Games that "journalists" hated but geek audiences liked

[Louis_Cypher]

I can think of a couple of ones in recent years that were pretty prominent examples of this:

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Mad Max (2015) - [Metacritic Score: 69 / User Score: 79]

Mad Max was just a thoroughly decent, solid, open world game, as good as anything on the market. It treated the Mad Max licence faithfully (something that seems to be a common theme with these critic-hated games). It might not have been a masterpiece or anything, but was widely regarded as way better than the utterly terrible critic scores it was getting. Some people speculated that folks were burned out on open world games, but that does not explain the utterly strange score.

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Terminator: Resistance (2019) - [Metacritic Score: 47 / User Score: 75]

This one score is perhaps even more extreme and unbelievable. A really faithful adaptation of the 'Future War' briefly witnessed in Terminator 1 and Terminator 2: Judgement Day. Perhaps not the greatest shooter ever made, but just really solid, quite atmospheric, and a true old-school single-player campaign. What motivated such a degree of opprobrium and bias against this game? It was like a throwback to when games actually treated their licenced franchise with respect in the 1990s.

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So what happened? These are both games I would recommend. I have some suspicions, given what we know about the 'culture war'. Perhaps these games were deemed problematic; maybe because they were based upon masculine 1980s films, or had a traditional Caucasian protagonist, or they treated geek franchises with respect? Maybe that, or maybe as we suspect, games journalists are neither gamers, nor journalists, or they took money from a rival publisher? Post any more you think of.

 

[Zlaja]

Days Gone [Metacritic score 71 / User score 84]

One of the more decent open world games that started as a Sony exclusive, but then ended up on PC. Riding and customizing your bike is fun and dealing with literal hordes of zombies is fairly exciting. For a while anyway. The game is bit too long though. Took me forever to finish it. Granted, I'm a slow player, but still.

 

[agentorange]

scores like 69 and 71 are not terrible. they are firmly in the above average to good category which is where games like this belong. this is the issue with the 1 - 100 rating system where people simply take everything under 80 to mean terrible. if you look at the metacritic scores you linked for these games you see a bunch of the "audience" rating it as 9s and 10s, gimme a break. journalists are retarded and so are audiences

 

[Dadd]

scores like 69 and 71 are not terrible. they are firmly in the above average to good category which is where games like this belong. this is the issue with the 1 - 100 rating system where people simply take everything under 80 to mean terrible. if you look at the metacritic scores you linked for these games you see a bunch of the "audience" rating it as 9s and 10s, gimme a break. journalists are retarded and so are audiences

They are terrible, in effect, when journalist scores are greatly inflated for AAA games, where games that are at best mediocre like AssCreed or Call of Duty games get above 70. That means, for most people, a game with a score of 69 is "worse" than those AAA games.

 

[markec]

Postal games get panned by critics but fans seem to like them.

 

[†††]

A classic

 

[Wunderbar]

 

[Semiurge]

So what happened? These are both games I would recommend. I have some suspicions, given what we know about the 'culture war'. Perhaps these games were deemed problematic; maybe because they were based upon masculine 1980s films, or had a traditional Caucasian protagonist, or they treated geek franchises with respect? Maybe that, or maybe as we suspect, games journalists are neither gamers, nor journalists, or they took money from a rival publisher? Post any more you think of.

Although I'm sure that there are many journos who would love to subtract points for the lack of "educational value", it could also be that these legendary franchises suffer the consequences of being too influental. Their flavors of post-apocalyptica no longer offer anything unique or exciting for the gaming market.

 

[NecroLord]

Who cares about what a bunch of cockroach game journos think?
If you decide you want to play something, then do it.

 

[Zlaja]

Ryan got scared shitless and quit after the first hour.

Spoiler

I don't even dare play it.

 

[Derringer]

Journalists hate games they don't get paid to review since they've just use trainers and cheats to play through them for the past few decades anyways.

 

[AndyS]

My first guess is that the publishers didn't bribe the reviewers for a bump in the score and the reviewers are just too damn stupid to appreciate games for what they are.

 

[markec]

You can always find atleast one review that will be overly critical for the best games.

Personally I still find the most egregious review to be when RPS reviewed New Vegas.

It’s just that this is absolutely not the classic that Fallout 1 and 2 unquestionably were, and it’s also not the bold, bright reinvention that Fallout 3 was. It’s just... here, offering more Fallout. Do you want some more Fallout? If so, New Vegas can provide, so long as you don’t mind your every hour with it being laced with some small amount of disappointment. That is, unless you haven’t played a Fallout game before, but in that case you’re better off with the Game of the Year edition of Fallout 3.

 

[lycanwarrior]

The Kyle Rittenhouse Turkey Shoot game.

Also Acquitted game on Steam haha.

 

[Fedora Master]

Who cares about what a bunch of cockroach game journos think?

(((News Posters)))

 

[rusty_shackleford]

scores like 69 and 71 are not terrible. they are firmly in the above average to good category which is where games like this belong. this is the issue with the 1 - 100 rating system where people simply take everything under 80 to mean terrible. if you look at the metacritic scores you linked for these games you see a bunch of the "audience" rating it as 9s and 10s, gimme a break. journalists are retarded and so are audiences

there's a reason D is a failing grade.

 

[NecroLord]

Who cares about what a bunch of cockroach game journos think?

(((News Posters)))

I kinda respect the japs, to be honest, even though I dislike jrpgs(with some small exceptions, mainly 90s jrpgs).

 

[JarlFrank]

Who cares about what a bunch of cockroach game journos think?
If you decide you want to play something, then do it.

All I look at before buying a game is Steam user reviews, and only to check for some glaring flaws like bugs etc. Anything with 60% positive can be a good game that's just buggy, or a game with a very narrow audience and most people pan it cause they don't like its style.

Critic reviews, however, are totally worthless.

 

[NecroLord]

Who cares about what a bunch of cockroach game journos think?
If you decide you want to play something, then do it.

All I look at before buying a game is Steam user reviews, and only to check for some glaring flaws like bugs etc. Anything with 60% positive can be a good game that's just buggy, or a game with a very narrow audience and most people pan it cause they don't like its style.

Critic reviews, however, are totally worthless.

Yeah, bugs and glitches are also the things I check for in a review.
Everything else does not matter all that much. Except if the game is incloooosive and seeks SJW approval with nigger vikings and shit like that. Then it is permanently off my list.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I'd probably read reviews from a reviewer that focused solely on the technical aspects of games

 

[Strange Fellow]

I don't know about Terminator, but 70 is a very generous score for Mad Max. 80 is just stupid.

 

[ferratilis]

 

[Hagashager]

The meme example would be Cuphead, which while largely praised by Critics, also revealed a perfect microcosm of games' Journalists inability to actually play games.

The Takahashi Tutorial is gold.

 

[kangaxx]

Imagine not enjoying Colonial Marines. I still find it funny to this day.

 

[Louis_Cypher]

Nobody should care about "journalists", or review scores obviously, but it's interesting to witness these cases. In a normal score gradient a mediocre game would get "25% to 50%", but the press can give mediocre games "75%".

That's when "69%" for a solid game, that people enjoy, looks like some conspiracy lol. Fuck knows what Terminator: Resistance's developers did to get "47%" for a good game; that's the equivalent of a "0%" score to these clowns.

That suggests collusion, when the average was taken from 29 outlets. It's a more interesting question than the score itself, what was going on there.

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Necromunda: Hired Gun (2021)

Getting back to games that were better than mainstream reviews suggest, I think Necromunda: Hired Gun was decent fun. This one doesn't count as press bollocks, because I hear it released in a buggy state, so we can't say that journos were unfair. It's also pretty bare; one hub and several maps (albeit good maps). However it has geek appeal, that will appeal to a gamer/sci-fi junkie more than a random buyer; Warhammer appeal, as long as you don't expect anything like a story, just nice dakka.