jasoncross.org

Nice analysis! Are these statistics consistent with the total # of games for each online platform? Would be interesting to see the number of games for comparison.

This is kind of pathetic, Jason. Tetris party is one of the better implementations of a classic game – to single it out for dismissal like while giving SotN/Rez/Ikaruga/SSF2T and frigging Puzzle Quest a pass is … highly questionable. Then going further and claiming your cherrypicked example just shows Wiiware games in general are not only worse on average, they’re also *overrated* … that is insane. Your fanboy is showing. Also, there are better games than Tetris Party on ALL of those lists that don’t rate as high. Don’t cry because your favourite XBox games got rated lower – it just shows how arbitrary Metacritic score are and how they shouldn’t be taken seriously at all let alone ‘analysed’.

Also, if, as you said on Qt3, the goal was to compare all games on the download services without considering whether they were new or not – it seems exceedingly strange to ignore older games like XBox orginals and Virtual Console releases, which would change the ranking considerably.

“Methinks thou doth protest too much, sir!” Well you would wouldn’t you! But really, to pick out that one rating as if it were a pattern and use it to ‘prove’ how Wiiware is getting an easy ride when pretty much every other rating on that lists seems ~ right (ie. Wiiware is mostly composed of junkware and the top-rated games reflect that) – come *on*, Jason. It was just a lazy argument and an absurd reach in an otherwise fastidious-to-the-point-of-not-even-being-interesting article. It stuck out. Of ALL the things you suddenly decide to lose your faith in Metacritic over … that’s it? It’s just peculiar that we’re asked to accept without question that Puzzle Quest and Peggle and Rez are all better games than a fully fleshed-out version of Tetris with some pretty creative and even demented game modes. So what else is overrated there? Presumably you take issue with *many* of those scores. So let’s go. What is Jason Cross’ World of Goo score? 89? Orbient gets what? 75? I just want to know!

Opinion shmopinion – you were the one making authoratative statements about quality, falling back on ‘opinion’ now is a ridiculous copout – especially given that the aim of the article is to *quantify* opinions. Sheesh. There isn’t anything that makes Tetris Party somehow indictative of reviewer kid gloves when it comes to Wiiware. To act as if it’s just obviously a worse game than Puzzle Fighter or Puzzle Quest (or any of the other games on that list) is laughable, and generating some general rule a single game – you refuse to offer more examples – is psychotic. Tetris Splash was a barebones entry – it’s possible it was *underrated*, but it says nothing about Tetris Party, which is a much better version, no matter how you try to underplay it.
Finally, over half of the games on the 360 list are do-overs of ex-retail games. So you’re not sticking to your rules. PS3 and Wiiware have more original content in the top 20. I can understand not counting Virtual Console games/XB Originals/Playstation Classics because they have no new content at all, but it’s also worth pointing out that the distinction is narrow and technical.

All my friends tell me I need to get BF 1943… now only if they’d buy it for me.