According to review-aggregating site Metacritic, the music game the critics loved most this year is The Beatles: Rock Band. Its 88-89% rating (depending on platform) kept it out of the overall, cross-platform top 10 for the year, but it ranked fairly highly on individual platform charts. Interestingly, Guitar Hero 5′s results proved a lot more variable;Guitar Hero: Metallica actually beat it out on PS3.

Here’s the breakdown:

PS3
The Beatles: Rock Band — #14 (88% review average)
Guitar Hero: Metallica — #23 (86%)
Guitar Hero 5 — #26 (86%)

360
The Beatles: Rock Band — #11 (89%)
Guitar Hero 5 — #22 (85%)
Guitar Hero: Metallica — #26 (84%)

Wii
The Beatles: Rock Band — #2 (89%)
Guitar Hero 5 — #3 (89%)
Guitar Hero: Metallica — #11 (85%)

And the consumers seem to have agreed with the critics: the NPD Group’s Anita Frazier recently reported on her Twitter feed that Guitar Hero and Rock Band were two of the top five highest-grossing properties in gaming for the year. (The other three: Call of Duty, Wii Fit, and Mario Bros.)

Hit the Read link for the exhaustive rundown of the top 40 games on each platform.

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