Equivalent site for books or video games?

[BleuPanda]

I've been using this site for music recommendations and They Shoot Pictures for films, but I have no idea about these other two. I feel video game reviews are a large portion of the Internet, so it's not hard to find video game recommendations, but I can't even find a review aggregate for books.

Any idea of an am-equivalent for these media? And if not, anybody have any tips on how to get one started?

[Chambord]

I'm also looking for a book equivalent for TSPDT / AM but haven't found anything. There are several reliable best of lists / polls from writers / critics and I'm using those for book recommendations (as long as nobody compiled them yet). In fact there is a compilation but is based mostly on english language book lists so I don't currently use it: http://thegreatestbooks.org/

The lists I use:

Norwegian Book Clubs' top 100 books of all time
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_100_Be ... f_All_Time

The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books
http://www.toptenbooks.net/list-books

Newsweek's Top 100 Books: The Meta-List
http://www.librarything.com/bookaward/N ... +Meta-List

The Telegraph's 100 novels everyone should read
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/book ... -read.html

Daniel S. Burt's Novel 100
http://www.adherents.com/people/100_novel.html

Ted Gioia's The 100 Greatest Novels
http://greatbooksguide.com/OneHundredGr ... ovels.html

MUBI USERS' FAVOURITE BOOKS (2012 poll)
http://mubi.com/lists/mubi-users-favourite-books

[Nassim]

I've been using this site for music recommendations and They Shoot Pictures for films, but I have no idea about these other two. I feel video game reviews are a large portion of the Internet, so it's not hard to find video game recommendations, but I can't even find a review aggregate for books.

Any idea of an am-equivalent for these media? And if not, anybody have any tips on how to get one started?

There is this one for videogame, it's far from perfect but that's a start http://www.filibustercartoons.com/games.htm

[Live in Phoenix]

Metacritic has a database of all the video games from the 21st century, and a few from before then. Rotten Tomatoes used to have something like that, but it looks like they tossed it (as Metacritic had a database for new books for a couple years, then tossed it).

http://www.metacritic.com/browse/games/ ... &sort=desc

I'm surprised that even the filibustercartoons site exists, because I don't think that video games (let alone books) have been subjected to the same kind of "list of lists" frenzy that music and movies receive. For games, you would probably have to do something like cobble together any available full-length lists from filibustercartoons, and throw Metacritic and allgame.com (which tries to review everything) into the mix.

Edit: Actually, adding in "contemporary" reviews (print or online) would really open the floodgates, wouldn't it? Nothing but sympathy for compilers...

[Jeff]

Googling "Acclaimed video games" turned up this:
http://www.acclaimedvideogames.org/

There's also the aforementioned http://www.filibustercartoons.com/games.htm, but I think I prefer the acclaimedvideogames site after poking around both for a bit.

At a loss for literature though.

[Jirin]

There's less separation between the popular video games and critically praised video games than there are for music and film.

There's one board I post on in Gamefaqs called RPGs - Everything Else which focuses on niche RPGs. There's probably other forums around that focus on niche games rather than popular ones.

[John]

There's less separation between the popular video games and critically praised video games than there are for music and film.

That's very true. Even the games that are considered critical darlings are kind of popular. Even indie games are somewhat popular. If a game is good, most people who play games know about it.

The only exception to the rule I think is when it comes to older games. There are a lot of 8 bit and 16 bit games that can be considered critically acclaimed that not many people know about. That filibuster cartoon list is pretty good for seeking out the older stuff especially once you get past the top 50 or so.