Walter White – the one who knocks, the danger, and the force behind the highest-rated show on TV?
In the upcoming 2014 edition of the Guinness World Records, Breaking Badwill have its own entry. It’ll be in there under the record “Highest-Rated TV Series.” So I guess Guinness just settled it – Breaking Bad beats The Wire. Now everybody can stop arguing. Sorry Omar. Sorry Bubbles. Sorry Snoop.
Apparently, Guinness looked to reveiw aggregation site Metacritic as the source for their record. Breaking Bad season 5 currently boasts a 99 out of 100 score on the site. Apparently, Guinness is only referencing the latest season when they say “highest-rated,” as Breaking Bad‘s scores for seasons 1-4 are 74, 85, 89, and 96, respectively. That’s an average of 88.6 for the whole series.
On the other hand HBO’s The Wire, which many TV lovers will tell you is the only other show that stacks up to Breaking Bad, has a 91.6 average rating over its 5-season run. But it’s highest score for any particular season was only 98.
Other shows in the canon like The Sopranos don’t feature full Metacritic scores for seasons 4 or 5.
So what have we learned? Well, Guinness says Breaking Bad is the highest rated, but they’re only looking at the latest season. Overall, The Wire edges it out in terms of average score throughout the whole series.
Metacritic, the popular video game review aggregator, has released its third yearly breakdown of the best gaming publishers. The rankings come as an aggregate of the critic Metacritic scores of each publisher’s titles released in 2012. Sales and user reviews are not taken into account.
Somewhat surprisingly, Electronic Arts (EA) has topped review charts this year. This is despite being voted “Worst Company in America” by gamers fed-up with day-one DLC and micro-transactions that are popping up in every one of the publisher’s releases.
Though it may be hard to remember due to the scandals over its ending and day-one DLC, Mass Effect 3 was well-reviewed upon release and tops EA’s list of 2012 games with a Metacritic score of 93. The publisher’s average score was 75.2, and none of its games scored a 49 or lower.
The next three publishers on the list are all first-party publishers: Microsoft with a 73, Sony with a 72.3, and Nintendo with a 71.2. Microsoft was led by Mark of the Ninja‘s 91, but was balanced out by poorly rated Kinect and Xbox LIVE Arcade games. Nintendo was similarly balanced by casual-gamer targeted titles, though Xenoblade Chronicles‘ 92 saved it from falling lower on the list. Similar to EA, Sony also did not have any scores fall below 50, though a majority of its titles fell into the “average” range from 50 to 75.
Capcom (70.4), Warner Bros (70.6), Ubisoft (68.2), Konami (69), Sega (69.9), and Activision Blizzard (64.4) rounded out the top ten. Activision’s highest-rated title was Diablo III (88), but the publisher was brought low by movie tie-in games such as 007 Legends, which managed a 25 Metacritic score.
As for the “mid-size” publisher (those that released between 7 and 14 titles) rankings, Take-Two Interactive (83.1), Telltale Games (83.9), and Square Enix (75.2) led the list. Telltale Games was buoyed by each episode of its The Walking Dead adventure game, which managed to win quite a few game of the year awards.
When Activision launched the sequel to the Infinity Ward gem, Modern Warfare, the second installment broke all kinds of video game-related sales records. Can we expect a repeat now that Modern Warfare 3 is available? If I were a magic eight ball, signs would point to yes. Not that I have special insight to the purchasing habits of gamers, but hey, some trends are pretty obvious to see.
In fact, Modern Warfare 2 sold so well, it changed the landscape of how video games are perceived, snarky dating guides by damned. No longer are video games restricted to the basement dwellers who prefer to live their lives vicariously through animated pixels and polygons. The financial success of MW2 made it clear video games had finally graduated to a legitimate form of entertainment. Considering the records the game broke, the evolution was unavoidable.
With that in mind, can we expect the same from Modern Warfare 3, which hit the stores Tuesday morning at midnight, and needless to say, the Internet is reacting in a giddy manner. Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook are just some of the places the Modern Warfare 3 release is being celebrated.
And then the was the push from Activision themselves, which provided us with the nifty “Vet and n00b” commercial:
It should be noted there’s something of backlash aimed at Modern Warfare 3, but that’s just par for the course with the gaming community. It’s the exact same mentality that drives the “PS3 versus the Xbox 360 versus PC gaming” flamewars that tend to dominate these kinds of discussions. Here’s what should be the final word on these useless back and forths — like what you like folks — although, I’m afraid it will fall on deaf ears:
As for the reaction to the MW3 launch, Twitter naturally weighed in as the #MW3 hashtag is a current trend, and much like other trends, people are latching onto this one, too:
For what it’s worth, the majority of the reviews for MW3 have been quite glowing, but this is one game that’s probably “bad review” proof, that is, it doesn’t matter if Yahtzee Croshaw happens to rip it to shreds — something that hasn’t happened yet — people are still going to buy it like hotcakes.
Oddly enough, however, while the critics seem to be enjoying MW3, the anti-Modern Warfare folks are busy trolling over at Metacritic:
Notice the official reviews are good, but the user reviews are not. This is a direct result of the anti-Modern Warfare crowd, because, I guess, if you don’t like a game, it’s not allowed to get good reviews?
Whatever the case, the good is outweighing the negative, just as long as you aren’t this dude’s girlfriend:
While there have been some oddities concerning the launch — a truck in France getting jacked, resulting in 6000 copies of MW3 being stolen, or the overloading issues with Modern Warfare Elite — the day still belongs to Modern Warfare 3, that is, until Skyrim comes out on Friday.
