It’s the end of the year, a time of reflection, so today we’re going to look back over the last 12 months of reviews across Nintendo Life. Reviews are our “bread and butter” so to speak, but have become quite a challenge for us as a team. The sheer amount of games currently being released means it’s almost impossible to review everything; therefore, we have to pick and choose games we think our audience is most interested in hearing about.
This year we reviewed a total of 603 games – now that is a lot of games. How many of those reviews do you think you read? All of them? Good answer. Across those 603 reviews you generated nearly 25,000 comments, we’ll forgive you if you didn’t read all of those.
In terms of spread, 472 of the games reviewed were for Switch eShop, then 118 Switch retail games, 10 retail 3DS games, only 2 Nintendo 3DS eShop games, and finally 1 mobile game.
Top Rated Games 2018
It’s been a solid, if not amazing, second year for Nintendo Switch which saw us dish out only three 10/10 – Outstanding scores. Can you guess which they were?
The first was back in January when we awarded the amazing adventure/platformer Celeste the top score. Second was Bithell Games’ text-em-up Subsurface Circular in March. Finally, unsurprisingly, was just a couple of weeks ago with a small release called Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
Some other high scoring games were: Firewatch, Hyper Light Drifter: Special Edition, Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom, Just Shapes & Beats, Dragon Blaze, Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna – The Golden Country, WarioWare Gold, Pokémon Crystal Version, Hollow Knight, and Iconoclasts.
Outside of that, we awarded a total of 82 games with 9/10, 181 games with 8/10, 153 games with 7/10 and 97 games 6/10.
Worst Rated Games
Whenever we review a game we have to give it a fair shake – without this integrity the voice of the site is meaningless. Now, when we’re picking games to review we’ll avoid the games that obviously look poor; you don’t need us to tell you about every single release, right? That said, we still reviewed some clangers this year, dishing out 54 scores of 5/10, 21 scores of 4/10, 9 scores of 3/10, 2 for 2/10 and incredibly one 1/10. Ouch.
Most Viewed Reviews
As mentioned above, whenever we’re sifting through the release list every week we have to make decisions on which reviews are going to be useful to the majority of our readers. This task isn’t as simple as it sounds; we don’t simply go after the most popular games, as often really popular games are expected to be good enough for an impulse purchase. In lots of ways we focus our attention on the games that look like they have the potential to be great, but also have the potential to fall flat, hence requiring a review.
To us, a successful review is one that helps inform as many people as possible and help their purchasing decision, good or bad. The main metric we have to measure this is views, so which did you read most this year?
Most views scoring 10-6
- Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Let’s Go, Eevee!
- Starlink: Battle For Atlas
- South Park: The Fractured But Whole
- Octopath Traveler
- Shining Resonance Refrain
- Hollow Knight
- Saturday Morning RPG
- Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana
- Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition
- Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
Most views scoring 5-1
- Hollow
- Gal*Gun 2
- Ark: Survival Evolved
- Cities: Skylines
- Scribblenauts: Showdown
- R.B.I. Baseball 18
- Adventure Time: Pirates of the Enchiridion
- Senran Kagura Reflexions
- Tennis
- Fantasy Hero ~unsigned legacy~
Least views (any score)
- Toast Time: Smash Up!
- Super Hyperactive Ninja
- Nidhogg 2
- Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP
- 6180 the moon
- Professional Farmer: Nintendo Switch Edition
- NAIRI: Tower Of Shirin
- Spheroids
- Gunhouse
- Rock Boshers DX: Director’s Cut
Another metric we can look at is social media, and how often our reviews are shared. This indicates that someone found it useful and wanted to share it.
Most shared (any score)
- Everspace – Stellar Edition
- Starlink: Battle For Atlas
- Horizon Chase Turbo
- Mega Man 11
- The Alliance Alive
- South Park: The Fractured But Whole
- Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
- Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle
- Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Let’s Go, Eevee!
- Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker
As you can see, it’s extremely difficult for us to predict how many views or shares a review will get and often the results are surprising. Alas, we will keep trying to perfect our formula in 2019.
If you read, liked, shared or commented on any of our reviews this year, thank you! Were there any games we didn’t review that you wanted to see in 2018? Let us know in the comments below.