In fact, the Switch had four games scoring 90 or higher this year, more than the PS4 and XB1 combined.Forget everything you know about The Legend of Zelda games. In less than 10 months, the Switch already has two such games, and they both rank among the 20 highest-scoring games released for any platform in Metacritic's history.
The Xbox One and PS4 each have just one game scoring above 95 in their four-year histories. It was quite a launch year for Nintendo's newest console.
BEST PS3 RPGS 2017 PC
If you want to be more generous and include XB1 console exclusives (games that are also available on PC but not on any other console), the Xbox fares slightly better, with Cuphead and Forza Motorsport 7 both scoring 86. Trying to decide on a console to buy? It can't be a good sign that the year's highest-scoring Xbox One exclusive is a DLC pack based on Mattel's Hot Wheels toys. The total of Xbox One exclusives receiving positive reviews in 2017? A mere one. The problem? Virtually all of those good Xbox One games could also be found on other platforms.
In fact, 43.5% of all Xbox One releases received positive reviews in the past year, a fairly significant increase over the 2016 approval rate of 36.1% and also higher than the figure for the rival PlayStation 4 console. The good news for Microsoft's console in 2017? The average Metascore for all XB1 releases increased to 71.2 from just 69.8 in 2016. Hatsune Miku: Project Diva Future Tone - Future Sound Hatsune Miku: Project Diva Future Tone - Colorful Tone Terrific reviews were accompanied by strong sales, with the game becoming the best-selling new IP of all time on the PS4. A third-person, open-world, action/RPG/survival game that is the first new property in over a decade from Killzone developer Guerrilla Games, Horizon centers on the female archer Aloy in a colorful but post-apocalyptic future world that blends nature and technology and the old and the new (think robotic dinosaurs, for example). Not every great game needs to be a sequel. The average Metascore for PS4 games also ticked up one point (from 69.1 to 70.1) compared to the prior year.
That percentage represents a slight uptick compared to 2016, when the approval rate was below 36%. Overall, 37.7% of PS4 games released during 2017 received positive reviews from critics. While Sony's console saw only two games scoring 90 or above in 2017-down from four in 2016 and six in 2015-there were many more positively reviewed PlayStation exclusive titles this year: 20, compared to 13 the prior year. Now, let's take a look at the best games of 2017 by platform. Only games with 7 or more reviews are included in this and every other list that follows. Games are ranked by Metascore prior to rounding. The 90+ Club: The Best-Reviewed Games of 2017 (Any Platform*) Percentages may not add up to 100% due to rounding.Īnd here are 2017's best-reviewed titles, regardless of platform: The pie charts reflect the percentage of all releases for each console with Positive Reviews (receiving a Metascore of 75 or higher indicating), Mixed Reviews (receiving a Metascore of 50- 74), and Negative Reviews (receiving a Metascore of 49 or below). ** Excludes games with fewer than 7 reviews.Īll Metascore data for this and all other tables in this report is from December 31, 2017. * Games with 4 or more reviews in Metacritic's database released between Januand Decem(based on North American release dates, except in cases where a game has not been released in North America). Before that, here's a quick look at how each of the gaming platforms compared during the past year. One of those great 2017 newcomers was even brand-new IP, and from an indie developer at that: Giant Sparrow's adventure game What Remains of Edith Finch, which scored 92 in its Xbox One edition.Ī bit further down the page, we'll reveal this year's best-reviewed games for each console (plus sections on PC and handheld games). That's up from just six such titles in 2016. In all, 10 different titles (accounting for 11 total products, thanks to one multi-platform release) scored 90 or higher in 2017. Both titles were for Nintendo's brand-new Switch console, with the latest Zelda release, Breath of the Wild, barely edging out Super Mario Odyssey (by less than 0.3) to take the title of Metacritic's Game of the Year for 2017. After complaining for the past few years about a dearth of high-scoring game releases, 2017 saw two different games score 97, which represents the highest year-end Metascore for any game since 2013. Here's a switch-or make that a pair of Switch releases.