Yes man, I ended it just months ago. Gotta start a medicine course soon - indeed, only because I was approved I'll manage to get a PS3.

Back on topic, your scientifically proved unbiased rewiew says Tony Hawk 2 is the best PS2 game, gave 98 to the disappointing GTA IV and an 80 score from Nintendo Power prevented Shadow the Hedgehog from being a red-rated title on the GameCube.

(this is not a personal attack on anyone in this thread)

But this thread proves nothing, i personally do not believe in existance of a "Hardcore Gamer" but if you only looking at AAA titles on the console, you're as casual as people that buy Carnival Games and Deca Sports, because you have not even attempted to develop your own taste or style in gaming, you're unable to appreciate good games (that couldnt get a good review for some reason), true gamer can enjoy any sort of games (as long as it is a good effort).

Buying only AAA games, is supporting only Big budget games that have ridicilous amount of hype and marketing behing it. This is killing industry, because other games do not sell and are being ignored by the people.

I am suprised that nower days people treat Reviews as some sort of prodigies and anything less then 80% score is seen as not worthy of playing.

My most played games this generations have metacritic score of 72 and 78, and i had more fun with them then with games that are reviewed in its 90's.

Wii is a gaming console, so it is a toy.

It's like asking every person leaving the stadium in the World Series what they think of the show "Desperate Housewives"

You are comparing almost opposite things. It's more like comparing Oprah to Ellen. Both are great and to each their own taste.

But wait isn't the Wii one like compeltely different cause of the fact of the wiimote and stuff.  I dont' know

A game is not better because of the control style, that would make PC games and console games different too.

Yet now lets look at Gears of War 2.  Or Halo 3.  Now tell me are these games just so much better than the earlier games, or is it just like you said you rated the previous ones so high and that these games have slightly more added or something, BUT MOST IMPORTANT they have better graphics, so then will get a better score.

This is the kind of thing I'm arguing against because it is blind ignorance to ask if GoW2 was better because they improved almost every single area of the game, and while I have access to a wii and about 30 wii games, it seems like some of you have never played the HD games you talk about. It also goes to show that you don't even realize that Halo 2 had a better score than halo 3, and is generally accepted to be the better game, although both are not as good as the original which was better because the other two, despite upgrades and tweaks, lacked the same kind of story depth.

Games are judged based on how much potential they reached. These reviewers are not elitists, they judge quality. They take their jobs seriously, and give a game what it is worth most of the time. That is where meta-collections fix any biases that might be present. Also your last passage is purely anecdotal.

@haxxiy
gta4 was not disappointing. It is a great game. SO was tony hawk 2. Now the one problem that you guys are seeing is that you think these scores incorporate all time scores but they don't. They are based against what they could have been and what they did so well. Tony hawk 2 was one of the games that completely reinvigorated gaming, and gta4 is still one of the most polished, well put together games that I've ever seen.

@lolisclaw
Again this is anecdotal evidence, what you are saying is the most fun you've ever had is what you are applying to the majority of gamers, which simply isn't true. But the real issue here is that you are going a little bit overboard saying that this thread supports buying nothing but AAA games when it clearly doesn't. One thing you have to understand is that there exist games that are capable of blowing you away. Reviews help to show this because, like metacritic says, world of goo is AAA and I agree.
It is important to play what is your consoles's best games before you go and say that you've played the best games ever and they were underrated.

I think you missed my point , with all the hype surrounding AAA games, and the reviewers ranting about them. Many GOOD games are being simply ignored which forces many studios to cease projects and concentrate only on big blockbusters (just look at recent comments from EA etc. etc.) because of the development costs on HD consoles. Therefore games that could be fresh, innovative, a bit different, ambitious are rare at the moment because they are not as safe to develop.

Plus it leads to belief that if game does not score high in Meta/GameRankings it's not worth any attention which is wrong. Especially when most reviewers have not much to do with professional journalism, a lot of them are still approaching games like fanboys without any objectivism.

This seems like you're reducing the "hardcore" crowd to a herd of sheep, flocking to games that score only 90%+. If I used labels, and considered myself "hardcore" I think I would be very offended by this, since the opinions of reviewers (who may or not be biased due to reviewer gifts/advertising money) do not correlate with my thinking a great deal of the time.

No, its not about wanting a handicap at all in fact.

It’s about evaluating games according to what they were designed to be, rather than what hardcore elitists want them to be.

Allow me to elaborate.

Using a hardcore standard, graphics are typically weighted equally with gameplay. This is consistent with the philosophy behind traditional games in which incremental enhancements in graphics are a high priority. It’s logical to hold such games to a graphical standard of success because that is the intention of such games in the first place.

However, with certain Wii and DS games, it’s obvious that graphics are not as important. Indeed, for games such as Wii Sports, Fit, Brain Training etc, which use a very minimalistic presentation, graphics are secondary to gameplay features.

Other factors such as ease of use, interface (motion controls/touchscreen/microphone) are not acknowledged by the traditional review standard. Nonetheless these are all important factors that underly the whole philosophy behind these games.

To judge casual games according to graphics, complexity etc is holding them to a standard that they don’t aspire to.  Indeed, it may be argued that Nintendo's casual titles deliberately distance themselves from traditional stereotypes. They will be disadvantaged in such a comparison because they are not trying to be hardcore games. The genius of Brain Training has nothing to do with graphics at all, yet a traditional criteria would deduct marks nonetheless.

You suggest that I claim that games like Wii Fit and Wii Sport are ‘AAA’ when I have said no such thing. What this tells me is that you’ve missed my point entirely. Why would I say they are ‘AAA’ when I’m trying to discredit the whole notion of using an ‘AAA’ standard for casual games? All I’ve said is that games like Wii Fit and Wii Sports are quality games, and when I say that I’m judging them by a standard that is consistent with what they aspire to.

Casual games are very different from traditional games, best illustrated by snobcore attempts to disregard them altogether as non-games. This is something you cannot deny. When comparing apples to oranges a rigid absolute criteria will not suffice.

Ultimately, using a rigid criteria such as metacritic is far from objective as you imply. For a start, it simply cannot remove the hardcore bias inherent in the reviewing industry. Secondly, the review system is hardly consistent and prone to hype (GTA4 being a good example of this). There is no true way to be objective here so you shouldn’t present it as such (Scientific my arse).

And c’mon, M&S @ the Olympics is better than Wii Sports???  From a hardcore perspective pehaps.

xponent your changing the subject. This is just a trend showing how many copies a typically AAA game sells on a given console. I provided xbox and ps2 information and there will be more to come.

You are saying that reviewers are hardcore elitists. The major block between us is this issue. I think that they review games based on their value and ability and you think they review based on some "hardcore" definition that you still haven't provided.

As for saying that wii sports was AAA., you implied it by saying that we should include wii sports and wii fit.

These are the issues you are going to need to respond to if you are going to have a discussion about this because you have been cherry picking a while now.
I've explicity said that world of goo, a casual game, made the AAA. WoG is a great game.

As for the reviewers, it is oging to be something we have to disagree on, but you must agree that using outside sources is better than using my opinion vs your opinion. For some reason you want this to be opinion vs opinion, and that isn't how things get resolved sir.
Until we can get by the perceived reviewer standpoint this discussion is at an end, and at an end by your hands, for your bullishness, and consistent referring to people like me who like games such as SMG, MGS, and Halo as snobcore.

As long as we're all willing to admit this thread has nothing to do with sales, fire away! Sounds like fun.

Can I create arbitrary, meaningless categories to evaluate games too? This will be fun! Quick first thought: Gamecube had the best sales ratio ever for a console that was the color purple.

its so hard not to insult people. Especially when they think they are cute by inferring that wii sports is the best game of all time.