Topic: Why does the reviewers on this site seem to hate fun?

I only come here for the occassional piece of news, and mostly reviews. Particulary eshop reviews. But it drives me nuts when most of the eshop reviews basically give the games bad grades.

Chariot a 7? Maze and that Tank game getting failing scores? Etc.

Where are gamers sense of fun these days? On the site I come from (vgchartz) it is the same. Unless it is Shovelnight or a Nintendo game, no one wants to play anything. Reviewers do no help with their inability to have fun or be surprised anymore.
Many of these eshop games are fun for high scores, community on miiverse and the price. But if they do not have as much content and quality of a Zelda title, it seems critics will pan it.

Learn to have fun again!

Reviews are just people's opinion. You just have a different opinion.

A seven is a good score when talking about game reviews.

I recommend giving this a read.

They hate fun ? I disagree wholeheartedly.

Read the Scoring Guide. A 7 is not a bad score. Reading reviews is more useful than just looking at scores, too.

who whoa whoa.

7 is a good score!

Is complaining about said scores "having fun" to you?

I think you overestimate the quality of some titles. But, as others stated, a 7 is still a very commendable score.

Aside of that, it's not the best idea to rely on reviews. Try to find a gameplay video of sorts (maybe the first few videos of an LP) to get a better impression on a game. Reviews tend to go into more technical viewpoints, which isn't very indicative of a games' entertainment potential.

http://www.metacritic.com/publication/nintendo-life

Average is 6/10 for this site. (It was 7/10 when I first looked I guess the really terrible NES (At least by volume compared to good VC games) games have reduced it).

Strange how it can be 11.4 points lower on Average but still higher than average 47% of the time (1st party Nintendo bias ?).

I like the strict reviews. It stops my wallet from burning to a crisp within a few months. They don't give away free 10s, and the 8s and 9s are incredibly good games. The 6s and 7s have improvements or could be repetitive. Anything below a 6 is a big no-no for me unless it's a classic Virtual Console title that I really need to play such as Donkey Kong 3.

You seem to agree with the OP: "Unless it is Shovelnight or a Nintendo game, no one wants to play anything."

And even the eShop games that get great reviews on this and other sites (Stealth Inc. 2, SteamWorld Dig, Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition, Teslagrad, The Swapper, Thomas was Alone, Art of Balance - all 9 on NL) have virtually no presence in the eShop sales charts, compared to Nintendo games, VC nostalgia, and that over-hyped (but good) NES-inspired indie game called Shovel Knight.

I personally lost the count of the games I discovered thanks to NL's reviews and I'm talking of games not made by Nintendo and with no shovel in them, if that needs to be clear.

I actually can't judge the score policy here since I give little to no attention to the numbers, but the reviews' text is always very informative and help me understand if I will enjoy the game, no matter if the reviewer liked the title or not.

People should start read more and write less, I'm kinda tired to see people disagree with NintendoLife cause of a number and nothing more; it's not useful to anyone to know that RandomUser70 would have given the title a 8 instead than a 7.
With this I don't mean people shouldn't disagree with the reviews here, I also disagreed with some reviews in the past, I'm just saying that personal opinions on this or that aspect of a game are way more useful and interesting to read than cold numbers alone than mean nothing without some kind of context.

And anyway NintendoLife have fun, I could swear I can tell by reading the review that the reviewer of Chariot had fun with that game, but some aspects didn't convince him and he had to warn us in his review. Afterall enjoy a game personally and finding it objectively perfect are two different worlds and reviewers must balance between those worlds for make a review as fair as humanly possible.

So which part of the review did you disagree with? Please use quotes.

This is bogus in my view. Everything from 4 - 1 is kinda harsh. And 7 - 5 is like saying "We recommended this game! Even though it's kinda crap and we don't care about it." And as for 4 and below. They're basically saying if it hits this area then don't buy it, even if you're a fan of the series or genre and you've played previous titles. At least that's how I see this. I mean, I hate Dark Souls series with an Overheat passion, because the game forces me to play how it should be played and not how I want to play it (And I don't mean I want to suddenly fly and spit fireballs). Still, I'd give it an 8 even though their's a lot I don't like about it. Cause the 'game' is there. People like it. They enjoyed it for how the game is and not what they wanted it to be. Every RPG gamer should at least try the Soul series once to get a better opinion on it.

What are you even trying to say here? That a game rated 5 or 6 shouldn't be pursued with caution? That NintendoLife wouldn't rate Dark Souls 8+?

Well, hearing that makes 7+ should be bought without thought. Every game should be though about. Weather you've got time to play it or if the money would be well spent weather you have other importance's. Since every game should be thought about before being bought. 7 - 5 sound kinda the same. Just the lower the number goes, the more reason why the reviewer didn't like something more than the last.

Fantasy Life is not a Nintendo game

The important thing to remember is that it's a reviewer's job to report the reviewer's impressions, not the reviewer's job to report your impressions.

Quite how that gets forgotten so often I have no idea, but here we are.