http://www.thejimquisition.com/nier-automata-review/

http://www.thejimquisition.com/nioh-review/

http://www.thejimquisition.com/persona-5-review/

Well, go figure indeed - because Amiibo Festival is from that strange period of budget titles during the middling life Wii U that Nintendo released packaged garbage with pricetags;  Paper Mario: Color Splash, Mario Tennis: you know the one, Metroid Federation Force and the aformentioned NotAnimal Crossing.  Those games were all bad and really you'd be shooting your own foot trying to defend them.

However, show me low scores of a game like Mario Kart 7 and 8 and we're cooking.  But, you're not going find much.  Despite Mario Kart basically stagnating since the Wii interation, with a few bells and wissles added here and there, it gotten glowing reviews since 7.  No one dared challenge that the series is no better than CoD or Assassin's Creed in it's yawnful repetition.  But, I digress.

Show me some reviews roasting a high profile Nintendo game, and we'll talk. 

Curious what you would consider high profile.  Is Star Fox Zero good enough?  How about Metroid: Other M?  New Super Mario Bros. 2?  Tomodachi Life sold over five million, is that high profile?  All of these titles got some bad reviews mixed in with good.  People aren't afraid to give Nintendo bad scores, they just like some of Nintendo's high profile franchises, just like any high profile franchise has fans.  Mario Kart 7 has an 85 on Metacritic, only a little higher than Call of Duty games like Black Ops III (81) and the supposedly maligned Infinite Warfare (78).  For further comparison, Mario Kart Wii was an 82.

You're attributing a bias toward Nintendo by essentially saying "As long as you discount the games that get bad reviews, Nintendo only gets good reviews!"

Look at it like this: whatever direction a reviewer would get more heat from, expect scores in the opposite direction.

It is not benificial for reviewers to highly rate highly subjectively bad games like Other M and Amiibo Fesitval.  It's in the reviewers best interest to ride the tide - rate it where it belongs, because to be adverse will cause backlash.  On the flipside, high profile games - that's, games that don't have budgets the size of a toilet paper roll being relased on very dead consoles - are highly over blown as "system seller" material.  Nothing could make the Wii U move, yet every game over 80 meta is dotted as a system seller.

74

That's not a Nintendo-specific problem that you're describing, though.  Not saying I fully disagree, just that any game with hype could get a backlash from a poor review.  Since we're talking about ARMS, I don't see any reason a reviewer would believe they'd get heat for rating it below a 90(the claim of which is what kickstarted this whole side discussion a few pages back, I don't remember what you actually predicted the score would be, if you made a prediction).  Splatoon got an 81, turned out to be insanely popular among Nintendo fans, but nobody got heat for it that I recall.  The other games I mentioned had scores below 80 and budgets of general Nintendo high-profile size(even Tomodachi Life, probably, had a budget similar to most 3DS games).

Some reviewers did give Other M good scores, though.  Some gave it bad(mostly middling, which in that generation was the same as bad).  If anything people often claim that giving bad reviews to good games is effective clickbait.  And how do they know what is "highly subjectively bad" unless they're formulating their own opinions?  Since Jim Sterling was brought up, I'll point out that he gave Mario Kart 7 a bad review, but Mario Kart 8 Deluxe a great one.  Are you accusing him of fearing Nintendo fan backlash?  Because I don't see that, at all.  I think he just happened to love one game and not the other.  Not every reviewer is that consistent but once again, I'm not seeing any proof that this is a Nintendo-centric problem rather than some reviewers being crappier than others.

Whether people mistake a good Metacritic score for a system seller seems beside the point unless I missed something, I'll admit I kind of jumped in when you were conversing with other people so maybe I did.

83

Pretty sure I haven't seen a single 79 prediction, so why not, I'll go with that. 79 for me.

Quite a lot of lower scores than I expected, even from Nintendo fans. Does it have to do disproving users that Nintendo fans praise anything made by Nintendo?

I'm going optimistic and saying 88.

Most will probably think I'm crazy, but I think this is going to be a home run for Nintendo and I'm gonna go with a 90 meta. My main reasoning being that Arms actually breathes new life into the fighting genre, which is something that hasn't happened since I don't even know when. Even the Smash Bros games, good as they are, haven't been able to do that. I think it's been far too long since a fun new fighter with some innovation has hit, and I think critics will respond in a big way. Besides, Nintendo can't seem to do any wrong this year with the gaming media.

I'd guess something like 74 purely because I feel the gameplay looks simplistic and it could get repetitive quite quickly as a single player game. It looks like a game that would be great to be bundled in with the console rather than a standalone title. Also it looks like its main strength could be local multiplayer. I remember power stone which I initially thought was great but soon tired of and it reminds me of that a bit.