Edit: rather than as a percentage of total games per system, it might be better as games reviewed per system.
I thought of that at first but... if there are more good available games to review, why would NL review the bad ones? They only have so many resources so they would tend towards the ones which will naturally get higher scores. I suppose an exception is Nintendo exclusives because they will get reviewed no matter what. But generally I would expect more games = higher percentage of reviewed games score high ( and conversely a smaller percentage of games gets any review at all, especially the subpar games).
@Dogorilla To be fair, Wii had around 3,000 games including virtual console games. Switch has well over 10,000... so is it surprising there are twice as many 10/10s? Random indie games like the 10/10 Poker game are bound to happen if you have enough games overall. So it is less we are getting lots of good games and more we are getting lots of games.
As for surprise of 10/10s... Balatro certainly surprised me. Haven't played it but it looks... awful tbh purely from the screen shots and game description — but apparently actually playing it is great? Makes me wonder what other games sound like potential shovelware but are actually amazing — I suspect some of those never get noticed. The only other one on any of the lists which surprises me is Subsurface Circular because... I feel like I've never heard of that game.
I own 13 of the 10/10 Switch games and the list contains 5 of my personal top 10 Switch games.
it amuses me the Wii U 10/10s are (basically) a subset of the Switch ones.
Are those ordered by date? 🤔 I just noticed the 13 Switch ones I own are all near the start of the list... I've never played the most recent 11 of them.
I think I've played 30 overall from all the lists though some I never owned so never fully played.
Yeah, I did say it's not too surprising for a few reasons, but I probably should have mentioned the simple fact the Switch has far more games than anything else!
Balatro is definitely one I wouldn't have bothered with based on first impressions but I'm interested in playing it now. I've played Subsurface Circular, it's very good but I wouldn't go as far as giving it a 10 personally.
Yes, it's sorted by date within each console. I got it from here, though for some reason Densetsu no Stafi 3 doesn't come up if you sort by date. You can also sort by user rating, which is interesting - NightSky has the lowest user rating on the list with only 6.6/10.
It's always felt so odd to me how NSMBW got a 10/10 score from this site. I mean, the game's fine and all, but I bet that reviewer was most likely offered a good amount of $$$$ for that review.
It's mostly but not entirely a function of how many games each platform had. If you throw the above list and put it alongside the number of games on each of those platforms (from Wiki)
Switch has got more 10s than it probably should have all things considered. It's certainly doing much better than the DS did comparatively. But for a library that's 5X bigger than Wii U and over twice the size of Wii? Makes sense it has about 5X and 2X as many 10s
Also worth noting that Nintendo Life didn't exist before DS/Wii so for all of the consoles before that the only reason they'd be reviewing those games is as a retrospective. Which almost surely colours those reviews and also changes the perspective vs if they had been done at the time of release
It's surprising the DS has so few 10s when you look at it like that. I know NL wasn't around for the beginning of the DS era so they missed some of the early games, but then they've missed a lot of Switch games too just because there's so many of them.
@FishyS
That's fair, and I did wonder why it was smaller than I thought it should be. I mostly used it because the "lists of games" pages on wiki was the easiest way to grab numbers quickly. I think another criticism of that method is that the lists for WiiWare and DSiWare are different lists on wiki. I didn't add those in my graph. And of course that distinction doesn't exist for 3DS, Wii U, Switch. So yeah, lots of problems there but..... same rules for all and an illustration that's just intended to give a broad idea? Meh, close enough
What I did consider initially was plotting "Nintendo Life 10s" vs time on market. And even potentially taking into account how many platforms Nintendo had going at the time. Because functionally what we're actually measuring is the rate at which great games are released on Nintendo's platforms. But I couldn't be bothered putting launch dates into a spreadsheet..... again.... so counts on wiki it is....
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I enjoyed Subsurface Circular, and would highly recommend it to anyone who wants something a bit different to kill a couple of hours with. It goes on sale regularly for a very low price, which helps too.
That said, it's a game where you talk to robots on an underground train and piece together puzzles from those seemingly random encounters. An interesting story emerges, that's reminiscent of Isaac Asimov at his finest, but even so, it's pretty thin on the gameplay front, and not really comparable with the AAA games on the list.
It really underlines how subjective review scores can be. Ah well, there's no substitute for actually reading them.
Edit: rather than as a percentage of total games per system, it might be better as games reviewed per system.
I thought of that at first but... if there are more good available games to review, why would NL review the bad ones? They only have so many resources so they would tend towards the ones which will naturally get higher scores. I suppose an exception is Nintendo exclusives because they will get reviewed no matter what. But generally I would expect more games = higher percentage of reviewed games score high ( and conversely a smaller percentage of games gets any review at all, especially the subpar games).
Yeah, can totally see that. It would be interesting, but ultimately defeating, to spend a load of time and energy on reviewing bad games. I would imagine more games are played at NL towers than reviewed.
The way I was thinking of it, is that there are probably a load of potential 10/10s out there that haven't come onto the NL radar, which could skew things when comparing against the total amount. I think that's probably more speculative than your very reasonable point
@Dogorilla I find the case of NightSky particularly interesting here.
10/10 NL review score. OK. But then, when the 3DS eshop is about to close, and NL did their 'Countdown' series as the closure approached, NightSky wasn't even mentioned:
I didn't really hit the 3DS scene until the N3DS came out in 2015. I'm not sure I'd ever heard of NightSky before you made this thread. It's like NL reviewed it 10/10 and then forgot it even existed.
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@gcunit Yeah, it's an odd one. I think I remember Official Nintendo Magazine giving it 60-odd percent, which is more in line with the user consensus on this site. But the late Philip J Reed clearly saw something special in it, so I do want to give it a go on Steam (where it has 'very positive' reviews, incidentally) at some point to see what I think of it.
@Dogorilla I was just searching NightSky up myself out of curiosity and it apparently got nominated for a handful of awards when it initially came out (namely being an IGF Seamus McNally Finalist for what it's worth) so it does seem like it was a critical darling on release that just kind of faded into the background as more titles released for the system (it was a VERY early 3DS release after all).
I will say though: if Philip thought highly of it then I'll definitely take his word and give it a go later down the line myself
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I remember NightSky from when it first came out. It's a physics platform game with a lot of atmosphere and some interesting puzzles. I probably wouldn't rate it a ten but, again, it's something worth picking up in a sale. That'd have to be on Steam these days rather than the 3DS eShop, of course.
The developer, Nifflas, went on to create Affordable Space Adventures and work on Baba Is You, which I'd think are considerably better games, although neither of them made this list.
Oh Baba Is You was (even partially) made by Nifflas? I had no idea!
It's cool to see he's still around, since I remember him from the freeware days. Happy he's still around making games people actually know about. Felt the same way when another person I'd followed making freeware games went on to work on Stardew Valley.
Worth remembering that all of these opinions are some person's opinion at some point in time so you can't really expect consistency. But if we're playing the consistency/oddness game there's one thing that sticks out to me. The Gameboy
There's only one game that has got a 10 for the GB(C) and the further you look at it the more brutal it kinda is. That one game got a remaster on Switch which gets a 9. Even more fun, Return of Samus got a 10 on 3DS for its remaster but the original only gets a 7. I guess their count of reviews for that platform is fairly low but at the same time it's not like they're reviewing an entirely random selection of games. It just kinda feels like, in general, there's a bit of a bias against the GB(C)
Pokemon Red/Blue: 9/10
Mario Tennis: 8/10
Tetris: 8/10
Kirby's Dream Land: 7/10
Dr Mario: 5/10
Really interesting thread, and the discussion is quite thought-provoking...
On one hand, I appreciate that a review by a single person is a reasonably subjective take on a piece of media/art - but equally, a "10/10" could be objectively considered as a 'hard recommend' for the majority of the gaming population. I often assume a degree of margin, perhaps 2 points either side of a review, and then apply depending on taste. (EG. Lies of P could perhaps be an indicative 8/10, albeit for some a 6 or others a 10 depending on your genre tastes)
That si interesting Pokemon red/blue on hit 9/10. Those games were great, and I have fond memories as a kid playing them
If I were to nitpick any one game that I don’t feel like is a 10/10, it’s A Short Hike. Picked it up because of the review score and it being on sale, and is it a great game? Yes, but one of the best games of all time? I wouldn’t say so. I did most of what was to be done in the game, and I have never thought of it again until I saw it on the list. A breezy way to spend an afternoon, and not incredibly more.
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@JakedaArbok Always a matter of personal preference in the end. I rated it 9/10 but I almost never give 10s and personally I put Short Hike on my top 10 Switch game list. The game really sticks in my mind and it's pretty rare for a game to make me cry or otherwise be overcome with emotion. That emotional impact is I think what puts it over the edge for people who rate it high, so if the game didn't touch you in that way I can understand not being as impressed with it.
I didn't really have the emotional impact from A Short Hike (or at least that aspect of it didn't particularly stick with me) but I think I'd actually still give it a 10. I was really impressed by the way it takes the general gameplay style of an open-world adventure and distills it into a couple of hours where absolutely everything you can do in the game is fun and charming. Definitely need to replay it at some point and do all the side stuff I missed the first time round.
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Topic: Nintendo Life 10/10s
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