Famitsu - Scoring

Scoring

Video games are graded in Famitsū by a panel of four video game reviewers. Each reviewer gives a score from zero to ten (ten being best). The scores of the four reviewers are then added up with a possible score of forty. From the twenty games awarded with the perfect score so far, three are for the Nintendo DS and five are for the Wii. The PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 have three games with perfect score, including two games which attained forty in both platforms, the others are all for different platforms with only one title each. Franchises with multiple perfect score winners include The Legend of Zelda with three titles, Metal Gear and Final Fantasy with two titles each.

Every game but one with a perfect score so far is from a Japanese company, eight of them being published/developed by Nintendo, four by Square Enix, two by Sega and two by Konami. The only completely foreign game to achieve a perfect score so far is The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim by Bethesda Softworks. Other foreign games that have achieved near-perfect scores are L.A. Noire, Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto IV - all three of which came from Rockstar Games; Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Call of Duty: Black Ops, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 - all from Activision; and Gears of War 3 from Epic Games. (Kingdom Hearts II is a joint effort between Square Enix and the U.S.-based Buena Vista Games.) Famitsū Wave DVD does not grade video games.