This shows very clearly that graphics sell games better than gameplay and it probably ends the debate that raises over and over in this forum.
Well I wouldn't phrase it like that. I think that it's just the shooter genre which is very picky about graphics. Think of e.g. Dragon Age 2 - its graphics were semibad for modern standards (compare it to e.g. The Witcher 2 which wasn't even done by a team that big) but it still got great ratings...
I think the problem with shooter reviews most magazines do is that they select some "reference games" like e.g. Crysis or CoD. Any game then has to compare with those and wherever they don't follow the forumla they gather demerits...
