ya, its ridiculous, the DS has had tons of amazing games so far. some have been really underrated like the phoenix wright games.

Can anyone name a site with reviews that are more on than off?

yeh, i hate it how all of psp's major games are from nintendo

.

Maybe handheld games are just not very good, and don't deserve to be rated high.

Metacritic percentages and Gameranking percentages are soooo overrated. I don't know why people use them anyway. Or even review scores. The actual review is what matters. The written review tells you the faults and gems about a game.

I could care less about the fact there are fewer 90+ rated games on the DS. All I know is that the DS has some awesome software that is really astounding and worth owning. I wouldn't pay any attention to stupid rating sites like those. They make no judgement on whether a game is good or not.

I have a DS and its probably the hardware i play most games on.

Firstly, I do think that handheld games are somewhat unfairly compared to console games. Handhelds are simply not powerful enough to compete with console games for depth or graphical ability, two aspects which have a large impact on the average reviewers rating.

But on the other hand I think that with the DS, game developer have been faced with a completely innovative interface, and many are still experimenting with the interface. This has brought some brilliant new gameplay designs. For example, someone mentioned Phoenix Wright. The game is some aspects is brilliant: the art style is amazing, you'll be laughing through the whole game. Its a brilliant game, but would it not be great if the game was a bit deeper. Imagine if the story line was not so linear, if the court cases actually involved really contemplating the next response, if the evidence was not so obvious, if it actually required some real hard investigative work to win a court case. It is just one example of an innovative style with tons of potential, but which isn't yet fully harvested.
Then there is Elite Beat Agents, one of my favorite games of all time. But honestly, there could have been more songs and maybe few more gameplay techniques could have been introduced, even though to me, as is, the game definitely deserves a 9.
With the DS, there are many brilliant games that could just be more immersive: Trauma Centre, Drawn to life, even Brain Training could have been more immersive. For god sake, how hard is it to just put 70 different simple brain games on one disk. Like the addition and subtraction of double digits. The DS must be capable of at least that.
So to me it is not necessarily the fault of reviewers. Game developers have to start taking risks and investing that little extra into a title if they want to achieve a 9.

AAaaaaahhhh. And yeeeeeeaaaaaaah. Since you put it there in the OP, the fuckin' PSP gets nothing absolutely no respect either. Personally I rarely go a day without playing both my DS AND PSP.

- I have 30 DS games at home with me and another ten (I think) that I've loaned out. So friggin' what. The DS is going down in history as either the greatest game system made or a close second to the SNES. (But it plays everything the SNES played, so I think it should win... whatever).

- I have PSP games! I buy them! THEY ARE AWESOME! I'm not going to start picking on console games that got rated high and list the great PSP games that were rated lower and start some ignorant list warz based on that crazy fucked up MetaCritic. In my estimation the real problem with the PSP is that it's a multi-media device. Hey, but that's a different thread.

I'm tempted to start my own "MiniCritic" and just include reviews from websites that emphasize handheld gaming.

I get so fuckin' tired of the "no games" bullshit. It's a mantra now and I don't think the PSP is ever going to get rid of it, but the awesomeness that is the PSP is awesomeness because it has some AMAZING GAMES, not because it plays goddamn mp3's or movies. Fuckin' A.

Here's my collection as of now:

And I'm one of the casuals! FFS.

I find IGN to be much more reliable than Metacritic for handhelds.

I would assert that the cause in lower reviews (per capita? maybe, whatever term is correct) for handhelds would have to do with 1 thing. Graphics.
or Visuals if you will.

Someone who is not a Die Hard review Critic/Gamer will not ever review a handheld fairly because they will undobtedly prefer the console version to the handheld. The screen is smaller and most people would only prefer to play it if, 1 their on the road or something and are limited to HH gaming and/or 2. It isn't a handheld exclusive title.

That being said. I imagine many "lesser" critics tend to base their criticism mostly on what the game looks like. I think a few EGM critics fell in this category, whenever scanning through their reviews some 8 years ago. If it was a game they liked and gave an 8-10 it was all "the game LOOKS so good, OMG the cutscenes! the colors children the colors" They would only have credible reviews for games that didn't perform well.

PS fkusumot .. Right ON!!!

I agree!

I also blame Wii Fit!
(damn reviewers are on that instead of PSP/DS)

and if you do start a site. Let me knoe I'd like to contribute!