IDK about you guys, but I think I’m gonna stop looking at review scores for Nintendo games until I’ve played them for myself. These scores have like zero correlation to my personal enjoyment: I loved Kirby Air Riders, Metroid Prime 4 Beyond, and see MKWorld & EoW as some of the greatest games Nintendo has ever put out!… yet they all only recieve lukewarm reception. (And don’t even get me started on DragXDrive and Welcome Tour. Criminally underrated games!)

Yeah I stopped caring about review scores back in the Wii days.

Many games I loved got mediocre reviews; Fatal Frame 4 and 5, Disney Epic Mickey, Binary Domain, Sniper Elite 3, Strange Brigade, etc.

Reviews shouldn't even have numbered scores tbh that's well outdated now it should just be a verdict system of bad/average/good with the review articulating the verdict reasoning.

Glad they're focusing on the third party prowess. It genuinely is a revelation for anyone who is Nintendo only or just much prefers portable. The competent power of the system is really paying off.  

Tell me more about this. Why do you consider numbered scores outdated, and what make the bad/average/good system superior? I'm genuinely curious. I've thought a lot about this question myself.

Pokopia really doing some heavy lifting for Nintendo.

I'll try, to start off a verdict system gives greater context of the the reviewers reception of the said bit of media they're reviewing and puts more emphasis on the substance of the review. To highlight this point two of the most often used scoring scales out of 10 or 100 have reviews that will label a game mediocre but give it a 6/10 and an average game 7/10, what this means is that you have over half of the scale is redundant because they're just different numbers for how bad a game is and as a consumer do you really need to know how bad games measure up to other bad games? You don't even need to know how average and mediocre games compare to each other tbh all that's required is knowing if a game is of sound quality and this is the range where an argument can be made to know how game in this tier compare to each other. The is also the age old situation of another reviewer even from the same outlet can say a different game is decent but not great and give a 7/10 resulting in reviewers using the same scale but giving the same score a different quality value which ends up with mixed messaging something a verdict system won't have as the context is more universal in what category the reviewer sees the game in.

This is the issue in why I feel it's outdated and why consumers in the modern era aren't as influenced by scores and averages like they were years ago due to this as they're trying out games that averaged in the 7/10 aka 70% range and finding them great in fact some games even averaging less than that they're enjoying and finding decent as to them what's the point when the numbered scaling is not translating to what they were being conditioned to expect from it.

On another note it'll also help weed out bait and troll reviews.

Kena Bridge of Spirits hits Switch 2 next week, on the 26th:

https://www.vgchartz.com/article/467325/kena-bridge-of-spirits-launches-march-26-for-switch-2/

Vampire Crawlers hits Switch next month, on the 21st of April:

https://www.vgchartz.com/article/467328/vampire-crawlers-the-turbo-wildcard-launches-april-21-for-ps5-xbox-series-switch-pc-game-pass/

This is pretty much part of my point earlier in that S2 is being pushed and handled more like a platform intended to be a main or primary platform as opposed to mainly being a vehicle for first party titles, Nintendo actively pushing exposure for third party titles is a move to position third party games as good cover for more quieter periods or even allow first party titles more time in the oven.