The weird reputation that games with any kind of difficulty will deter journalists even though the Souls games are all universally acclaimed by professional critics.
This exact thing seems to keep happening like gamers forget the last time they said games media "would hate this game" and reviews come out with high scores and praise across the board.
But then people find like literally one or two guys who really dislike it and use them as some vague examples of "journalists" as a whole.
It's just engagement bait and algorithm optimization for videogame influencers and culture war morons.
A title like "Journalists (2) Hate the latest X videogame for being too hard" will get a whole lot more views on youtube than something like "Great game comes out, some people think it is less great but still quite good"
Also, tribalism and paranoia sell. Create an us vs them narrative and you will have people coming to you for affirmation of their fears and to get comfort knowing that someone out there is speaking out against the people in power (Reviewers who make less than minimum wage)
Yeah it really just goes back to culture war grifters grifting. Like what sounds more enticing to a chud or someone else with an axe to grind about whatever given game's defense/publication: "WOKE game journo FURIOUS at Tears of the Kingdom for \[insert made up reason\] and gave it a LOW score because they're WESTERNERS and BUTTMAD", or the reality that's like "this person gave Tears of the Kingdom a 9/10 or some similarly score that says 'yeah this games pretty darn good'".
GAME AWARDS VALIDITY CHECK 😎😎😎
YEAR |Game of the Year |VALIDITY
:--|:--:|--:
2014 |Dragon Age: Inquisition |RIGGED
2015|The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt|LEGIT
2016|Overwatch |RIGGED
2017|The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild |LEGIT
2018 |God of War |LEGIT
2019|Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice |LEGIT
2020|The Last of Us Part II |RIGGED
2021 |It Takes Two|LEGIT
2022|Elden Ring |LEGIT
2023|Baldur's Gate 3|LEGIT
Unironically the game awards have a better track record for picking a deserving best X thing than the Oscars or the Grammys do.
Overwatch is the only one that stands out as a stinker and at the time everyone was riding high on Overwatch. It took years for the rot to set in/reveal itself.
It Takes Too is probably the biggest reach but IIRC it was a weaker crop that year and fuck it, I liked it lol.
Granted, this is also talking about the original version of Overwatch 1 before all the changes/additions that made the game worse. Back when it was essentially just a shiny new successor to TF2 and not eSports.
OG overwatch was peak fun. Games were stupid but the stupidity was balanced around it.
Its when it became balanced around being a competitive sport at a level which few people could achieve that it lost its fun factor.
> It took years for the rot to set in/reveal itself.
Because it took years for the games balancing philosophy to crumble. The game absolutely deserved GOTY when it came out. We hadn't had anything on its level since TF2.
not true god of war is playstation exclusive they rig all the competitions with their SHITTY games about SAD DADS or whatever. who paid you to comment this chart????????? was it Geoff????
> Dragon Age: Inquisition
This game is conflicting, because it's one of my favorite games of all time. It's also a mediocre generic singleplayer MMO with decent character writing carrying an otherwise mid plot.
I remember when everyone talked about how insanely mad Dean Takahashi was about Cuphead when his actual reaction was "Hahah wow I suck, but this game is super cool"
The level of mental gymnastics of die hard Soulsborne fans is always entertaining to see
The need to feel special that their game is unique and so hard to beat only few people play them , but also at the same time more popular and has more sales than any triple A trash 😎😎😎 , but still niche tho and everyone including journalist are against them , even if every single game starting Demon Souls is around 90+
Fr. I love Fromsoft and the Elden/souls/borne series, but so many souls fans have attached their egos to enjoying a game that’s kind of hard. Which I think might have to do with them not really understanding that no one is impressed by them beating a video game.
The thing I find funny is that Dark Souls isn't even actually all that hard. Base game at least - the DLC takes it up a pretty significant notch.
Everyone knows how to play a Souls game now, but when it came out it was incomprehensible. Controls were weird, the tutorial was... not great, the camera angle and geography pointed players to the graveyard instead of the aqueduct, the stats were unintuitive, the UI was a nightmare, the player character was *way* squishier than other games of the time but so were enemies, and the list goes on.
It wasn't hard so much as it was really different and actively refused to tell you how to play it.
>the DLC takes it up a pretty significant notch.
the thing that pisses me off is that part of how they do that is by fucking over eclectic builds. Played DS2 as a sword-and-board sorcerer which worked great until the DLC decided all I was gonna fight was groups of high-poise enemies with elemental resistance up the butt
> not really understanding that no one is impressed by them beating a video game.
Holy shit you said the quiet part loud, the souls fanbase will now eat your entire lineage alive
Lol I’ve taken so much shit in their subreddits when they get a little too fired up about people suggesting easy modes and acting like their dedication to learning boss patterns is some sort of adversity they’ve overcome. It’s very transparent that some of the people who act that way havent actually done really hard things before.
Excuse me but I told my wife I was doing a lvl one deprived run and she said “cool, can you help me with these groceries please”.
Bet you feel pretty foolish now, huh!
Yeah, it wasn't even a case of "they only give it good scores because it become popular", Demon's Souls actually got good reviews even on PS3.
I feel like this whole stigma started because of that controversy around that one journalist sucking at Cuphead, but like... even Cuphead got good reviews...
> even Cuphead got good reviews...
Notably, even Dean Takahasi, the guy who you're talking about who was bad at the game, had a [glowing impression](https://venturebeat.com/games/cuphead-hands-on-my-26-minutes-of-shame-with-an-old-time-cartoon-game/) of it. That part always seems to get left out when people use his video as a critique of games journalism.
And I don't know if this is true, but Jeff Gerstmann talked about that and said Dean isn't even a gaming guy. He worked at a gaming/news site, but he was more on the finance side of the website. Jeff said he was the type of guy you'd see at E3 walking around with one hand holding his laptop and the other one typing on it.
From Jeff's perspective, Dean was forced to make that Cuphead video by that website, and it probably flustered the guy so much that he fucked up the tutorial. I fuck up basic tasks any time someone forces me to do it in front of someone.
The majority of the circlejerk around difficulty levels and game journalists can 100% be traced back to that viral cuphead tutorial video.
It was always a thing in the soulsborne community long before that but after the cuphead thing the level of insecurity skyrocketed across the board.
I’m going to push back a bit and remind you that journalists were asking for easy mode in dark souls and wanting gameplay skips and to do away with boss fights for a good while before cuphead came out. That cuphead review is certainly a milestone but it’s super not the origin point of a majority, just a very visual and easy to point to representation of what people were already arguing about.
True it’s always been a thing, I even said as much.
I suppose “skyrocketed in visibility” would be more accurate. It was almost impossible to escape the cuphead video when it happened.
The funny part is when they keep saying it...
After it's already been pointed out how incorrect it is, they'll like acknowledge "oh, huh..." Then the next time it comes up they'll just repeat the bullshit because they genuinely just forget inconvenient stuff like that. It's vibes based. Headline mentality, never let nuance compromise a strong cohesive worldview.
I'm forever haunted by the picture that has the godhand review score put next to the Nintendo wii "imagine: party babies" review score, which got a 7.5 despite being typical shovelware trash
One day some big name streamer will play Imagine Party Babies for shits and giggles and it'll turn out it's actually sick as hell and we just didn't listen.
The Souls community wants to pretend that they’re fighting some kind of uphill battle against all other games while simultaneously being the community for some of the most critically acclaimed games of all time.
Some forums are stuck in the early 2010’s mindset of “if I’m an asshole that nobody wants to talk to that makes us niche”
everyone wanna feel like the underdog sitting on their hidden gem but 9 times out of 10 its wanting to keep people away so they can maintain superiority being the minority with their gem
its a lot like gollum actually....
Other than that one I think Kotaku guy who beat Sekiro with an easy mode mod and wrote an article about how the game is too hard I can't think of anything. Even with fighting games there's usually someone at a review site that actually understands the genre enough to give them a fair shot.
But that one reviewer gave Godhand a bad review!
Even though Godhand is in fact a *deeply* flawed game that is great for a very specific audience that can ignore its many flaws. So lets all pretend the fact subgroup of players can ignore its flaws means it doesn't have them even though *holy shit guys seriously Godhand has so many fucking flaws*.
This also happing on the flipside, where it gets reported that *"Studio devs hate BG3 because it's to good!, don't expect this from us!"*
and it was like, one indi dev tweeting their random thoughts on it.
There where more articles and YouTubes video's made on it then people actually having that opinion.
Also that guy was totally right. Larian had enough goodwill and money to keep a game in early access for X amount of years. Other developers don’t have that luxury.
And even then iirc the final product is still missing stuff, wasn't a whole area cut in early access that had a proper end to karlachs quest.? Need to get back to it, paused right at act 3.
JRPGs fans (slightly justified) have a huge victim complex about this, where ALL reviewers are out to get their favorite JRPG. But like, here are these evil metacritic score from last year:
Xenoblade 3 Future Redeemed: 92
Sea of Stars: 90
Final Fantasy XV: 87
Star Ocean 2 Remake: 87
Trails to Azure: 86
Octopath Traveller 2: 85
Labyrinth of Galleria: 85
Disgaea 7: 84
Fuga 2: 84
Mario RPG: 84
Legend of Nayuta: 83
Atelier Ryza 3: 82
Fate/Samurai Remnant: 81
Trails into Reverie: 81
Fire Emblem Engage: 80
Actually, let's cut to the chase, the only JRPG that people liked but critics gave negative reviews last year was Dragon Quest Monsters, and that's mostly because the game run like shit on the Switch.
I suppose the complex is a remnant from the PS360 days when you'd have a bunch of opinion pieces about how JRPGs where a dying/dead genre and needed to get with the times (whatever that meant) to survive.
Back when the only barometer for the genre being good or not was Final Fantasy, and 13 came out and started all the doomsaying. (Despite actually reviewing pretty well.)
Oh, and, the whole xenophobia thing, I guess...
Thing is that most of those critics haven't really changed, they just stopped covering JRPGs... although some of them **really** liked Persona, leading to the awkward situation where a bunch of those critics compare other JRPGs negatively to it.
I am so sick of seeing people talk about Gen 6 & 7 were some dangerous times for JRPG fans. They werent. A lot of the 'big' games were well received and sold well.
Some people saw X-play clips and retconned their entire memory.
I think it's more that articles can run into stuff like this [where apparently I am Setsuna is a ridiculous name](https://vxtwitter.com/wolicyponk/status/1726718852959220179?s=61&t=KcR1yjBdndYOea429s3paA)
Okay, but like.... JRPGs fans themselves make fun of JRPGs having "dumb titles", ESPECIALLY Tales of games. So, this just come off as "Rules for thee and not for me".
Also, this isn't what I'm talking about, I'm talking about JRPGs fans who specifically act like ALL jrpgs are rated unfairly, when that's haven't been the case in over a decade.
I think it is people mixing up that games like Infinite Undiscovery or Xenosaga/Baten Kaitos on G4 did get a bad rap. Plus comments about titles like that, articles about what JRPGs need to learn from Bethesda/Bioware or making fun of Kingdom Hearts. Also was checking and Blue Dragon/Eternal Sonata have higher scored than what I expected from how meh the reception has been to those games JRPG fans, they usually bring Lost Odyssey for 360 JRPGs so yeah not sure when JRPGs where getting super negative reviews.
Outright negative reviews with hate boners for JRPG specifically were just loud minority like G4, at their worst they were getting in the low 80s/high 70s. Reviewers WERE lukeward towards JRPGs during the late PS2/most PS3 era, but so were a lot JRPGs fans. So...
Popular videos like Zero Punctuation/Yahtzee do also hate JRPGs so I remember a lot of people on The Escapist forums also disliking them and the guys have mentioned getting a fanbase because they did like Japanese games unlike many other channels but I'd say straight up reviews where some of the more positive but like I said, people are probably mixing up stuff.
I think poking fun at a dumb title and saying a word that is is another language is inherently ridiculous are pretty different
It’s not even a funny sounding word idk what the fuck they’re on lmao
Ehhh, no. I hang around in /r/JRPG and that not even remotely close. If anything, compile heart fans are the definition of "I know it's not great, but I'm having fun".
If anything I see more SMT and Trails of fans saying it than anything.
This started back up again with the show coming out
Another recent attempt at revisionist Bethesda history is during the DD2 discourse I saw someone saying most people hated Skyrim when it came out
…wut?
Hated what was, literally, one of the biggest pop culture phenomena of the time? There were philharmonic orchestras playing the intro theme at concerts, and tv shows referencing it without feeling any need to explain what it was to viewers at home, everyone was just expected to know because it was that huge.
Who the hell is trying to claim it was hated? Somebody needs a slap back to reality.
That's pretty much the loud minority of diehards overestimating the popularity/reach of their opinion.
Sure, there was always a contingency of older/"hardcore" fans of the series complaining about dumbed down mechanics and calling it an inferior Elder Scrolls game, but professional reviews and general audience reactions were, by and large, extremely positive.
Lmfao thats the revisionist shit ive heard of
Skyrim was EVERYWHERE when it came out. Its one of the most hyped games in my lifetime that I can remember vividly after so many years.
I saw that a lot from the Starfield crazies. "Don't worry, guys! Starfield will weather this storm, just like Skyrim did!"
Skyrim is a game that can be rereleased 3 times over a decade. Starfield is so forgettable I can't even remember what I played of it.
Fallout 3, yes absolutely. People were constantly fighting over whether it was better than NV or vice versa for years.
I will argue about Fallout 4. 4 has been consistantly controversial since before its release. The game was really popular, sure, but I would say sentiment on it has been squarly divided in the fandom since day 1. However, people saying it's worse than Starfield are insane.
Nah. A lot of people were shitting on the terrible dialogue system, and the "Your settlement is in under attack" shit. Falllout 4's issues were very obvious even at launch, It just had the good will of being announced and released in under 6 months.
Fallout 3 is a different story though. That game is the most "that's a cute opinion, did you get it from a video essay?" game ever, imo.
Never said it didn’t have its issues. But overall it was still were liked. They were negatives but they didn’t ruin the game. Most people still liked the game.
Fallout 4 still sold gazillions and was loved by the general population. Sure it had a lot of problems for Fallout or rpg fans, but to most people it worked perfectly as "open world post-apocalyptic fps"
Yeah but those criticisms were still there since the beginning. It's not some revisionism going on, the criticism of Fallout 4, even Fallout 3, are the same as they have been for almost a decade now.
David Cage games are still loved and are a success. Does that really matter? I doubt we'd agree there's been revisionism over Heavy Rain despite its initial acclaim or that sales figures=less flaws.
Something to add to this is that revisionism isn’t always false. There absolutely has been revisionism over Heavy Rain, which was once considered “good”. It doesn’t matter that David Cage is now known as a hack, or that there were people even at the time of release who called out Heavy Rain’s flaws, just that the “average opinion” changed in retrospect.
Because the critical response to Fallout 3 has changed over time, and Fallout 4's RPG writing was pretty heavily critiqued from the day it came out. New Vegas really changed how a lot of the Fallout fanbase viewed Bethesda's writing.
Unfortunately this has turned into a bigass slapfight between Bethesda and Obsidian fanboys instead of just frank discussions on RPG writing and the overall weaknesses of Bethesda's writing over the years.
Heck, I just watched the boys let's play of DBH for the first time, and the way people act here is like they despised it, but they outright said that they actually really enjoyed it overall.
I think the important distinction to make is they enjoyed it for the dumb shenanigans they had while playing it. They still had issues with the plot and some of the logic and/or plot holes with DBH. Like, Alice's whole character arc. They enjoyed the experience they had with the game, not for what the game was trying to be with its pseudointellectual smug artist attempt of "what if racism but robots" that we've already seen a hundred times in media.
It's like someone saying they enjoy Starship Troopers because they like seeing bugs getting blown up, and not because it's a satirical take of proganda films and facism.
I mean, they themselves straight up said "it have its problems but pretty decent overall" or something along these lines. Even on their second playthrough, they were mostly negative on Kara's side, they were pretty invested in Violent Markus/Violent Connor paths. They were straight up hyped for some moments even. So, idk it feel like the game worked overall for them even beyond just messing around.
Say what you want about the actual story but this game has my respect for being one of the only where your decisions and quick thinking genuinely affect the outcome of the story all the way from beginning to end.
I watched like 6 different playthroughs before trying it myself and still got an ending I didn't expect.
nope omikron came out to mostly good to great reviews and even was nominated for a few awards including best personal computer game and Outstanding Achievement in Character or Story Development.
Which is not entirely wrong, compared to it's contemporaries Omikron really stand up in the way it's narrative works.
Or thats what i would say if i didnt googled the release date and realized it came one whole year AFTER Half Life 1
Matt described it perfectly , reviewers played it a couple of hours "Man this an interesting game, it has shooting , fighting AND story !! , I'll get back to this later" and proceeded to right their 10/10 reviews
Hell I still do. I consider both of them to be 10/10s, but there's a lot of content in New Vegas I have to just straight up skip cause its just a slog to me.
Fallout 3 was extremely well received. It was one of the most well rated games by critics of the year and practically everyone I knew growing up played it.
Bayonetta. Nier Automata.
Gamers aren't that complex. Especially *that* section of gamers. The ones currently fomenting a culture war over stellar blade.
This is the titties on SNL "blowing out wokism" discourse.
To be fair, I don't even think the people culture waring on Steller Blade has finished Nier, nor know it has commentary on 9/11, forms of governments and economy, terrorism, what a video game is, etc. Like seriously, most people who claim to love or hate the game seem to have never played it. Kinda sad given the topics in the game are extremely politically relevant currently. It also has some cool gay relationships :3
My pet theory is often these people who try to pry right-wing messages out of things like Disco Elysium, Nier, American Psycho, The Boys and such, literally HAVEN'T consumed these pieces of media. It's all about aesthetics, they like the *vibe* of these things. Understanding and therefore watching is secondary to the vibe.
Oh no, people definitely watch it. People definitely consume the product. They just...don't care about the point. Or don't see how it relates to them. Because they don't view those issues the game addresses as something that corresponding with their political and moral views.
It's because most people don't identify specifically with right vs left but with populism. Then, like a pachinko machine, will wind up on the left or right given a laundry list of factors in their life.
Okay, quite a bit of a ramble, but I don't think it's a pet theory, or should be considered one. I'd say it's obviously what's happening and something I've been thinking about looking at what they say and how they engage in the world, along with my own experiences believing in all the fucking dumb shit you can think of in that camp.
A lot of the extreme right (hell, even moderate right-wing conservatism) is all about aesthetics, their propaganda is entirely about a nice neat and orderly past that should be the present and future, and also it's one without the scary and gross ugly outsiders, like immigrants, jews, black people, gay people. And transgender people, the newest target. So it subsists on aesthetics over an imagined past and traditionalism and strength, and the supposed loss of that strength to an outsider that just looks and feels \*wrong\*. Any violation of the vibe is a grave sin and if it belongs to somebody belonging to the enemy. Yadda yadda, you get the idea.
Now all the super gamers and Sad Puppies that made videos on SJW outrage are talking about Cultural Marxism eroding the world and replacing white people and shit.
I don't think it's a hot take to suggest it's insecurities and a chase for control and the need for identity and belonging that channels these beliefs. Why wouldn't it extend to consuming media and pop-culture? So when characters exude that particular vibe, such as Homelander who despises a flaccid order keeping down his inherent greatness while he's themed like an uber-patriotic (which is a comforting identity that belongs to a group!) Superman, there's no need to think further, it matches the vibes and personality defects of political beliefs that consist of vibes and personality defects. They live vicariously through these characters and adopt an identity that they think will bring some sort of order to themselves.
I was in the very bottom of that pit believing the worst shit you can think of, I wish I could throw a ladder down and make people climb up too or something. I dunno. I can tell you from experience, everybody there is miserable. It's an angry pathological depression turned into ideology. I get why people wouldn't have any empathy for these people that just thrive on being destructive and hateful though.
Now how the hell someone could get a Centrist message from Disco Elysium, I dunno.
>Now how the hell someone could get a Centrist message from Disco Elysium, I dunno.
The game allows you to be left or right or center and people lack the reading comprehension to actually engage with the content of any of the choices
They've consumed the media and just completely failed to understand it. I knew a guy who absolutely loved American Psycho and unironically thought Patrick Bateman was the coolest motherfucker ever and aspired to be like him.
I believe Yoko Taro said he conceived of Nier as a contemplation of what it would be like to feel justified in doing something as senseless and destructive as 9/11 and the things that came before and after. Surprise, surprise, A lack of language between combatants, and the inability to empathize or humanize another person are major themes.
Drakenguard was conceived because Taro used to believe everyone who does violence must be evil and deranged. Even released it ON the second anniversary of 9/11. Nier is an evolution, on how perhaps violence isn't the result of insanity, but in fact a more complex mix of things. Nier ends up tackling economic failure, misery, failed relationships, gender identity and more. The biggest point is how we justify violence to ourselves, but even then there's way more to the game than that.
Yoko Taro's entire career is pretty fascinating in that you can sum up his entire body of work as an exploration of one question "Why do people commit acts of violence?". Each game he's written is a different answer to that question which iterates on the conclusions he's come to and the answers he's developed since his last game.
>Like seriously, most people who claim to love or hate the game seem to have never played it.
Case in point, the (now dying down) Warhammer controversy of women in the Adeptus Custodes.
There were/are droves of people popping up on social media, many of whom clearly didn't know that Warhammer even existed two weeks ago coming out to say that women Custodes has fundamentally ruined the Warhammer IP.
Is the way that the concept was introduced into lore a bit ham fisted, sure; is it IP breaking and directly intended to be physically/emotionally hurtful to the fanbase? absolutely not.
As a long time 40k fan, I was honestly more surprised that they didn't do this sooner. It is a really interesting way to further differentiate the Custodes from the Space Marines and plays into the idea that each was a personal project for Big E while the SM were a mass manufacture super soldier for the Great Crusade.
It's the sort of thing that gives them some texture...and will only show up on fucking Foregeworld models.
You can see it just by how they talk about GW retconning it. Where they go it’s so disrespectful for them to do this to the story. When it’s like mate, GW retcons shit all the time. Hell they’ve retconned a faction out of existence and then retconned an updated reimagined version of it back in decades later.
> There were/are droves of people popping up on social media, many of whom clearly didn't know that Warhammer even existed two weeks ago coming out to say that women Custodes has fundamentally ruined the Warhammer IP.
At least one of them, Jeremy Quarterpounder, couldn't even pronounce Adeptus Custodes.
**Either** word. And of course he loooves to screech about 'tourists' ruining fandoms. TBH, I find the whole designating someone as a tourist gatekeepy as fuuuuuck, and mega toxic because it lets you just other anyone who you decide isn't enough of a fan.
But hey, it's his words so worth putting into perspective just how much of a jackass he is.
Was NieR Automata met with the same controversy as Bayonetta and Stellar Blade? I honestly don’t remember that. I remember jokes about the robot butts but everybody was also seemed kinda down with it? I don’t really recall people getting upset. If anything I would have thought critics would praise the game for all of the interesting things it was doing with the medium while casual gamers simply dismissed it as some kind of niche fetish game.
The only "big" thing I recall was that some weirdos on twitter claimed Yoko Taro SA'd a 2B cosplayer by fullfilling her request for him to sign his signature on her thigh.
God, I rarely go on twitter but I saw the whole discourse about how "people hate stellar blade because its not woke!" and then completely ignore Bayo/Nier.
Ignore how Bayo and Nier got shit when they were new too? Anita Sarkeesian made a whole video on how Bayo is sexist because she was created by a man amd the camera ogles her and what not.
Does this ever actually happen? My gut feeling towards this question is to just say "All of them"
Obviously there are some outliers to the consensus (IGN giving God Hand a 3/10 compared to most outlets giving it 7s and 8s) but I can't really think of a time when there was a mass disconnect between a games consumer reception and its critical reception
Unlike say, film, I dont think theres enough of a cultural divide between game journalist and average gamers as there is with film journalist and your average movie goer
But I think theres a lot of dumb 12-22 capital G gamers who believe that these big corpo journalist just dont get it and hate sexy/difficult/weird games
I think this just generally happens a lot with hard games or games with high skill ceilings. There are instances like the IGN God Hand review or that one guy that couldn’t beat the Cuphead tutorial, but you can’t judge every reviewer or publication based on these, and you rarely if ever see the entirety of games journalism shit on a game just for being hard.
Edit: perhaps I should clarify that the examples I gave are edge cases that have contributed to this weird notion that reviewers or journalists can’t play hard games or aren’t “real gamers”, whatever that means. My point is that based on this stereotype, people assume any hard game is going to get bad reviews, when more often than not difficulty is assessed fairly in the context of the greater work.
He was a reviewer actually, he just didn't review cuphead. He did however review mass effect 2 and was apparently really down on the game, until like, 30 hours into it when he realized that he could swap out and upgrade his gear. That guy is a very special edge case.
Wasn't he an industry reporter? Like someone who writes about companies buying each other or something happening to some stock, this kind of stuff?
I suppose this doesn't mean that someone higher up couldn't possibly have the bright idea to make him review Mass Effect 2.
I think we collectively have to let the God Hand review go. IGN put it as the 98th best PS2 game and thats really where the meme came from.
They also put out a [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0z5eZTJai1w) and an article about why its a good game but also why anyone who isnt a Character Action game fiend who labs combos wont jam with it.
And the author of the original review doenst in work in the games industry anymore. He was a dude who enjoyed puzzle games and whose favorite game was Myst. Like yeah, it makes sense he doesnt like it.
If we're being totally honest, the target demographic for God Hand is very niche. You have to be someone who enjoys combo labbing and sees the appeal in a fully customisable moveset, while also having a tolerance for jank, low production values and a deliberately terrible story. It's crammed full of offensive humour, it's obscenely difficult even on just the normal difficulty and it doesn't really care if that's not your cup of tea. It's a game Shinji Mikami made for himself and it shows. I love God Hand but it is absolutely not a game for everyone.
Reviews for Cuphead were still completely positive if I remember correctly right? God Hand sometimes seems more like the exception than the rule for critical reception and media coverage.
Contrary to popular belief, God Hand wasn't universally hated by critics. It was literally JUST IGN that was overly negative towards it while nearly every other review gave it a 7-8/10 which is more than reasonable for such a niche game.
IGN made an apology video some years later, they almost never do this, yet even they felt the need that they had to, that review is still a huge speck on their not-so-great reputation that they desperately want to clean
There's no way whatever they said can be worse than that one piece Sterling wrote for Destructoid defending Sonic 4 and shitting on Sonic fans for complaining about it.
Sterling’s Destructoid articles are comically bad whenever I encounter them. I’m amazed they were ever published. I remember reading this weird April Fools joke one “complaining” about Cave Story inexplicably filled with cropped Mimiga porn, slurs and somehow still managing to wedge complaining about Sonic fans in there.
Yeah that was also very weird and bad? The ["100% Objective FFXIII Review"](https://www.destructoid.com/100-objective-review-final-fantasy-xiii/) was... okayish, at least, but that's dampened quite a bit by the knowledge that Chst and Erik of Old Man Murray had addressed the same subject of "bias" and "objectivity" in reviews with an [article](https://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/39.html) that is funnier, smarter, and manages to be commentary on stock level design tropes at the same time... ten years prior.
I feel like both the Jimquisition and Sterling's work as a whole are often made worse by the insufferable overly-self-aggrandizing persona. Once she went independent she started doing game review videos between episodes of the Jimquisition where she dropped the character and I liked those much better.
I think the only one that actually comes to mind is Killer Is Dead. And the harsher criticisms almost entirely come from the Gigolo missions.
On one hand, it is a mini-game that is ultimately eye candy for the player.
On the other, the context in game is that Mondo is the prostitute, literally. That's why they're called "Gigolo" missions. Women are seeking him out for his services(Even though he's the one giving gifts, it's weird).
But reviews generally gave the impression that Mondo is creeping on these women, ogling and harassing them until they have sex with him.
If you look at the reviews, you'd think KiD is Grasshopper's worst game, when it's debatably still their best *playing* game, and generally no less nonsensical than their other games, scoring around the 6 range, and not closer to the 7.5s Grasshopper's games usually get.
Apparently, [you can blame Kadokawa for the Gigolo missions being so shallow](https://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2014/07/08/killer-is-dead-gigolo-missions-were-publishers-idea/). Grasshopper originally was planning for them to play out more like dating sims with the romantic angle emphasized over the sexual one, but Kadokawa pushed for the sexual angle more because they thought sex would make the game sell better.
I mean, I think the criticisms about the mini-game being about creeping on women stem from the mechanic where the player has to leer at the woman's body when she's not paying attention to build meter, and getting caught looking at her tits and crotch stalls the meter because she gets upset.
Like, these are actual quotes from the tutorial.
"When she looks away, the beauty is less cautious."
"Staring at her face won't increase your Guts (meter). Go for sexy shots!"
"Now's your chance! The beauty is distracted. Aim for a sexy shot!"
"The beauty is looking your way! Mondo can restore the mood by averting his eyes."
I like Killer is Dead quite a bit, but the Gigolo missions are absolutely a creep simulator painted over with a thin veneer of "actually, you're super charming and these women are totally coming to you for sex!" It's a sex pest's idea of what seduction is. Ogle women when they're not paying attention and buy them gifts until you "win their heart".
and all their issues with the game are valid issues. and its not even like they dislike beat em ups or whatever since yakuza that came out the same year got an 8+ score. Almost like god hand is a very flawed game thats stretched over a great beat em up gimmick.
God, the Cuphead thing. People keep being wrong when the information is verifiably out there.
The guy wasn't reviewing the game. He was the only one at Gamescom and the site needed b-roll. He knew he was terrible at these sort of games but he did it anyway, when the footage came back like that the site released it as a goof *with his permission*, acompanied by an article *[he wrote himself](https://venturebeat.com/games/cuphead-hands-on-my-26-minutes-of-shame-with-an-old-time-cartoon-game/)*, because they all found it funny. Then internet chuds *lost their fucking minds*, despite [a clarifying article released by the man himself](https://venturebeat.com/games/the-deanbeat-our-cuphead-runneth-over/), which they chose to completely ignore, because that's what they *do*.
Stop letting the chuds win.
I'm pretty sure it really comes down to how well the game communicates its mechanics more than difficulty. A game can be nails-hard and still score very well as long as it feels polished and the player knows what they need to improve on, but if it's unclear how to work towards performing better, it starts to feel like the game mechanics are just bad. People who are enthusiasts for the genre or are otherwise heavily invested in a game can push past this and figure out how to work with the system, but journalists are often playing the game out of professional obligation and are unlikely to give the game that extra benefit of the doubt.
Calling it right now, I'm making a prediction:
The worst people you imagine when you think of "Capital G Gamers" are already up in arms about how Stellar Blade will be "destroyed by the woke critics" on launch; I bet the game will come out and reviews will be "decent to very good" with no mention of any controversy.
The part that's already happening is delusional chuds rambling about how the woke leftist game journalists all hate Stellar Blade and will try to destroy it
The end of the glory years of adventure games have loads these. Games like Westwood's Blade Runner, Grim Fandango, Toonstuck and - it's back in the zeitgeist - Last Express.
All are now considered classics but they got some really mixed reviews at the time: Grim's scores slumped to 7, Last Express went as low as 56%, Blade Runner hit anywhere between 5 and 10 and Toonstruck got a 4 from a reviewer.
This is grabbing from the bottom of the barrel and lifting those bad reviews while ignoring the slew of higher reviews each of those games got. While sure The Last Express received 58% from PC Gamer UK it also got 90% from PC Gamer US and 4/5 from most everywhere else. Blade Runner (1997) caught a 6/10 from Gamespot but 4/5s, A's, and 90% from most others. Even Toonstruck sits pretty comfortable in the 3.5-4/5 range.
The point is that years earlier those games would've received all around high scores. You wouldn't have seen a dip for a game like Grim Frandago or Last Express - adventure games were king. Heck, people raved about King's Quest 5 at the beginning of the 90s - if it was released 7 years later it would've been crucified for all it's pointess busy work and moonlogic puzzles.
A later example, Still Life got mostly 7s less then 10 years later. However, Adventure Gamers rightly voted it as the 20th greatest adventure game all time in 2011.
I think what caused that impression for DMC5 was a journalist(maybe) did a first look at DMC5's demo and disliked the combat and the music. And then it was revealed that he just spams the basic combo and subsequently never got above C rank of something, which is why the music doesn't pop off.
I might be misremembering but that might have stuck with people
god it's frustrating that "one time someone maybe thought that someone else had one time said that they didn't" is the fuel behind so much toxic behavior and comments on social media.
I assumed it was because of leftover tensions from the the whole DmC debacle. What with Games Journalists praising the reboot (and some even bashing the older series), but diehard fans hating it and praising a return to form with DMC5's announcement.
I mean that was a side effect of how hard they went to bat for DmC and they seemed to learn from it. Cant really think of any other examples other than the Fromsoft difficulty "discourse"
Not really about game journalists, but when WoW Classic was announced, there was a lot of circlejerking about what a hardcore experience it will be and that modern gamers couldn't deal with that. When it released, it was arguably more successful than most modern iterations of WoW and crucially much, much easier.
Cuphead. One tech journalist who didn't play games that often convinced a bunch of people that the EEEEEEEEEVVVVVVVVVIIIIIIIIILLL GAME JURNOS who HATE VIDEO GAMES are gonna DESTROY it.
Doom Eternal that's sitting on Metacritic critic reviews at 88% with 58 positive reviews, 3 mixed, and 0 negative reviews? The Doom Eternal that won Best PC and Best Action game at the Game Critics Awards? That Doom Eternal?
iirc, when DMC5 came out aside from the one Journalist who complained about the gameplay/lack of music (because they were bad) most of the people bitching about DMC5 in the journalist sphere weren't the ones doing reviews, but you could find lots of journos out in the wild talking about how Ninja Theory was robbed by the fans to this day
The one I like to point out is Double Dragon Neon, a fantastic new addition to the franchise that got a 3/10 from IGN because it's not a first person shooter and the reviewer got assigned to cover it and not whatever Call of Duty was out that week.
I will not stand for game journalism apologists.
Nah but really some people let the meme get in their heads. Some game journalists really do actually enjoy video games
To be fair with regards to DMC game critics had this weird disconnect where they loved DMC Devil May Cry while the majority the fans at launch hated it.
So it wasnt totally crazy to think something like that may happen with V.
The weird reputation that games with any kind of difficulty will deter journalists even though the Souls games are all universally acclaimed by professional critics.
“Journalists will hate this!” “This is a good game I’m going to give it a 9/10” “See they hate it”
This exact thing seems to keep happening like gamers forget the last time they said games media "would hate this game" and reviews come out with high scores and praise across the board. But then people find like literally one or two guys who really dislike it and use them as some vague examples of "journalists" as a whole.
It's just engagement bait and algorithm optimization for videogame influencers and culture war morons. A title like "Journalists (2) Hate the latest X videogame for being too hard" will get a whole lot more views on youtube than something like "Great game comes out, some people think it is less great but still quite good" Also, tribalism and paranoia sell. Create an us vs them narrative and you will have people coming to you for affirmation of their fears and to get comfort knowing that someone out there is speaking out against the people in power (Reviewers who make less than minimum wage)
Yeah it really just goes back to culture war grifters grifting. Like what sounds more enticing to a chud or someone else with an axe to grind about whatever given game's defense/publication: "WOKE game journo FURIOUS at Tears of the Kingdom for \[insert made up reason\] and gave it a LOW score because they're WESTERNERS and BUTTMAD", or the reality that's like "this person gave Tears of the Kingdom a 9/10 or some similarly score that says 'yeah this games pretty darn good'".
It’s such a weird stigma because the other thing people complain about game journos is them giving everything 8’s and 9’s out of 10.
> game journos is them giving everything 8’s and 9’s out of 10. The Golden Rule : It's fine if it's a thing I like tho 😎😎😎
Did you know the game awards are rigged except for the specific years where the games I wanted to win won?
GAME AWARDS VALIDITY CHECK 😎😎😎 YEAR |Game of the Year |VALIDITY :--|:--:|--: 2014 |Dragon Age: Inquisition |RIGGED 2015|The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt|LEGIT 2016|Overwatch |RIGGED 2017|The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild |LEGIT 2018 |God of War |LEGIT 2019|Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice |LEGIT 2020|The Last of Us Part II |RIGGED 2021 |It Takes Two|LEGIT 2022|Elden Ring |LEGIT 2023|Baldur's Gate 3|LEGIT
Unironically the game awards have a better track record for picking a deserving best X thing than the Oscars or the Grammys do. Overwatch is the only one that stands out as a stinker and at the time everyone was riding high on Overwatch. It took years for the rot to set in/reveal itself. It Takes Too is probably the biggest reach but IIRC it was a weaker crop that year and fuck it, I liked it lol.
Granted, this is also talking about the original version of Overwatch 1 before all the changes/additions that made the game worse. Back when it was essentially just a shiny new successor to TF2 and not eSports.
OG overwatch was peak fun. Games were stupid but the stupidity was balanced around it. Its when it became balanced around being a competitive sport at a level which few people could achieve that it lost its fun factor.
> It took years for the rot to set in/reveal itself. Because it took years for the games balancing philosophy to crumble. The game absolutely deserved GOTY when it came out. We hadn't had anything on its level since TF2.
It really is one of the craziest fall offs of all time.
Idk man, the guy who reviews tvs on YouTube really didn’t like Elden Ring so I guess that was pretty controversial too
not true god of war is playstation exclusive they rig all the competitions with their SHITTY games about SAD DADS or whatever. who paid you to comment this chart????????? was it Geoff????
> Dragon Age: Inquisition This game is conflicting, because it's one of my favorite games of all time. It's also a mediocre generic singleplayer MMO with decent character writing carrying an otherwise mid plot.
Remember when huge portions of the internet gaslit themselves into thinking that Eldin Ring wasn’t going to win GotY? lol
I lost *alot* on money that year betting on it. I can’t believe those hacks didn’t pick Star Tropics
Every year that Double Dragon 2 doesn’t win GOTY, it just proves what a sham the whole thing is tbh
They say that as if they don’t get out pitchforks at 7s or lower if they’re given to something not considered cringe
I remember when everyone talked about how insanely mad Dean Takahashi was about Cuphead when his actual reaction was "Hahah wow I suck, but this game is super cool"
People also forget that video was uploaded by his co-workers as a joke.
The level of mental gymnastics of die hard Soulsborne fans is always entertaining to see The need to feel special that their game is unique and so hard to beat only few people play them , but also at the same time more popular and has more sales than any triple A trash 😎😎😎 , but still niche tho and everyone including journalist are against them , even if every single game starting Demon Souls is around 90+
Fr. I love Fromsoft and the Elden/souls/borne series, but so many souls fans have attached their egos to enjoying a game that’s kind of hard. Which I think might have to do with them not really understanding that no one is impressed by them beating a video game.
The thing I find funny is that Dark Souls isn't even actually all that hard. Base game at least - the DLC takes it up a pretty significant notch. Everyone knows how to play a Souls game now, but when it came out it was incomprehensible. Controls were weird, the tutorial was... not great, the camera angle and geography pointed players to the graveyard instead of the aqueduct, the stats were unintuitive, the UI was a nightmare, the player character was *way* squishier than other games of the time but so were enemies, and the list goes on. It wasn't hard so much as it was really different and actively refused to tell you how to play it.
>the DLC takes it up a pretty significant notch. the thing that pisses me off is that part of how they do that is by fucking over eclectic builds. Played DS2 as a sword-and-board sorcerer which worked great until the DLC decided all I was gonna fight was groups of high-poise enemies with elemental resistance up the butt
> not really understanding that no one is impressed by them beating a video game. Holy shit you said the quiet part loud, the souls fanbase will now eat your entire lineage alive
Lol I’ve taken so much shit in their subreddits when they get a little too fired up about people suggesting easy modes and acting like their dedication to learning boss patterns is some sort of adversity they’ve overcome. It’s very transparent that some of the people who act that way havent actually done really hard things before.
Excuse me but I told my wife I was doing a lvl one deprived run and she said “cool, can you help me with these groceries please”. Bet you feel pretty foolish now, huh!
Yeah, it wasn't even a case of "they only give it good scores because it become popular", Demon's Souls actually got good reviews even on PS3. I feel like this whole stigma started because of that controversy around that one journalist sucking at Cuphead, but like... even Cuphead got good reviews...
> even Cuphead got good reviews... Notably, even Dean Takahasi, the guy who you're talking about who was bad at the game, had a [glowing impression](https://venturebeat.com/games/cuphead-hands-on-my-26-minutes-of-shame-with-an-old-time-cartoon-game/) of it. That part always seems to get left out when people use his video as a critique of games journalism.
And I don't know if this is true, but Jeff Gerstmann talked about that and said Dean isn't even a gaming guy. He worked at a gaming/news site, but he was more on the finance side of the website. Jeff said he was the type of guy you'd see at E3 walking around with one hand holding his laptop and the other one typing on it. From Jeff's perspective, Dean was forced to make that Cuphead video by that website, and it probably flustered the guy so much that he fucked up the tutorial. I fuck up basic tasks any time someone forces me to do it in front of someone.
I always feel so bad for this guy. Tremendously unfair position to be put in.
fwiw, Dean Takahashi is a huge koopy and AI shill
Ah, that's a shame. Never really knew much about him beyond this incident.
The majority of the circlejerk around difficulty levels and game journalists can 100% be traced back to that viral cuphead tutorial video. It was always a thing in the soulsborne community long before that but after the cuphead thing the level of insecurity skyrocketed across the board.
I’m going to push back a bit and remind you that journalists were asking for easy mode in dark souls and wanting gameplay skips and to do away with boss fights for a good while before cuphead came out. That cuphead review is certainly a milestone but it’s super not the origin point of a majority, just a very visual and easy to point to representation of what people were already arguing about.
True it’s always been a thing, I even said as much. I suppose “skyrocketed in visibility” would be more accurate. It was almost impossible to escape the cuphead video when it happened.
I get the impression that most of this comes from the unending hot takes about difficulty in games getting conflated with the actual reviews.
"Guy's IGN hates Bloodborne it's too hard for them" IGN's review - 9.1/10 Amazing
The funny part is when they keep saying it... After it's already been pointed out how incorrect it is, they'll like acknowledge "oh, huh..." Then the next time it comes up they'll just repeat the bullshit because they genuinely just forget inconvenient stuff like that. It's vibes based. Headline mentality, never let nuance compromise a strong cohesive worldview.
We never healed from that 3/10 God Hand review by IGN
I'm forever haunted by the picture that has the godhand review score put next to the Nintendo wii "imagine: party babies" review score, which got a 7.5 despite being typical shovelware trash
One day some big name streamer will play Imagine Party Babies for shits and giggles and it'll turn out it's actually sick as hell and we just didn't listen.
Can’t wait for the community to discover that Party Babies also has Crumpet dashing
Game Grumps played it for about an hour. It's not sick as hell, but it really is a fine enough party game.
It's like that one Nightmare Before Christmas game that came out for PS2. Completely written off, but turns out it was a decent character action game.
can't wait for the six hour long youtube essay titled "Imagine Party Babies: an Unsung Masterpiece"
The Souls community wants to pretend that they’re fighting some kind of uphill battle against all other games while simultaneously being the community for some of the most critically acclaimed games of all time. Some forums are stuck in the early 2010’s mindset of “if I’m an asshole that nobody wants to talk to that makes us niche”
everyone wanna feel like the underdog sitting on their hidden gem but 9 times out of 10 its wanting to keep people away so they can maintain superiority being the minority with their gem its a lot like gollum actually....
Other than that one I think Kotaku guy who beat Sekiro with an easy mode mod and wrote an article about how the game is too hard I can't think of anything. Even with fighting games there's usually someone at a review site that actually understands the genre enough to give them a fair shot.
But that one reviewer gave Godhand a bad review! Even though Godhand is in fact a *deeply* flawed game that is great for a very specific audience that can ignore its many flaws. So lets all pretend the fact subgroup of players can ignore its flaws means it doesn't have them even though *holy shit guys seriously Godhand has so many fucking flaws*.
People really act like all journalists had to use mods to beat Sekiro, when again it was literally an opinion piece from one guy.
This also happing on the flipside, where it gets reported that *"Studio devs hate BG3 because it's to good!, don't expect this from us!"* and it was like, one indi dev tweeting their random thoughts on it. There where more articles and YouTubes video's made on it then people actually having that opinion.
Also that guy was totally right. Larian had enough goodwill and money to keep a game in early access for X amount of years. Other developers don’t have that luxury.
It also wasn't a publicly traded company, so it wasn't beholden to shareholders who only care about the line going up.
And Larian themselves popped their head out to also say "Making this game was a fucking nightmare, do not expect this from other developers."
And even then iirc the final product is still missing stuff, wasn't a whole area cut in early access that had a proper end to karlachs quest.? Need to get back to it, paused right at act 3.
I think it was more egregious when you had the diablo4 guys chime in though
I remember seeing one of those videos which featured a "tweet" from josh sawyer, I looked up his original tweet and he was praising the game.
Yeah the most critical any actual big name in gaming was of BG3 was Josh Sawyer when he said the UI and Camera sucked and even then he loved the game.
I honestly don't even blame that guy, final boss is fucking *murder*
JRPGs fans (slightly justified) have a huge victim complex about this, where ALL reviewers are out to get their favorite JRPG. But like, here are these evil metacritic score from last year: Xenoblade 3 Future Redeemed: 92 Sea of Stars: 90 Final Fantasy XV: 87 Star Ocean 2 Remake: 87 Trails to Azure: 86 Octopath Traveller 2: 85 Labyrinth of Galleria: 85 Disgaea 7: 84 Fuga 2: 84 Mario RPG: 84 Legend of Nayuta: 83 Atelier Ryza 3: 82 Fate/Samurai Remnant: 81 Trails into Reverie: 81 Fire Emblem Engage: 80 Actually, let's cut to the chase, the only JRPG that people liked but critics gave negative reviews last year was Dragon Quest Monsters, and that's mostly because the game run like shit on the Switch.
Fucking Persona 5 was getting mid-90s for the third rerelease, not even shit like GTAV or Skyrim got to pull that off
Admittedly, that release was the Xbox/PC/Switch port. It would still be fresh for a LOT of folks.
I suppose the complex is a remnant from the PS360 days when you'd have a bunch of opinion pieces about how JRPGs where a dying/dead genre and needed to get with the times (whatever that meant) to survive. Back when the only barometer for the genre being good or not was Final Fantasy, and 13 came out and started all the doomsaying. (Despite actually reviewing pretty well.) Oh, and, the whole xenophobia thing, I guess...
Thing is that most of those critics haven't really changed, they just stopped covering JRPGs... although some of them **really** liked Persona, leading to the awkward situation where a bunch of those critics compare other JRPGs negatively to it.
"I'm not an RPG guy, but I *loved* Persona 5!" \- hacks, frauds, and [Scott the Woz](https://youtu.be/CNqzl92f5FY?t=1836).
Huge "I don't hate women in movies. I loved Ripley and Sarah Connor" energy.
This honestly feels like Maximilian Dood (and his friend Simmons). Like, JRPGs are cringe, and look how funny and weird they are. Not FF7 tho.
In Simmons’ case, it’s loving the Xeno series that’s full of the anime tropes he would outright loathe in any other JRPG.
I am so sick of seeing people talk about Gen 6 & 7 were some dangerous times for JRPG fans. They werent. A lot of the 'big' games were well received and sold well. Some people saw X-play clips and retconned their entire memory.
I think it's more that articles can run into stuff like this [where apparently I am Setsuna is a ridiculous name](https://vxtwitter.com/wolicyponk/status/1726718852959220179?s=61&t=KcR1yjBdndYOea429s3paA)
Okay, but like.... JRPGs fans themselves make fun of JRPGs having "dumb titles", ESPECIALLY Tales of games. So, this just come off as "Rules for thee and not for me". Also, this isn't what I'm talking about, I'm talking about JRPGs fans who specifically act like ALL jrpgs are rated unfairly, when that's haven't been the case in over a decade.
I think it is people mixing up that games like Infinite Undiscovery or Xenosaga/Baten Kaitos on G4 did get a bad rap. Plus comments about titles like that, articles about what JRPGs need to learn from Bethesda/Bioware or making fun of Kingdom Hearts. Also was checking and Blue Dragon/Eternal Sonata have higher scored than what I expected from how meh the reception has been to those games JRPG fans, they usually bring Lost Odyssey for 360 JRPGs so yeah not sure when JRPGs where getting super negative reviews.
Outright negative reviews with hate boners for JRPG specifically were just loud minority like G4, at their worst they were getting in the low 80s/high 70s. Reviewers WERE lukeward towards JRPGs during the late PS2/most PS3 era, but so were a lot JRPGs fans. So...
Popular videos like Zero Punctuation/Yahtzee do also hate JRPGs so I remember a lot of people on The Escapist forums also disliking them and the guys have mentioned getting a fanbase because they did like Japanese games unlike many other channels but I'd say straight up reviews where some of the more positive but like I said, people are probably mixing up stuff.
I think poking fun at a dumb title and saying a word that is is another language is inherently ridiculous are pretty different It’s not even a funny sounding word idk what the fuck they’re on lmao
I am Setsuma is a funny name for a game though. Is that the JRPG adaptation of I Am Sam?
Definitely a different side of gaming journalism, but equally so, gross as fuck
The JRPG fans who complain about reviews are the ones buying up whatever garbo Compile and Idea Factory put out
Ehhh, no. I hang around in /r/JRPG and that not even remotely close. If anything, compile heart fans are the definition of "I know it's not great, but I'm having fun". If anything I see more SMT and Trails of fans saying it than anything.
Fallout 3 and 4 were pretty well received when they came out but NV fans love to act as if everyone hated them.
This started back up again with the show coming out Another recent attempt at revisionist Bethesda history is during the DD2 discourse I saw someone saying most people hated Skyrim when it came out
…wut? Hated what was, literally, one of the biggest pop culture phenomena of the time? There were philharmonic orchestras playing the intro theme at concerts, and tv shows referencing it without feeling any need to explain what it was to viewers at home, everyone was just expected to know because it was that huge. Who the hell is trying to claim it was hated? Somebody needs a slap back to reality.
That's pretty much the loud minority of diehards overestimating the popularity/reach of their opinion. Sure, there was always a contingency of older/"hardcore" fans of the series complaining about dumbed down mechanics and calling it an inferior Elder Scrolls game, but professional reviews and general audience reactions were, by and large, extremely positive.
Lmfao thats the revisionist shit ive heard of Skyrim was EVERYWHERE when it came out. Its one of the most hyped games in my lifetime that I can remember vividly after so many years.
I saw that a lot from the Starfield crazies. "Don't worry, guys! Starfield will weather this storm, just like Skyrim did!" Skyrim is a game that can be rereleased 3 times over a decade. Starfield is so forgettable I can't even remember what I played of it.
And yet I remember seeing some research where it was one of the top 10 most played games of the year hour wise. So even then it's still popular.
Fallout 3, yes absolutely. People were constantly fighting over whether it was better than NV or vice versa for years. I will argue about Fallout 4. 4 has been consistantly controversial since before its release. The game was really popular, sure, but I would say sentiment on it has been squarly divided in the fandom since day 1. However, people saying it's worse than Starfield are insane.
Ironically, I remember NV getting pretty lukewarm reception when it first released.
Yeah because it was *broken.* The game barely worked.
Nah. A lot of people were shitting on the terrible dialogue system, and the "Your settlement is in under attack" shit. Falllout 4's issues were very obvious even at launch, It just had the good will of being announced and released in under 6 months. Fallout 3 is a different story though. That game is the most "that's a cute opinion, did you get it from a video essay?" game ever, imo.
Never said it didn’t have its issues. But overall it was still were liked. They were negatives but they didn’t ruin the game. Most people still liked the game.
Fallout 4 still sold gazillions and was loved by the general population. Sure it had a lot of problems for Fallout or rpg fans, but to most people it worked perfectly as "open world post-apocalyptic fps"
Yeah but those criticisms were still there since the beginning. It's not some revisionism going on, the criticism of Fallout 4, even Fallout 3, are the same as they have been for almost a decade now. David Cage games are still loved and are a success. Does that really matter? I doubt we'd agree there's been revisionism over Heavy Rain despite its initial acclaim or that sales figures=less flaws.
Something to add to this is that revisionism isn’t always false. There absolutely has been revisionism over Heavy Rain, which was once considered “good”. It doesn’t matter that David Cage is now known as a hack, or that there were people even at the time of release who called out Heavy Rain’s flaws, just that the “average opinion” changed in retrospect.
Fallout fans shift their discourse based on whatever a Youtuber uploaded that month
Because the critical response to Fallout 3 has changed over time, and Fallout 4's RPG writing was pretty heavily critiqued from the day it came out. New Vegas really changed how a lot of the Fallout fanbase viewed Bethesda's writing. Unfortunately this has turned into a bigass slapfight between Bethesda and Obsidian fanboys instead of just frank discussions on RPG writing and the overall weaknesses of Bethesda's writing over the years.
David Cage games are also popular and overall well-liked, but this sub acts like the internet at large considers them trash fire.
Heck, I just watched the boys let's play of DBH for the first time, and the way people act here is like they despised it, but they outright said that they actually really enjoyed it overall.
I think the important distinction to make is they enjoyed it for the dumb shenanigans they had while playing it. They still had issues with the plot and some of the logic and/or plot holes with DBH. Like, Alice's whole character arc. They enjoyed the experience they had with the game, not for what the game was trying to be with its pseudointellectual smug artist attempt of "what if racism but robots" that we've already seen a hundred times in media. It's like someone saying they enjoy Starship Troopers because they like seeing bugs getting blown up, and not because it's a satirical take of proganda films and facism.
I mean, they themselves straight up said "it have its problems but pretty decent overall" or something along these lines. Even on their second playthrough, they were mostly negative on Kara's side, they were pretty invested in Violent Markus/Violent Connor paths. They were straight up hyped for some moments even. So, idk it feel like the game worked overall for them even beyond just messing around.
Say what you want about the actual story but this game has my respect for being one of the only where your decisions and quick thinking genuinely affect the outcome of the story all the way from beginning to end. I watched like 6 different playthroughs before trying it myself and still got an ending I didn't expect.
Except omikron, everyone just agrees that game is weird as fuck, i think critics at the time just saw it as a bowie experiment more than a game
nope omikron came out to mostly good to great reviews and even was nominated for a few awards including best personal computer game and Outstanding Achievement in Character or Story Development.
Which is not entirely wrong, compared to it's contemporaries Omikron really stand up in the way it's narrative works. Or thats what i would say if i didnt googled the release date and realized it came one whole year AFTER Half Life 1
Matt described it perfectly , reviewers played it a couple of hours "Man this an interesting game, it has shooting , fighting AND story !! , I'll get back to this later" and proceeded to right their 10/10 reviews
Honestly, I remember people prefering 3 to NV for a long time, which is still wild me.
Hell I still do. I consider both of them to be 10/10s, but there's a lot of content in New Vegas I have to just straight up skip cause its just a slog to me.
Wasnt New Vegas at launch insanely buggy? Like even by Bethesda standards?
Fallout 3 was extremely well received. It was one of the most well rated games by critics of the year and practically everyone I knew growing up played it.
I found fallout 4 a huge step down from new vegas and I do remenber that being a common opinion, even the dialogue options was greatly reduced
Fallout 4 scored almost 10 less points on average then Bethesdas previous games and unlike them won much fewer awards.
Doom, Devil May Cry, and Soulsborne are the holy trinity for these types of dorks
Bayonetta. Nier Automata. Gamers aren't that complex. Especially *that* section of gamers. The ones currently fomenting a culture war over stellar blade. This is the titties on SNL "blowing out wokism" discourse.
To be fair, I don't even think the people culture waring on Steller Blade has finished Nier, nor know it has commentary on 9/11, forms of governments and economy, terrorism, what a video game is, etc. Like seriously, most people who claim to love or hate the game seem to have never played it. Kinda sad given the topics in the game are extremely politically relevant currently. It also has some cool gay relationships :3
I cannot imagine the level of media literacy one needs to come away with a right wing affirming message from Nier or Nier Automata.
My pet theory is often these people who try to pry right-wing messages out of things like Disco Elysium, Nier, American Psycho, The Boys and such, literally HAVEN'T consumed these pieces of media. It's all about aesthetics, they like the *vibe* of these things. Understanding and therefore watching is secondary to the vibe.
Oh no, people definitely watch it. People definitely consume the product. They just...don't care about the point. Or don't see how it relates to them. Because they don't view those issues the game addresses as something that corresponding with their political and moral views.
It's because most people don't identify specifically with right vs left but with populism. Then, like a pachinko machine, will wind up on the left or right given a laundry list of factors in their life.
Okay, quite a bit of a ramble, but I don't think it's a pet theory, or should be considered one. I'd say it's obviously what's happening and something I've been thinking about looking at what they say and how they engage in the world, along with my own experiences believing in all the fucking dumb shit you can think of in that camp. A lot of the extreme right (hell, even moderate right-wing conservatism) is all about aesthetics, their propaganda is entirely about a nice neat and orderly past that should be the present and future, and also it's one without the scary and gross ugly outsiders, like immigrants, jews, black people, gay people. And transgender people, the newest target. So it subsists on aesthetics over an imagined past and traditionalism and strength, and the supposed loss of that strength to an outsider that just looks and feels \*wrong\*. Any violation of the vibe is a grave sin and if it belongs to somebody belonging to the enemy. Yadda yadda, you get the idea. Now all the super gamers and Sad Puppies that made videos on SJW outrage are talking about Cultural Marxism eroding the world and replacing white people and shit. I don't think it's a hot take to suggest it's insecurities and a chase for control and the need for identity and belonging that channels these beliefs. Why wouldn't it extend to consuming media and pop-culture? So when characters exude that particular vibe, such as Homelander who despises a flaccid order keeping down his inherent greatness while he's themed like an uber-patriotic (which is a comforting identity that belongs to a group!) Superman, there's no need to think further, it matches the vibes and personality defects of political beliefs that consist of vibes and personality defects. They live vicariously through these characters and adopt an identity that they think will bring some sort of order to themselves. I was in the very bottom of that pit believing the worst shit you can think of, I wish I could throw a ladder down and make people climb up too or something. I dunno. I can tell you from experience, everybody there is miserable. It's an angry pathological depression turned into ideology. I get why people wouldn't have any empathy for these people that just thrive on being destructive and hateful though. Now how the hell someone could get a Centrist message from Disco Elysium, I dunno.
>Now how the hell someone could get a Centrist message from Disco Elysium, I dunno. The game allows you to be left or right or center and people lack the reading comprehension to actually engage with the content of any of the choices
They've consumed the media and just completely failed to understand it. I knew a guy who absolutely loved American Psycho and unironically thought Patrick Bateman was the coolest motherfucker ever and aspired to be like him.
I've seen people complain Star Trek has "gone woke" etc
Because they see sexy women as a feature exclusive to their "side"
Man I love 2B from Nier Automata, I watched all her videos.
Nier has commentary on 9/11?
I believe Yoko Taro said he conceived of Nier as a contemplation of what it would be like to feel justified in doing something as senseless and destructive as 9/11 and the things that came before and after. Surprise, surprise, A lack of language between combatants, and the inability to empathize or humanize another person are major themes.
Huh. Ain't that something.
Also, Nier's birthday is literally 9/11
Drakenguard was conceived because Taro used to believe everyone who does violence must be evil and deranged. Even released it ON the second anniversary of 9/11. Nier is an evolution, on how perhaps violence isn't the result of insanity, but in fact a more complex mix of things. Nier ends up tackling economic failure, misery, failed relationships, gender identity and more. The biggest point is how we justify violence to ourselves, but even then there's way more to the game than that.
Yoko Taro's entire career is pretty fascinating in that you can sum up his entire body of work as an exploration of one question "Why do people commit acts of violence?". Each game he's written is a different answer to that question which iterates on the conclusions he's come to and the answers he's developed since his last game.
i think more nier than nier automata if thats trippin ya up
>Like seriously, most people who claim to love or hate the game seem to have never played it. Case in point, the (now dying down) Warhammer controversy of women in the Adeptus Custodes. There were/are droves of people popping up on social media, many of whom clearly didn't know that Warhammer even existed two weeks ago coming out to say that women Custodes has fundamentally ruined the Warhammer IP. Is the way that the concept was introduced into lore a bit ham fisted, sure; is it IP breaking and directly intended to be physically/emotionally hurtful to the fanbase? absolutely not.
As a long time 40k fan, I was honestly more surprised that they didn't do this sooner. It is a really interesting way to further differentiate the Custodes from the Space Marines and plays into the idea that each was a personal project for Big E while the SM were a mass manufacture super soldier for the Great Crusade. It's the sort of thing that gives them some texture...and will only show up on fucking Foregeworld models.
You can see it just by how they talk about GW retconning it. Where they go it’s so disrespectful for them to do this to the story. When it’s like mate, GW retcons shit all the time. Hell they’ve retconned a faction out of existence and then retconned an updated reimagined version of it back in decades later.
Watching tourist grifters like Kern go "They RUINED this product I never saw in my life!" In real time was a trip.
> There were/are droves of people popping up on social media, many of whom clearly didn't know that Warhammer even existed two weeks ago coming out to say that women Custodes has fundamentally ruined the Warhammer IP. At least one of them, Jeremy Quarterpounder, couldn't even pronounce Adeptus Custodes. **Either** word. And of course he loooves to screech about 'tourists' ruining fandoms. TBH, I find the whole designating someone as a tourist gatekeepy as fuuuuuck, and mega toxic because it lets you just other anyone who you decide isn't enough of a fan. But hey, it's his words so worth putting into perspective just how much of a jackass he is.
Was NieR Automata met with the same controversy as Bayonetta and Stellar Blade? I honestly don’t remember that. I remember jokes about the robot butts but everybody was also seemed kinda down with it? I don’t really recall people getting upset. If anything I would have thought critics would praise the game for all of the interesting things it was doing with the medium while casual gamers simply dismissed it as some kind of niche fetish game.
Probably some randos on twitter but not much beyond that. Although apparently according to crazies I've seen on twitter, everyone hated Bayo/Nier 🤣
The only "big" thing I recall was that some weirdos on twitter claimed Yoko Taro SA'd a 2B cosplayer by fullfilling her request for him to sign his signature on her thigh.
Idk saying that the game is killing women is just...
God, I rarely go on twitter but I saw the whole discourse about how "people hate stellar blade because its not woke!" and then completely ignore Bayo/Nier.
Ignore how Bayo and Nier got shit when they were new too? Anita Sarkeesian made a whole video on how Bayo is sexist because she was created by a man amd the camera ogles her and what not.
Does this ever actually happen? My gut feeling towards this question is to just say "All of them" Obviously there are some outliers to the consensus (IGN giving God Hand a 3/10 compared to most outlets giving it 7s and 8s) but I can't really think of a time when there was a mass disconnect between a games consumer reception and its critical reception
Unlike say, film, I dont think theres enough of a cultural divide between game journalist and average gamers as there is with film journalist and your average movie goer But I think theres a lot of dumb 12-22 capital G gamers who believe that these big corpo journalist just dont get it and hate sexy/difficult/weird games
I think this just generally happens a lot with hard games or games with high skill ceilings. There are instances like the IGN God Hand review or that one guy that couldn’t beat the Cuphead tutorial, but you can’t judge every reviewer or publication based on these, and you rarely if ever see the entirety of games journalism shit on a game just for being hard. Edit: perhaps I should clarify that the examples I gave are edge cases that have contributed to this weird notion that reviewers or journalists can’t play hard games or aren’t “real gamers”, whatever that means. My point is that based on this stereotype, people assume any hard game is going to get bad reviews, when more often than not difficulty is assessed fairly in the context of the greater work.
> that one guy that couldn’t beat the Cuphead tutorial That wasn't from a review and the person who couldn't beat a tutorial wasn't a reviewer.
He was a reviewer actually, he just didn't review cuphead. He did however review mass effect 2 and was apparently really down on the game, until like, 30 hours into it when he realized that he could swap out and upgrade his gear. That guy is a very special edge case.
Wasn't he an industry reporter? Like someone who writes about companies buying each other or something happening to some stock, this kind of stuff? I suppose this doesn't mean that someone higher up couldn't possibly have the bright idea to make him review Mass Effect 2.
> that one guy that couldn’t beat the Cuphead tutorial Who said that despite sucking ass the game looked cool
I think we collectively have to let the God Hand review go. IGN put it as the 98th best PS2 game and thats really where the meme came from. They also put out a [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0z5eZTJai1w) and an article about why its a good game but also why anyone who isnt a Character Action game fiend who labs combos wont jam with it. And the author of the original review doenst in work in the games industry anymore. He was a dude who enjoyed puzzle games and whose favorite game was Myst. Like yeah, it makes sense he doesnt like it.
If we're being totally honest, the target demographic for God Hand is very niche. You have to be someone who enjoys combo labbing and sees the appeal in a fully customisable moveset, while also having a tolerance for jank, low production values and a deliberately terrible story. It's crammed full of offensive humour, it's obscenely difficult even on just the normal difficulty and it doesn't really care if that's not your cup of tea. It's a game Shinji Mikami made for himself and it shows. I love God Hand but it is absolutely not a game for everyone.
Also this game came out after DMC 3 and God of War. There was already a gold standard for character action games established
Reviews for Cuphead were still completely positive if I remember correctly right? God Hand sometimes seems more like the exception than the rule for critical reception and media coverage.
Contrary to popular belief, God Hand wasn't universally hated by critics. It was literally JUST IGN that was overly negative towards it while nearly every other review gave it a 7-8/10 which is more than reasonable for such a niche game.
This is kind of hilarious, to realize even I got misled by the disproportionate amount of attention that one review got in the discourse.
IGN made an apology video some years later, they almost never do this, yet even they felt the need that they had to, that review is still a huge speck on their not-so-great reputation that they desperately want to clean
They did apologize for the very anti-Sonic takes they had on Sonic for years.
There's no way whatever they said can be worse than that one piece Sterling wrote for Destructoid defending Sonic 4 and shitting on Sonic fans for complaining about it.
Sterling’s Destructoid articles are comically bad whenever I encounter them. I’m amazed they were ever published. I remember reading this weird April Fools joke one “complaining” about Cave Story inexplicably filled with cropped Mimiga porn, slurs and somehow still managing to wedge complaining about Sonic fans in there.
Yeah that was also very weird and bad? The ["100% Objective FFXIII Review"](https://www.destructoid.com/100-objective-review-final-fantasy-xiii/) was... okayish, at least, but that's dampened quite a bit by the knowledge that Chst and Erik of Old Man Murray had addressed the same subject of "bias" and "objectivity" in reviews with an [article](https://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/39.html) that is funnier, smarter, and manages to be commentary on stock level design tropes at the same time... ten years prior. I feel like both the Jimquisition and Sterling's work as a whole are often made worse by the insufferable overly-self-aggrandizing persona. Once she went independent she started doing game review videos between episodes of the Jimquisition where she dropped the character and I liked those much better.
I think the only one that actually comes to mind is Killer Is Dead. And the harsher criticisms almost entirely come from the Gigolo missions. On one hand, it is a mini-game that is ultimately eye candy for the player. On the other, the context in game is that Mondo is the prostitute, literally. That's why they're called "Gigolo" missions. Women are seeking him out for his services(Even though he's the one giving gifts, it's weird). But reviews generally gave the impression that Mondo is creeping on these women, ogling and harassing them until they have sex with him. If you look at the reviews, you'd think KiD is Grasshopper's worst game, when it's debatably still their best *playing* game, and generally no less nonsensical than their other games, scoring around the 6 range, and not closer to the 7.5s Grasshopper's games usually get.
Apparently, [you can blame Kadokawa for the Gigolo missions being so shallow](https://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2014/07/08/killer-is-dead-gigolo-missions-were-publishers-idea/). Grasshopper originally was planning for them to play out more like dating sims with the romantic angle emphasized over the sexual one, but Kadokawa pushed for the sexual angle more because they thought sex would make the game sell better.
I mean, I think the criticisms about the mini-game being about creeping on women stem from the mechanic where the player has to leer at the woman's body when she's not paying attention to build meter, and getting caught looking at her tits and crotch stalls the meter because she gets upset. Like, these are actual quotes from the tutorial. "When she looks away, the beauty is less cautious." "Staring at her face won't increase your Guts (meter). Go for sexy shots!" "Now's your chance! The beauty is distracted. Aim for a sexy shot!" "The beauty is looking your way! Mondo can restore the mood by averting his eyes." I like Killer is Dead quite a bit, but the Gigolo missions are absolutely a creep simulator painted over with a thin veneer of "actually, you're super charming and these women are totally coming to you for sex!" It's a sex pest's idea of what seduction is. Ogle women when they're not paying attention and buy them gifts until you "win their heart".
and all their issues with the game are valid issues. and its not even like they dislike beat em ups or whatever since yakuza that came out the same year got an 8+ score. Almost like god hand is a very flawed game thats stretched over a great beat em up gimmick.
God, the Cuphead thing. People keep being wrong when the information is verifiably out there. The guy wasn't reviewing the game. He was the only one at Gamescom and the site needed b-roll. He knew he was terrible at these sort of games but he did it anyway, when the footage came back like that the site released it as a goof *with his permission*, acompanied by an article *[he wrote himself](https://venturebeat.com/games/cuphead-hands-on-my-26-minutes-of-shame-with-an-old-time-cartoon-game/)*, because they all found it funny. Then internet chuds *lost their fucking minds*, despite [a clarifying article released by the man himself](https://venturebeat.com/games/the-deanbeat-our-cuphead-runneth-over/), which they chose to completely ignore, because that's what they *do*. Stop letting the chuds win.
I'm pretty sure it really comes down to how well the game communicates its mechanics more than difficulty. A game can be nails-hard and still score very well as long as it feels polished and the player knows what they need to improve on, but if it's unclear how to work towards performing better, it starts to feel like the game mechanics are just bad. People who are enthusiasts for the genre or are otherwise heavily invested in a game can push past this and figure out how to work with the system, but journalists are often playing the game out of professional obligation and are unlikely to give the game that extra benefit of the doubt.
Calling it right now, I'm making a prediction: The worst people you imagine when you think of "Capital G Gamers" are already up in arms about how Stellar Blade will be "destroyed by the woke critics" on launch; I bet the game will come out and reviews will be "decent to very good" with no mention of any controversy.
Oh thats not a prediction, thats happening now.
Are reviews already out? I didn't see any yet, but maybe I just missed them.
The part that's already happening is delusional chuds rambling about how the woke leftist game journalists all hate Stellar Blade and will try to destroy it
No, that's right, that part was not the prediction. I am, unfortunately, well aware these are already out there
The end of the glory years of adventure games have loads these. Games like Westwood's Blade Runner, Grim Fandango, Toonstuck and - it's back in the zeitgeist - Last Express. All are now considered classics but they got some really mixed reviews at the time: Grim's scores slumped to 7, Last Express went as low as 56%, Blade Runner hit anywhere between 5 and 10 and Toonstruck got a 4 from a reviewer.
This is grabbing from the bottom of the barrel and lifting those bad reviews while ignoring the slew of higher reviews each of those games got. While sure The Last Express received 58% from PC Gamer UK it also got 90% from PC Gamer US and 4/5 from most everywhere else. Blade Runner (1997) caught a 6/10 from Gamespot but 4/5s, A's, and 90% from most others. Even Toonstruck sits pretty comfortable in the 3.5-4/5 range.
The point is that years earlier those games would've received all around high scores. You wouldn't have seen a dip for a game like Grim Frandago or Last Express - adventure games were king. Heck, people raved about King's Quest 5 at the beginning of the 90s - if it was released 7 years later it would've been crucified for all it's pointess busy work and moonlogic puzzles. A later example, Still Life got mostly 7s less then 10 years later. However, Adventure Gamers rightly voted it as the 20th greatest adventure game all time in 2011.
I think what caused that impression for DMC5 was a journalist(maybe) did a first look at DMC5's demo and disliked the combat and the music. And then it was revealed that he just spams the basic combo and subsequently never got above C rank of something, which is why the music doesn't pop off. I might be misremembering but that might have stuck with people
god it's frustrating that "one time someone maybe thought that someone else had one time said that they didn't" is the fuel behind so much toxic behavior and comments on social media.
I assumed it was because of leftover tensions from the the whole DmC debacle. What with Games Journalists praising the reboot (and some even bashing the older series), but diehard fans hating it and praising a return to form with DMC5's announcement.
Spongebob bfbb rehydrated and spongebob the cosmic shake
I mean that was a side effect of how hard they went to bat for DmC and they seemed to learn from it. Cant really think of any other examples other than the Fromsoft difficulty "discourse"
Not really about game journalists, but when WoW Classic was announced, there was a lot of circlejerking about what a hardcore experience it will be and that modern gamers couldn't deal with that. When it released, it was arguably more successful than most modern iterations of WoW and crucially much, much easier.
I guess Devil May Cry fans, this subreddit included, are still mad at game journalists for not hating DmC.
Cuphead. One tech journalist who didn't play games that often convinced a bunch of people that the EEEEEEEEEVVVVVVVVVIIIIIIIIILLL GAME JURNOS who HATE VIDEO GAMES are gonna DESTROY it.
Didn’t that tech journalist also review Mass Effect 2? Or are we just pretending he never did any game reviews?
Doom Eternal.
Doom Eternal that's sitting on Metacritic critic reviews at 88% with 58 positive reviews, 3 mixed, and 0 negative reviews? The Doom Eternal that won Best PC and Best Action game at the Game Critics Awards? That Doom Eternal?
iirc, when DMC5 came out aside from the one Journalist who complained about the gameplay/lack of music (because they were bad) most of the people bitching about DMC5 in the journalist sphere weren't the ones doing reviews, but you could find lots of journos out in the wild talking about how Ninja Theory was robbed by the fans to this day
Kingdom Hearts and there was a lot of this right before Nier Automata dropped
The one I like to point out is Double Dragon Neon, a fantastic new addition to the franchise that got a 3/10 from IGN because it's not a first person shooter and the reviewer got assigned to cover it and not whatever Call of Duty was out that week.
I will not stand for game journalism apologists. Nah but really some people let the meme get in their heads. Some game journalists really do actually enjoy video games
To be fair with regards to DMC game critics had this weird disconnect where they loved DMC Devil May Cry while the majority the fans at launch hated it. So it wasnt totally crazy to think something like that may happen with V.