I lost faith in "gaming journalism" when I realized that most Wii games were being knocked down about a review point more than they should be by nearly every reviewer.

And that most of the reviews for those games consist of, "I wanted to like this game but WAGGLE KIDDY WAGGLE WAGGLE."

Well, I wont flame you ... but everyone has different tastes. I bought Wii Music for my friend as a gag gift, and that exactly what it was. We played it, and it was fun for about 30 minutes. The re-playability and fun factor is very low, yet, I could imagine this being fun for kids. Even his wife (who is the epitome of casual) was baffled very concept of the game. If i was a reviewer, the score would be on the bad side of 5/10.

Before you go saying"OMG, you are a fanboy!," I have had some great times playing Boom Blox, Mario Kart Wii, and SSB, so its not that I am a hater. I don't understand the demographic this game is marketed towards, nor do I get the point. As a musician, the game is not a music simulator, nor is it a rhythm game ... there just doesn't seem to be a point.

Thats the problem, readers are taking reviews to seriously. Its pretty juvenile to blame fanboyism on an altered review score. I agree reviewers can be fanboys but its also their job to view the subject critically. I mean gamers need to relax i dont see any other media taking reviews as seriously I mean a movie reviewer or book reviewer rarely gets lombasted when failing a loved film.

Ascension is overrated.  You become this all powerful being, and you can't do anything about it.

Reviews suks and not even because of their bias towards the Wii. FFXII has 90+ on metacritics. That really doesn't make sense to me. Same for Mario Sunshine having 90+.

Bias towards the Wii? I hope you mean bias against.

Sigh.

Another "review scale is broken" bs thread.

Sigh.

Don't trust reviews after the stupid reviews of Mario Kart but I am beginning to have faith in them once more after the low scores for Wii Music.

*woot* *woot* Double negative alert! Double negative alert!

Anyways, I believe certain websites' (IGN, Games Radar, and 1up) opinions portend whether or not a game is of a high or low quality.

The reason so many reviewers has so much difficulty reviewing games is similar to the reason why so many developers have such difficulty producing games for anyone except for "Core" gamers ... The industry does a pretty piss-poor job of attracting people with a moderate interest in videogames to get involved with the development or reviewing of videogames so there is little or no understanding of what anyone except for "Core" gamers want in games.

I could be wrong but I suspect that the percentage of gamers who fall into the category of "Core" gamers peaked with the SNES/Genesis generation and since then there has been far more growth from unconventional gamer demographics (although the definition of "Core" would be a lot different in the early 1990s than it is today). Since then unconventional gamers have been the primary sorce of growth in the industry and the definition of what a "Core" gamer is has changed in order to retain their dominance in the industry.

The side effect of the Nintendo DS and Wii's popularity is that "Core" gaming would have to be drastically redefined in order to retain dominance because the "Kiddie/Casual/Unconventional" gamers now (drastically) outnumber "Core" gamers; one of the main reasons for this is there are a lot of "Core" gamers (like me) who also are "Kiddie/Casual/Unconventional" gamers, whereas there are a lot of people who would be classified as "Kiddie/Casual/Unconventional" gamers who do not play "Core" games. A lot of reviewers seem to be trying to justify their own preferences and games that would have received scores of 85% to 90% on the PS2/XBox/Gamecube are receiving 95%+ for the HD consoles, while games that would have received 75% to 80% on the PS2/XBox/Gamecube are receiving below 65% for the Wii.