thats a good list. 

 Most people feel the same way, but it really says something when most reviewers admit how awful the game was - despite the 9s they gave it.

That's right - and they'll burn you next!

 Do we need to bring up a game that was released over 10 years ago?

I think so. The point is valid. Toshinden wowed the media back then with its colorful palette and convincing 3D that blew away Virtua Fighter back in the day.

As a result, reviewers were fixated by the looks of the game, rather than the game mechanics, and they all trumpeted the game like it was Jesus' second coming. That lasted until they actually spent more than half-an-hour with the game and realized it was nothing more than monkey poo with a nice candy wrapper.

Well, everyone gobbled up the reviews like it was the gospel, and the rest, as they say, is history. Most game reviewers later said that they completely overrated the game, but the damage was done: SEGA's Saturn was doomed right then and there.

Personally, if there is any one game that I would attribute to the PSX's immediate success and to SEGA's downfall, Toshinden would be it.

A more recent example of media frenzy/manipulation (albeit unwilling, but manipulative nonetheless) would be Black & White - first the press gobbled it up, then realized it was actually a stinker of a game, and many a review was either retracted, or downgraded.

The thing about Toshinden is that it was a defining game of the time.

Toshinden was a demonstration of 3d fighting that was taking it to another level.  Virtua Fighter started it off, but Toshinden took the premise to another level.  In fact both were rotten in their own rights and didn't play well as fighters and weren't a patch on the traditional fighting games of the time.  They were thrust into the limelight because of the 3d alone.

Toshinden was a graphics-defining game during its time that sure enough, took 3D fighting to another level, but gameplay-wise it sucked elephant 'nads.

The original Virtua Fighter utilized the same gameplay mechanics as Virtua Fighter 4 (haven't played 5 yet but I'm willing to wager it has changed little); hence, it has evolved. Graphically it sucked compared to Toshinden (and was slow as molasses to boot) but all the elements of great gameplay were there; as such, it defined 3D fighting gameplay.

Personally, if anything, Toshinden just proves that no matter the candy wrapper, if the game is a steaming pile of horse manure, no amount of graphics embellishing will hide that fact. Virtua Fighter, while being woefully inferior graphically, has become the hard-core 3D fighter's game of choice, showing that gameplay trumps graphics.

Well, let's be entirely fair first off. What you look for in a game and what someone else looks for in a game are completely different. Critics may be hard pressed for graphics, which clearly PSP and PS3 are superior to their competitors, or at least equal. Also, so does exposure time is important for some games.

For example, for me, the first 20 hours of FFXII are a 5/5. I felt I had an awesome experience and loved the game.
Every second after the 20 hour mark made me wish I was playing X. Giving it a 1/5. I fell in love, and like an 11 year old school girl, my crush was gone within 24 hours. How do you accurately display this in a review that you gotta post ASAP, seeing as you have a job with deadlines that may not give you 50 free hours to game?

Finally, if anyone actually looks into Metacritic, you'll find there's some nice BS in there. Read over the lowest scoring reviews. You'll find 40's where you click the review and they praise the game constantly, or one example I clicked a game review ranked 42 with no number on the page, only a "C" ranking. I was unaware educational standards had dropped that a C was a 42%. I'm not even sure where the 2% came from.

Reviewers usually play a game extensively, at least good reviewers do. They finish a game like FF XII before reviewing it, these guys play for a living so they do play through before posting a review...

As for online games they play it a lot before judging, hence the long time after shadowrun came out to get reviews on it because they got the game same times as retail apparently...

I think yourmother's argument is air tight and the idea that reviewers who are not biased are somehow not objective just because they play many games is absurd. Good reviewers know when they are playing a good game and their tastes are more in tune when it comes to judging games compared to you or me because we don't play as many or as various games as they do...

So by your logic movie critics, book critics or critics of any kind or reviewers are completely pointless because the market decides. By this logic, Titanic was the best movie ever made and Britney Spears is truly a musical genius... 

 Perhaps that's just me mentally trying to digest how the game scored so high. They just stopped right before the mark that dropped it for me. Consequently, this is way off topic (Final Fantasy XII is ranked 92 on Meta Critic with a lowest score of 70). Slightly better.