Have we had any AAA titles score 90+ this gen?

vicissitudes said:
I remember back in 2007 when the PS3 had been out for almost a year, we already had quite a few 90+ games on "next-gen" consoles: Gears of War, Bioshock, Guitar Hero 2, Elder Scrolls IV, Halo 3, and followed closely by Call of Duty 4, Mass Effect, The Orange Box, and Rock Band.

Now that the Xbone and PS4 have been out for nearly a year and looking at the big AAA titles so far: launch titles all more or less disappointed, hyped up games like Second Son and Titanfall landed in the 80s, and Destiny looks like it'll follow suit. Even the feelings here towards these games seem more tepid. (and sorry I'm not counting TLOU:R since it's a remaster of a PS3 game)?
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To be consistent, you shouldn't count Guitar Hero 2 either then, as it was a port of a PS2 game.
 
I think a lot of the reason the PS3 got so many big hitters early on is because the 360 had already been out a year to get developers into gear. This time the basically started at the same time (I know, Nintendo was earlier) so it's going to take a little longer to get the next (now current) gen effort really kicked off.

Also, I think we're finally starting to see the ratings standards shift downward away from school grades and more to a balanced rating system. Are the games actually worse in comparison? I don't think so, personally Destiny is way more enjoyable than Resistance/Warhawk/any of the other PS3 early shooters.
 
Sho_Nuff82 said:
3D World is definitely AAA. I might argue that Rayman Legends is not, relative to the money Ubi spends on making and marketing their open world games.
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I agree, I just don't really see how we are suppose to set a standard for budget and marketing. Different companies have different priorities and spend different amounts on their titles. AAA platformers probably don't cost as much to produce as AAA shooters for example. I just define AAA according to what the publisher has positioned as their major games for that time period.
 
vicissitudes said:
Feelings on Metacritic aside, I do see it as a fairly good reflection of the general reception of a game, both by critics and by players (I'm talking about the official score, not the user score).

I remember back in 2007 when the PS3 had been out for almost a year, we already had quite a few 90+ games on "next-gen" consoles: Gears of War, Bioshock, Guitar Hero 2, Elder Scrolls IV, Halo 3, and followed closely by Call of Duty 4, Mass Effect, The Orange Box, and Rock Band.

Now that the Xbone and PS4 have been out for nearly a year and looking at the big AAA titles so far: launch titles all more or less disappointed, hyped up games like Second Son and Titanfall landed in the 80s, and Destiny looks like it'll follow suit. Even the feelings here towards these games seem more tepid. (and sorry I'm not counting TLOU:R since it's a remaster of a PS3 game)

Am I off-base here or have the AAA efforts so far this gen been lackluster compared to what we got early last-gen?
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You're forgetting that the Xbox 360 had already been out for a full year by the time the PS3 launched. 2015 should be the current gen console's "2007" so to speak.

That being said I agree that this year's games have been kind of disappointing. At this point in time the 360 already had system seller games like Dead Rising and Oblivion, with Gears of War right on the horizon.
 
I get the feeling reviewers are much more harsh now than a few years back.
Not really sure what cause the change but games like Watch Dogs and Destiny would have gotten perfect 10/10s from everyone in the past. Maybe the blow back from games like mass effect 3, dragon age 2 and bioshock infinite getting absurdly high score considering their actual quality has caused some change.

either way i feel AAA games are just more fairly rated now but they are still as good/bad as they have always been. expect only indie darlings and a select few AAAs to reach 90+ this gen.
 
Gotdatmoney said:
I agree, I just don't really see how we are suppose to set a standard for budget and marketing. Different companies have different priorities and spend different amounts on their titles. AAA platformers probably don't cost as much to produce as AAA shooters for example. I just define AAA according to what the publisher has positioned as their major games for that time period.
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It's an interesting (though also ultimately meaningless) distinction. I personally think it should be held to standards of the platform. Regardless of the genre, nobody's spending more money on Wii U focused releases than Nintendo on a Mario game. I don't know whether it would compare to the amount spent on a game focused for Xbox/Playstation, but it also isn't entirely relevant since Nintendo has done a lot to put themselves almost in a different market segment altogether from those two.
 
Guys, Wii U games don't count. It's not next gen, it's last gen. Not the same games, not the same content :p

SM3DW being at 93 is awesome and it seems to be the only AAA game that isn't a port or remaster above a 90 metacritic rating.
 
Dawg said:
PS4 has a couple of 90+ games.

screenshot_2014-09-11dcx96.png


Unfortunately, they're all ports/remasters.
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I think the user reviews shown here are more accurate than the actual score, although I can't speak for the last of us since I haven't played it. Generally speaking, I haven't seen anything worthy of a +90 score at all in quite a while. Notable exception may be the new mario 3d world / mario kart, neither of which I have had chance to get my mits on but that seem to be highly rated by almost all
 
Archaix said:
It's an interesting (though also ultimately meaningless) distinction. I personally think it should be held to standards of the platform. Regardless of the genre, nobody's spending more money on Wii U focused releases than Nintendo on a Mario game. I don't know whether it would compare to the amount spent on a game focused for Xbox/Playstation, but it also isn't entirely relevant since Nintendo has done a lot to put themselves almost in a different market segment altogether from those two.
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That falls a bit flat when you extend to things like 3DS and Vita though. What does a AAA vita title look like? It's pretty much why I don't really put much weight into the whole "AAA" philosophy. I don't think we can ever truly know.
 
Sayter said:
No, but I can read.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAA_(game_industry)
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You obviously didn't read it very well then, if you you think it's only based on cost of development.

An AAA title is intended to demonstrate the very best within a gaming company or franchise.[5][better source needed] Examples of such games are: Crysis, Halo, Uncharted, Tomb Raider, Mass Effect, Skyrim, Grand Theft Auto, and Half-Life. Others like Aliens: Colonial Marines, although initially regarded to be AAA,[13] after release, several reviewers point out the many flaws of the game.

Games not considered to be AAA have been referred to as "B titles",[14] by analogy to B-movies.[15]
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It's about quality - not budget. Alien: Colonial Marines, despite originally classified as AAA title due to budget, is basically a B or AA game.

Super Mario 3D World is currently the top rated game on the Wii U chiming in at a 93, and one of the top rated overall current Gen titles out there. It also had a massive marketing campaign - is getting console bundles - and has sold almost 2.5 million units, which at the time was around 50% of the install base.

I hate when folks are like "so Destiny cost $500 million. That's a AAA title. If you only spend $20 million, it can't be AAA". AAA has always been a quality indicator. Ironically enough, the origins are based off of Nintendo's own seal of quality - an indicator of a High Quality product out of Nintendo.

Also, at least critically, it appears 3D World > Destiny, even if Destiny is more popular.

I'll take the quality and polish of Nintendo games over a lot of supposed AAA games in the industry that release with countless bugs, missing content, etc. Battlefield 4 might be part of a traditional AAA franchise, but the game itself was piss poor in quality and fundamentally broken. I'll take Mario Kart with it's lack of any major issues over that any day.

heck compare NBA franchises. NBA Live 14 was not even close to the quality of the 2k version. By comparison, it's a AA game, despite coming from a high budget studio.
 
I don't see a (non port) game hitting 90+ this year either. I just barely jumped in this week to next gen, excited regardless.

Getting a Wii U soon also, which seems to have the best exclusives.
 
I think in the age of quick looks, let's plays etc review scores are completely irrelevant to the quality of any game. Look at how much coverage Destiny has had and no real reviews haven't hurt sales at all.
 
Gotdatmoney said:
That falls a bit flat when you extend to things like 3DS and Vita though. What does a AAA vita title look like? It's pretty much why I don't really put much weight into the whole "AAA" philosophy. I don't think we can ever truly know.
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Most developers are quite open about what constitutes their AAA portfolio during their earnings calls. Some companies, like EA, are almost exclusively AAA/mobile nowadays. Expectations can give you a pretty good idea as well. If the next Far Cry only sold as well as Rayman Legends, Ubi would stop making Far Cry games altogether.

By their very nature, it's almost impossible to spend as much on a handheld game as a high end console game, because the content and fidelity is limited by the hardware and storage space. Still, there are handheld games that are certainly promoted as much as any AAA console game (Pokémon, for example), so they probably fall under the same umbrella.
 
looking at the rest of the year the only game I can see getting 90+ is smash, MC collection, and some other game that IM forgetting right now.
 
shiftplusone said:
Nintendo starting the gen and spending 2 years farting around isn't quite the same scenario as MS/Sony delivering big titles a year in

There is no oblivion this gen 4 months after it really started like last time though, and a year in Epic delivered the first Gears. No comparable scenario this time
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Nintendo farting around for the first year is really no different than what Sony and Microsoft have been doing. Except Nintendo farted around with at least a few of great games, while Sony and Microsoft haven't really released anything worth buying their systems over. And it looks like they won't have anything worthwhile for the system until 2015.

I'm not defending the Nintendo droughts, but in its first year it had New Super/Luigi U, Zombi U, Nintendo Land, The Wonderful 101, Lego City Undercover, and Pikmin 3. And if you include games like Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate and Wind Waker HD, the Wii U has had a vastly superior first year to what the PS4 and X1 have had so far.
 
The debate over what is or isn't "AAA" is a very tired one in my opinion. Is Batman Arkham Knight AAA with a studio of 150 people, when Assassin's Creed has what, over 1000 people working on it annually? In my opinion, if a new release costs $60 or whatnot, we might as well call it AAA regardless of budget or employee count, as we the consumer are paying an "AAA" price for said product. It's certainly not a perfect definition, especially considering a product like Trials Fusion, but it's an easy one for our wallets to understand at the very least, and doesn't have that many exceptions.

Anyway, there is still October and November to come. Not that I really think any of those games will hit 90 on Metacritic. But it's certainly possible.
 
Aroll said:
You obviously didn't read it very well then, if you you think it's only based on cost of development.
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Never said it was ONLY about budget.

In the video game industry, AAA (pronounced "triple A") is a classification term used for games with the highest development budgets and levels of promotion.[1][2][3][4] A title considered to be AAA is therefore expected to be a high quality game and to be among the year's bestsellers.[5][not in citation given]
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SM3DW may have had the quality. But, it never had the budget. You need both to make it AAA.
 
Super Mario 3D World.

Deussano said:
Wii U is current gen? I know it is an active console...
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When you determine generations solely by power it gets extremely arbitrary and doesn't make sense. With that reasoning Ouya is part of the 6th generation. It makes a lot more sense to group together consoles by release date periods, at least in my opinion.
 
Storm Kyleis said:
Super Mario 3D World is the only one right now.
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Deservedly so, though I can't help but feel Tropical Freeze deserves more praise and attention than it got. It's definitely way better than anything on PS4 but the reviews certainly wouldn't have you believe it.
 
Sayter said:
SM3DW may have had the quality. But, it never had the budget. You need both to make it AAA.
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AAA also needs quality? That's a new one. The current definition of AAA is budget only. Which explains turds like GTA IV.

In fact when you include quality, there won't be much left :P
 
not yet (not counting remasters/ platform ports) though reckon the first will either be Bloodborne or Batman Arkham Knight maybe Witcher 3 but think that will be high 80's
 
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