HD games. It's just boring imo.

And for the record, MGS4 was my first MGS game, and I fucking loved it!

@ bugrimmar: A good reviewer will not allow expectations to guid him or her too much.

About your second point: One tries to look at the game as a regular player. It is however impossible to consider every type of gamer, because then every conclusion would be along the lines of "if you like this game, you'll like it. If you don't, you don't" and that's not exactly how it's supposed to be.

It's like movie reviews, but they don't seem to generate that amount of flak that game reviews get.

I think most of these problems with reviews can be resolved by the individual themselves if they actually read the review and don't just take the score at face value. Like you mention in the OP, Western reviewers appear to have criticised FFXIII for its linearity and this is reflected in the score. If however you read the reviews (in most cases anyway) it becomes clear that they rest of the game was very good (gameplay, story ect) and so if linearity doesn't matter to you then you should find the game even better than the reviewer did. If you simply use to reviews to help inform you about a game and then apply what is said to your own expectations and preferences there shouldn't be a problem.

I think that it's elitism only if you associate any intrinsic merit to being or not being in the restricted audience. Recognizing that a certain restricted audience will appreciate things that the widest one won't, would just be stating facts.

If a great book about genetics comes out and rocks the world of everyone who is interested and literate in that field of biology, then it's ok if it is reviewed as an outstanding achievement of writing by someone in that crowd. Your average reader won't appreciate it as much, but the review is only elitist if it states something like "and if you can't appreciate the details of the new metric for genetic drift, for example if you're an history teacher or a miner or a painter, then you're a caveman".

Universal appeal is a quality, but if you take it as the only metric then you flatten everything, losing any fold and crevice. The review for the minority crowd that wants to reach a hidden depth should be available as well.

The reviewers should just be more conscious of who they're going to speak to and state it clearly. Knowing your reviewer would go a long way, down to having a short bio for each of them ("John Doe has been reviewing games since 1995 and playing since 1985. He's mainly into JRPGs and SJRPGs. Favourite games include X and Y, but he loathed Z")

I read reviews to get an idea of what the game is. If I want a game,I'm going to get it regardless of what the review saids. I bought and loved Dante's Inferno and that was blated buy the critics. So it's all subjective. Reviews are not the be all end all of gaming.

hm, i agree. yeah.

hm.. but i also still stick to the idea that reviewers are stuck in a "high definition" mindset. everything has to be better looking, better sounding, sharper, etc. than before because they've come to expect games to go hand in hand with technology. also, i still have to stick with the idea about what  truly outstanding game is, but i gotta give you credit for making me see a modification in my theory.

sure, return of the king is a great movie. but it isn't one of the best movies ever made, because it's "incomplete" by itself. the lord of the rings trilogy, however, is outstanding.

so based on that reasoning, mgs4, by itself, is largely "incomplete". but the metal gear series is, as a whole, outstanding.

but lone games by themselves (one game alone) that accomplishes completeness without the need for sequels is what i can call an outstanding "game".

I think people need to realize that games can be fun and entertaining and still be horrible, at the same time games which are not fun or entertaining can be amazing.

I'll use the movie and book medium for examples.

Take Ninja Assassin, that was an extremely entertaining movie, however it was just downright horrible and utter trash. No matter how much I liked it, it doesn't mean that the movie was just horrible. Meanwhile, I can't stand Citizen Kane, but I can see why it is so amazing, I can see why it is praised so much, same applies to Casablanca.

Game of Thrones is a very entertaining series, but they are not good books. On the other hand you have Heart of Darkness which I couldn't stand, but dear god was it a brilliant book.

As such, just because people think Halo or Wii Sports or MGS4 is the best thing ever, does NOT make them good games by default. You might as well have said that Transformers or AVATAR are amazing movies or that R.A. Salvatore rights amazing books. The truth is that neither of those are good but they can still be entertaining. The same applies to video games. The medium will be consistently laughed at as a form of art while people keep saying "this is the most amazing thing ever!" In the end it's video games which will suffer.

The Video Game scene has already become like the movie scene. Full of easy cash-ins that have very little quality to them, but there are masses and masses of people who praise the games and they will keep being made. The difference right now is that bad movies, no matter how popular, are unarguably bad, meanwhile if I go and say MGS4 or Halo or Wii Sports are bad people won't shut up about how that's not true.

tl;dr version:
Video games are not a proper art form and won't become such until its consumers get out of the blind subjective veil over across their faces.

I don't really agree.

How would one think of gamers that are not themselves. You will always upset some people. Some people will always hate a game or love a game regardless of the score.

It's much better to be genuine and consistent with what you like. So when you give a game a high score, people who understand your preferences will know whether they will like that game as well.

It sounds like you should just look at metacritic instead of specific review sites.

Because its subjective and something approaching a universal metric for quality in video games hasn't been determined.

I think you're right there but I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing. Games should be partly judged based on the technology of the day especially as graphics and sound enhance the immersion and experience of a game. If the technology is there I expect developers to put in at least some effort to utilise it. I'm not suggesting that these are the most important factors as obviously gameplay is crucial but again this comes back to reading the content of the review. If graphics/sound are not important to you then as long as the rest of the review fits your idea of a good game then a score lowered by poor graphics shouldn't bother you.