• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Is there a video game equivalent to a critically panned but sucessful movie?

C

ClayKavalier

Banned
I mean movies like Jack and Jill, which is nearly universally hated by critics but was a financial success.

I don't think there is really a video game equivalent. There really isn't any low-hanging fruit in games*. For example, someone who doesn't play games might look at what sells and think "Oh, people who play games think it's fun to kill things." But that isn't quite it, it isn't fun to kill things, it's fun to play games with responsive controls. It's fun to outsmart an opponent and get the drop on them. I can't think of any mechanics you can just thoughtlessly drop into a game and have a huge hit the way you can have Adam Sandler tell some dick jokes and be assured of some level of success. There has to be some thought and skill put into controls, level design, and other aspects of gameplay.

The closest things games have is stuff like CoD but those games are still review well, and even if you find the games tired at this point it's hard to deny that those games' mechanics are still well done.

*The one exception I can think of are all of the timer-based resource tapping games on mobile. It seems like it's pretty easy to slap a license on those and make money.
 
O

Orayn

Member
Destiny could be one of the best recent examples depending on how you interpret the 7-10 review scale. That and the fact that there are still some people who insist it was a commercial flop for whatever reason.
 
A

Arthr2ShdsJcksn

Banned
Destiny.

edit... Damn, beaten by a matter of seconds. It definitely wasn't a commercial flop, but many critics were lukewarm to negative on it.

What about Wii Play? That thing was garbage, but everyone bought it, even if it was just for the controller :)
 
digita1alchemy

digita1alchemy

Member
You don't see this very often with games because the shallow, big-budget blockbusters are the ones that reviewers shower praise on.
 
M

MrBadger

Member
kqz1pzs.gif


Critics hate him but he still managed to beat Mario
for a very brief amount of time in a region where Wii U was dead anyway.
#ThankKnack
 
W

WarpathDC

Junior Member
Basically half of the Wii third party library. At one point it was selling so well shit games were killing it via
filthy casuals
 
E

Euron

Member
Many of you are posting games that received okay to mediocre reviews but weren't actually flat out panned by critics. The original Just Dance recieved a 49 Average of Metacritic yet became a massive sales success and jumpstarted the biggest casual series in gaming today.
 
D

DrArchon

Member
I think 9 out of 10 licensed games work with this. Basically any game with a monster marketing budget that isn't aiming for acceptance from traditional gamers probably fits this bill.
 
G

Gentleman Jack

Member
What's the threshold for success? Shovelware wouldn't exist if it wasn't making a good profit for its publishers and there was a lot of that last gen.
 
H

Heng

Member
Would Evolve fit in this category? It gets a ton of hate but I'm not sure if it got enough sales to be considered a success.
 
SerTapTap

SerTapTap

Member
Every licensed game
Most Japanese niche games
Probably most shovelware turns a profit

Heng said:
Would Evolve fit in this category? It gets a ton of hate but I'm not sure if it got enough sales to be considered a success.
Click to expand...

Evolve was an early critical darling before relase and still has a decent metacritic score
 
A

Arthr2ShdsJcksn

Banned
SiniisteR said:
I doubt that counts. An average 7/10 is hardly universally panned.
Click to expand...

In the world of video game reviews, I feel an average of 7/10 is the equivalent of a turd sandwich. There aren't enough serious critics out there (are there any?), and the various scales are completely out of whack.

Nameless said:
Seeing people mention Destiny sorta highlights the strange standard games are held to. A film with 75+ % on Rotten Tomatoes is considered a critical success, whereas a game with 75% on Gamerankings/Metacritic isn't.
Click to expand...

Film criticism has it's own problems, but I don't think game and film review scores are comparable.
 
Nameless

Nameless

Member
Seeing people mention Destiny sorta highlights the strange standard games are held to. A film with 75 % on Rotten Tomatoes is considered a critical success, whereas a game with 75% on Gamerankings/Metacritic isn't.
 
A

Alex_Mexico

Member
banefirelord said:
Watch_Dogs
Click to expand...
that got an 80 on Metacritic. That's nowhere close to being panned. We're talking about red or close to red numbers on Metacritic as critically panned.

Jack and Jill has a 3%, not an 80% on RT after all....


I have one good example that's not a lame licensed tie-in: Wii Music. That game was universally panned by gaming media but because it had Wii on the title it still managed to sell over 2 million copies (and still was the worst selling Wii-something game!).
 
O

Oersted

Member
Movie tie ins quite often fit the bill.

Nameless said:
Seeing people mention Destiny sorta highlights the strange standard games are held to. A film with 75 % on Rotten Tomatoes is considered a critical success, whereas a game with 75% on Gamerankings/Metacritic isn't.
Click to expand...

Games and movies are very different beasts, criticalwise. A movie/TV-series with a story like Witcher would probably get panned to hell and back, while for videogames things like conttolinputs and gameplay matter.

I know, playing Captain Obvious here.
 
C

Corpekata

Banned
Nameless said:
Seeing people mention Destiny sorta highlights the strange standard games are held to. A film with 75 % on Rotten Tomatoes is considered a critical success, whereas a game with 75% on Gamerankings/Metacritic isn't.
Click to expand...

Doesn't really highlight any high standards as much as it does that certain reviewer types don't use number scales well.

TV shows, for instance, have a similar problem with games in that reviewers rarely dip below the C or 7/10.

Movie writers use the entire scale far more often.
 
A

AuthenticM

Member
I think Enter The Matrix sold millions of copies despite getting wrecked by critics, from what I remember. I might be wrong.
 
A

A Dead Diehard

Member
Both Shadow the Hedgehog and Sonic 2006 got trashed by critics, but iirc still sold well enough for them to be listed as greatest hits for their systems.
 
P

PotionBleue

Member
Euron Crow's Eye said:
Many of you are posting games that received okay to mediocre reviews but weren't actually flat out panned by critics. The original Just Dance recieved a 49 Average of Metacritic yet became a massive sales success and jumpstarted the biggest casual series in gaming today.
Click to expand...
Kyzon said:
The first just dance iirc
Click to expand...

Yes, I was also thinking about Just Dance.

According to Ubisoft, the Just Dance franchise sales reached 54 million units last year, and Just Dance (1) on Wii sold a ton.

It's actually Ubisoft's second best selling franchise, only behind Assassin's Creed.

It's also an excellent example of reviewers completely missing the point, since unlike Sonic 2006, Just Dance 1 got good consumer reviews on metacritic and Amazon (4.3/5 with 1,000+ reviews).

justdance_metascore_agoex6.png
 
P

Platy

Member
The less you consider some game a "real videogame" the higher the chances of fitting the thread.

Casual games, Phone games, Facebook games
 
SinShep

SinShep

Member
Arthr2ShdsJcksn said:
In the world of video game reviews, I feel an average of 7/10 is the equivalent of a turd sandwich. There aren't enough serious critics out there (are there any?), and the various scales are completely out of whack.
Click to expand...

But that still doesn't mean it was universally panned. The majority of reviews for it all share the same critiques of it. Great gunplay and art style, but terrible story and amount of content. It was more generally disappointing than generally bad.

Plus, saying that any game that's 7/10 is considered a turd is throwing a lot of great games under the bus.
 
M

Miracle

Member
Brink? I remember how huge this game was before release. Panned by critics I know for sure, how well did it do in sales?
 
F

Fury451

Banned
Fasty said:
This.

Also what about Medal of Honour?
Click to expand...

I'm not sure that counts as panned necessarily. Although I suppose it depends on which one you're talking about exactly- some entries haven't fared too well, but I was assuming the 2010 one, which was in the 70s on metacritic.

Wasn't one of the EA sports games this gen pretty viciously savaged, but still sold a lot as usual? I can't remember what it was though.
 
C

Coppanuva

Member
Nameless said:
Seeing people mention Destiny sorta highlights the strange standard games are held to. A film with 75 % on Rotten Tomatoes is considered a critical success, whereas a game with 75% on Gamerankings/Metacritic isn't.
Click to expand...

Meracritic and rt percentage aren't directly comparable even for the same medium though. Isn't rt simply a percentage of reviewers w/o said the movie was enjoyable, whereas meta is an average of scores.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

[Automaton West] Rise of the Ronin’s overseas critic reviews booed in Japan
Opinion 2
95
7K
Plague Doctor replied
Why Isn't There an IMDb Equivalent for Video Game User Ratings?
16
2K
Elysium44 replied
Paul Tassi — Positive ‘Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League’ User Reviews Split Unusually From Critics
Opinion Analysis
44
2K
poppabk replied
Octopath Traveler 2 is better than Final Fantasy 16 (and any Square Enix game since 2006)
2
94
5K
Poppyseed replied
Shadow Man Remastered made me realize how some of these remasters are better left in the past
2
87
5K
coffinbirth replied
Top Bottom