2013: A Year in Reviews

by marino

2013 has been one hell of a year, you guys...on multiple levels. Before we say farewell and/or good riddance, let's take a look back at the games that were reviewed on Giant Bomb this year. Unfortunately, this is the only year-end data that I have to present to you this year. Maybe 2014 will be the return of achievement data or site data. We can only hope.

It was a relatively slow year for reviews on the site. There's probably multiple reasons for this including a pretty sizable drought prior to the release of the new consoles. Even so, we ended up averaging a little over one per week. Admittedly, there's not going to be a ton of analysis in the images that follow, but I hope you enjoy the pretty colors and some of the best community art from this year.

Art Credits

@silentz0r's "The Giant Bomb Show" (Hannah Barbara)
@screamingghost's "Nighthawks"
@fobwashed's E3 "Window Jeff" A-Ha Photoshop
@humanity's "Jeff in Video Games: The Last of Us Edition"
@teddie's "Set Sail for Bombing Horizons" (Wind Waker)

Previous "Year in Reviews"

So, let's get to it...

Alex

Once again, Alex reviewed more games than anyone else this year (24). Maybe-not-so-surprisingly, he was the only reviewer to dish out a 1-star review this year, and there were three (Aliens: Colonial Marines, The Walking Dead: Survival Instincts, and NBA Live). The one game Alex truly loved? Rayman Legends.

Brad

Brad started off the reviews this year with a bang. The new Devil May Cry was the first review of 2013 and immediately put 5-stars on the board. His second was StarCraft, and if you can't figure out what the other 5-star review from Brad was this year, you've been living under a rock. Percentage-wise, Brad liked more games (4's & 5's) this year than in 2012 (56% to 46%).

Jeff

Jeff didn't hate any games this year! Okay, that's not true. Of the 15 games he reviewed though, he obviously liked most of them. Jeff's two 5-stars came from two of the biggest games of the year; GTA5 and BioShock.

Patrick

This is the most interesting pie chart ever created. Thanks, Patrick. His 5-star games are quite diverse though. I don't think there's anything similar about The Last of Us, Gone Home, and Super Mario 3D World. Also worth noting is that Patrick did not give anything 5-stars last year.

Staff

You've been staring at Rorie-Tingle for a solid three minutes before you even read this caption, haven't you?

Stars

Although there were fewer reviews this year, the percentages ended up being pretty similar. We had exactly 16% on 5-star reviews last year too.

Platform

As you can see, the new consoles are already making a pretty big impact on the totals here. Also, keep in mind that there is some overlap in this category. For example, Brad's review of Brothers covers the XBLA, PS3N, and PC, so that gets counted towards all three of those categories.If you're a crazy person and want to yell at me about the order in which the wedges in my pie charts are, here's a bar graph just for you.

Monthly

Guess which month new hardware came out! Man, that Summer drought was rough. And when was the last time so few games came out in October. 2013, you so crazy.

Publishers

This is the first time I've put this data into the mix. For the record, "2K" includes both 2K Games and 2K Sports. Same goes for EA.

Annual

Lastly, here's a look at the total reviews per year based on stars. Blue is 5, green is 4, etc. While it may "look" like a steady decline in the number of reviews, it's actually not. From left to right, that's 98, 147, 107, 102, 96, 55 for a total of 605. So, 2009 and 2013 are the outliers, but we're still averaging almost exactly 100 per year.