Giant Bomb did a launch day Stream on March 3rd 2017 and played Vroom in the Night Sky.

It should be there. There is no excuse for not having it. That said, I found the star ratings on the Wii U and 3DS eShops to be almost completely useless. For some reason most online 5-star rating systems seem to default to everyone just giving 5 stars. Very few people use the system they way I think it should work, with an average game being 3 stars. I have a had a much easier time finding good games through online review aggregators, or curated lists of games from review sites. There is a lot of clearly low budget trash with high star grades that mix in with good games with the same scores.

Yes, but not really. The problem with user reviews is that people are allowed to give out too many scores of either 1 star or 5 stars. People that don't like the game instantly give it the lowest possible rating, and people that like the game give it the highest possible rating. There is no inbetween. If users were forced to score a game somewhat rationally, then I'd value user scores a lot more.

A lot of that is Spartacusing. People who think they’re leading or lead-participating in a tactical movement to bring down a great game in hopes of teaching the devs a lesson. All they actually achieve is proving why these sorts of scoring systems are worthless.

Another related problem are that people think on different scales. People play different pools of games. So even though they may share the exact same opinion on the game, it might be one of the worst games a person played in years, but they still enjoyed it so they give it a 4 or 5, while the other person played a lot of crappy games but then this one ended up being the best they played in years, and so give it a 9 or 10. Or some people might think 5/10 is what average games should be rated, but then someone else might find average games tick off most of their check list items of quality and give them 8 out 10.

IF user scores were instead matched to profiles for recommendations to like-minded profiles, then it might work better. Take two users with like-minded opinions, but different internal scales of scoring - for Profile A, a thumbs up is always a 10; while for Profile B, 10s are a once in a generation thing, and 6s are considered “Very good” 7s are “great” while 8s are “excellent” and 9s are “Game of the Year!”

So profile A sees a game with a 9.8 average based on the scoring of reviewers who rate games similarly and decides “Great! I’ll buy this game!” Profile B sees 8.1 for the same game and thinks exactly the same thing as Profile A, because 8.2 or 8.3 might be as high as games get on his list.

Averaging all scores, like the way Metacritic does it, is otherwise pointless. Especially when you mix together the totality of gamers, because then you have people with vastly different tastes informing the scores.

I really like your idea matching profiles of like minded individuals together! Definitely think you're onto something there!

@bolded Yeah we call that having poor taste. A lot of times when people loved a game I hated, I wonder what games they play. And a lot of times it turns out to be really awful games. The more good games someone has played the less likely they are to be impressed. And the fewer games they play the more likely they are to be blown away.

It goes deeper than that too. Some people just don't like certain genres. There's more to it but it's 2am here and I'm sleepy so maybe I'll post another day.

Ah, I quickly glanced at the review dates that popped up in Google.  Do they show the rating system in the video?

Yes I do. The 3ds/WiiU was great in this regard.

I agree with the person who groused that Netflix transitioned from a stars-system to a thumbs-up-or-down system instead, but I think you (and others here) have nailed why; people generally suck, and therefore go all or nothing. Apropos of the time, perhaps, but still. Because of that, I don't miss the rating system, even if I agree that it should be there.

Yeah, in short, I think it can be summed up as relativity being a big factor.

Unless all people play the same games, have the same tastes, and have the same opinions on what a rating scale should look like, then it’s not going to be particularly useful - and maybe even commercially harmful as a result of Nintendo’s own system because of gamer activism marring a rating or inflating.

A system that matches users up with others with those who generally play the same games and generally score games the same, then they’ll generally find the scores informative and useful. Relativity is accounted for and activist gamers can signal their activism to the other like-minded thinkers alone.