6.7 is perfectly reasonable for ToS2, just because you enjoyed the game more than that doesn't make the number wrong. Probably means a couple of things about your relative RPG experience, if you were desparate for an RPG to play, or if you just happenned to like an average game.

Here's an example that to me totally negates user scores

Cross Edge
Press score 5.3
User score 8.6

I can't think that any reasonably critical person could look at that game and end up with an 8.6, there is just no possible way.

you mean top20 in reviews or in sales?

if you mean in reviews, how can the games i say about, like Mario Party 8, Symphonia 2, Conduit and so on, be on top 20 since their press score is low, also, top 20 in sales or reviews is most likely Nintendo games, i'm mostly telling about 3rd party Wii exclusives

@Torillian, 6.7 is pefectly reasonable *for you*, Xbox360/Ps3 core gamers, but it's Wii owners are the ones that buy Wii games, and average Wii owner has different tastes or views, that's why they give a higher score i guess

that's the whole point of the thread, reviewers rate Wii games accoarding to Xbox360/Ps3 core-gamers point of view, where it's Wii owners that read the Wii reviews and buy Wii games, they rate Mario Party 8 by having core-gamers in mind, they should rate it based on Wii owners, party games fans for example, or not rate it at all!!

IGN has changed the way they score Wii games recently, and they are much closer to average Wii owners opinion

Wii audience is just a bit different and that's why i say Wii owners should stop base their decisions on reviews, like many people already agreed

User reviews huh? I thought those were mostly for fanboys to give hyped games on their system 10's and games on rival systems 0's.

Sorry, but i'm not buying the "Wii games are systematically underrated" shenanigans. The Wii games I've enjoyed are largely rated very fairly by critics. No More Heroes, Boom Blox, and Rune Factory Frontier are all examples of games that were reviewed well because they're good games.

The sort of people who make their voices heard on sites like IGN or VGchartz with user reviews are mostly rabid fanboys. Many of them write very short or poorly written reviews that usually just end up being "omg this game is awesome" or "omg this game sucks" without any semblance of objective, critical thought. If that's the sort of thing you want to read when deciding whether or not to buy a game, be my guest.

You could look at website that aren't full of "rabid fanboys" like Amazon.com ... From what I have seen, very few gamers tend to have the extreme negative reaction that some reviewers have towards certain Wii games.

Beyond that, I find it difficult to believe that a reviewer who was tasked with reviewing Animal Crossing in 2 days would be able to give an accurate review of the game. Basically, the game is designed around a short playtime a couple of times a week for a year and there really is no way to brute force your way through the content.

Amazon.com reviews suffer from the same problems that IGN and VGC suffer from. People tend to overrate system exclusive games but really just games in general. I tried and the lowest fairly known exclusive ps3 game I could find is rated at 3 stars (Haze). I'm sure there are games nobody has heard of rated lower, but still. It just goes up from there. How is that in any way reliable when people are handing out 3-5 stars for pretty much anything.

Some averages of exclusives to show my point:

Lair - 4 stars
Heavenly Sword - 4.5 stars
Haze - 3 stars

Too Human - 3.5 stars
Last Remnant - 3 stars
Star Ocean - 4 stars

The Conduit - 4.5 stars (still early, may change)
Wii Music - 3.5 stars
Sonic and the Black Knight - 4 stars

There are very few exclusive games rated lower than 3 stars on amazon.

edit: replaced Animal Crossing Wii(4) with The Conduit(4.5)

@ameratsu

What's wrong with The Conduit having 4.5 stars? From everything I have heard, the consensus seems to be that it is the best FPS on the Wii, just edging out Call of Duty: World at War. CoD: WaW has 4 stars on Amazon. Sounds perfect to me.

Something else bothers me about the reviews that The Conduit is getting. As the best FPS on the Wii, you would think that it would score the best as well. That's not the case though. CoD: WaW is sitting at 83.17 and The Conduit is at 74.82. Either CoD: WaW is too high (a possibility since it's CoD), or The Conduit is too low.

www.gamefaqs.com is the biggest gaming site on the Internet. They have a fairly strict policy regarding reader reviews. Reviews have to be of a certain lenght, and they must be approved by an admin before they are posted.

So let's see how Wii owners feel about these games once all the trolls and fanboys are kicked out:

The Conduit:
Metacritic 7.0
GameFaqs 7.8 (4 reviews)

Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World:
Metacritic 6.7
GameFaqs 7.5 (24 reviews)

Mario Kart Wii:
Metacritic 8.0
GameFaqs 7.7 (92 reviews)

Mario Party 8:
Metacritic 6.4
GameFaqs 7.4 (48 reviews)

MadWorld:
Metacritic 8.3
GameFaqs 8.2 (20 reviews)

SoulCalibur Legends:
Metacritic 5.5
GameFaqs 6.1 (10 reviews)

Super Smash Bros. Brawl:
Metacritic 9.0
GameFaqs 8.6 (211 reviews)

Out of these seven games, 4 were rated slightly higher by GameFaqs readers while 3 were rated lower. Draw your own conclusions.

See now GameFaqs I like, because you can read what they have to say and they don't just throw a number down. A number is useless if you can't read why they gave it that number.

That, and a 7.5 for ToS2 is within reason and I can see someone looking at the game critically and giving it that. And you can look at the difference in how a game is rated when they have to write something about it or when they just give it a number. ToS2 has a 7.5 for reader reviews and an 8.5 for reader ratings.

Metacritic.com doesn't take VGchartz reviews into consideration. Shouldn't they? I sent this email to Metacritic:

I've noticed that VGchartz.com reviews don't factor into your scores for games. At least not in the case of the Conduit for Wii so I assume this is generally true.

Respectfully I would like to ask why and urge you to include their reviews to your scores. There is a large debate around the legitimacy of reviews for Wii games right now, whether or not reviewers are reviewing for the average Wii owner or for themselves and their 'hardcore' gaming buddies. I believe the latter to be true. I would think that given the current debate around Wii scores you would want to include as much information as possible to calculate your Wii scores. Mathematically this would increase the accuracy.

The problem is further evidenced when you look at the difference between your calculated scores for Wii games and the user scores. The average gamer enjoys Wii game x, y or z much more than some critics who review games do. Some critics are interested in one thing only, hardcore, high definition games. User scores for Wii Sports and to a lesser extent The Conduit show an inconsistency. Frequently with these sorts of games there is a 10-percentage-point difference (or more) between Metacritic and the users' real opinions.

I find VGchartz to be fair and accurate in their assessment of games. Not only that, they are the number one source for monitoring game sales. This should make them a legitimate and reputable voice on games.

Sincerely

Concerned gamer Casualgamerguy
Zach Gruber @
http://casualgamerguy.blogspot.com/

i didn't know about this site, it is more fair, but it's still just 1 site, not every Wii owner cares to write a review, it's more practical to post the score

gamer score of faqs for SoulCalibur Legends and Mario Party 8 are not that far away, so i don't think gamestats are like only 10s and 0s, and they include faqs reviews as well, i guess

still, the Conduit deserves more than 7.0 and Tales 2, more than 6.7, for god's sake, Mario Party 8 as well, even SoulCalibur Legends

i really don't which if the two to trust, gamestats or gamefaqs

because of you count only ign.com (where most 10s and 0s are) and gamefaqs score, the user score for Conduit for example is 8.2 or smth, how does it reach 8.9 on gamestats!?

same for Symphonia 2