I miss the times where dev's didn't have to put tutorials into games. You learned everything you needed the first level by simply playing. Made it a little bit more immersive.

I thought you wrote it xD! Nonetheless it was a good article and it's kinda true.

Wonderful 101, a killer app? I think Its a Platinum Games problem. None of their games outside of Bayonetta have been a major hit with reviewers. They were hung up on technical problems that bogged down the fun of the game.

I'm not sure I agree with your Demon's Souls/Dark Souls point, as I think those games blend several genres and contrasting elements. The Souls games have RPG elements like stat-building , equipment/weapon upgrades, action elements in the form of its combat, survival horror elements in world/atmosphere design (I thought the Tower of Latria in Demon's Souls was freaky as hell).

Additionally, the Souls games combine several multiplayer aspects such as cooperation, PvP, messages, and player bloodstains, while managing to still be very much single-player titles. They also have level design that hearkens back to old school titles like Castlevania or Metroid.  Finally, they're some of the few modern games that aim to not hold the player's hand in terms of difficulty, which is certainly refreshing in much of today's gaming of tutorials, adjustable difficulty settings, and covenient check-points (and yet, the combat is still easy and intuitive to learn).  There's a ton of creativity in those titles.

With that said, I agree that Wonderful 101 also has a nice blend of game elements, and at least from what I've seen so far, deserves praise.

A killer app, by definition is, in this context, a game that both sells well and that substantially increases the sales of the platform(s) on which it is played. Thus W101, while it may be a fantastic game in the eyes of some people, can in no way be considered a killer app.

Wii U doesn't have a killer app, and that's why it's selling so poorly.

That said, it's possibly true that certain types of games will never land well with reviewers because they don't "get" the game. Same as movie reviewers, certain types of movie will never get great reviews because not enough reviewers like that sort of movie. However it doesn't stop those movies from doing very well at the box office, because the movie is loved by the genre fans.

True, and good point on films. Transformers 4 is almost guaranteed to be panned by 80% of critics and make millions at the box office.

I wonder, what was the last game to sell really well (say, 1mil+) and be universally (say, 49% or lower) derided? 

Platinum games never get good reviews. I will just look at reviews from writers I trust and not bother with the rest of them.
Some reviewers have hated it for being a Wii U game and nothing more.
Others hated the camera angle and amount of action on screen, yet don't hate Diablo for the same camera angle.
I read one the other day that only had 1 complaint in the entire review and the reviewer still rated it like a 40 out 100.

Book and movies both are rated differently from Video games. I never read a bad review for a book simply because it was on a reading level higher than the reviewer had. I never saw a review of Harry Potter that said they'd rate it higher if Ron wasn't a ginger, yet video games will get hits for being beyond the skill of the reviewer or because they thought one of their own ideas would make the game better.

I have not played Wonderful 101. So I'm not equipped to say whether or not the game is good.

However, regarding your assessment of its problem vis-a-vis the gaming press...without answering your long-form explanation with another long-form explanation, you're asking reviewers to do something that is not their job. Their job is to assess a game for the quality of its experience for the consumer, not to compensate for the shortcomings of the game's creators by "helping others find that fun."

To be brutally honest, a game that requires a separate tutorial is one that has failed to properly communicate its mechanics, and that should absolutely affect its score.

Has the game met your expectations in the fun department?

I like how all the reviewed bashed on it for not understanding it's controls and then complains about tutorials in Mario and Zelda games a month later,