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Discussion In another episode of Metacritic's user score sucks: all of Nintendo's 2023 releases have been review bombed for no reason (update: it's fixed now!)

Lord Azrael said:
Huh? What instigated this
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I think the anti-piracy stuff might be the reason review bombers will give you if you ask them ; but as always it mostly comes down to console warring. Sony and Xbox hardcore fans haven't had a lot to play this year so they try to entertain themselves as best they can.
 
Party Sklar said:
I think the anti-piracy stuff might be the reason review bombers will give you if you ask them ; but as always it mostly comes down to console warring. Sony and Xbox hardcore fans haven't had a lot to play this year so they try to entertain themselves as best they can.
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I don't buy that at all. This is clearly very organized since it spanned multiple games. You don't just get a bunch of other companies' fans all of a sudden deciding to review bomb several old games at once. Ironically your hypothesis sounds very console war-y. At most I could see it starting from a smaller group for a "cause" and then maybe bad faith actors jumping on the bandwagon
 
Lord Azrael said:
I don't buy that at all. This is clearly very organized since it spanned multiple games. You don't just get a bunch of other companies' fans all of a sudden deciding to review bomb several old games at once. Ironically your hypothesis sounds very console war-y. At most I could see it starting from a smaller group for a "cause" and then maybe bad faith actors jumping on the bandwagon
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It was just meant as a joke towards the drought of big exclusivities on PS5 and Xbox Series since the beginning of the year (I think I only booted up my PS5 and Series S for Ishin, Hi-Fi Rush and RE4 since the beginning of the year, and only one game of the three is an exclusivity) and a comment on the toxicity of hyper fans of any company who will find any excuse to jump on the bandwagon, as you said. Sorry if it sounded console war-y.

On a more serious note, I’ve seen here and there people calling for review bombs of Advance Wars and Engage because they were supposedly « woke ». Haven’t seen calls to review bomb Kirby and Metroid Prime, but a lot of bad faith actors complained about « remasters with a Dolphin texture pack », so it might be about that. For Cereza and the Lost Demon, like Bayo 2 and 3 I assume it might be because of the Nintendo exclusivity. While it’s obviously some kind of coordinated campaign, as OP pointed out, people might have different reasons to review bomb each one of these games.

Edit : upon checking the situation on MC, one really easy thing they could do would be to force people to write something to be able to review a game, or at least disclose the username of every person that gives a rating.
 
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Party Sklar said:
It was just meant as a joke towards the drought of big exclusivities on PS5 and Xbox Series since the beginning of the year (I think I only booted up my PS5 and Series S for Ishin, Hi-Fi Rush and RE4 since the beginning of the year, and only one game of the three is an exclusivity) and a comment on the toxicity of hyper fans of any company who will find any excuse to jump on the bandwagon, as you said. Sorry if it sounded console war-y.

On a more serious note, I’ve seen here and there people calling for review bombs of Advance Wars and Engage because they were supposedly « woke ». Haven’t seen calls to review bomb Kirby and Metroid Prime, but a lot of bad faith actors complained about « remasters with a Dolphin texture pack », so it might be about that. For Cereza and the Lost Demon, like Bayo 2 and 3 I assume it might be because of the Nintendo exclusivity. While it’s obviously some kind of coordinated campaign, as OP pointed out, people might have different reasons to review bomb each one of these games.
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If Advance Wars were review bombed for being ‘woke’, to me that’s different from the bigoted pearl-clutching over representation in games like Engage. I mean, at least there I can see what chuds don’t like (the merest hint of LGBT relationships) even if their fragile hate is really fucking stupid and easily set off over the tiniest hint of inclusivity. AW though… it’s literally the same cartoon character archetypes from 20 years ago, playing out their battles. It’s not even like there’s a twisted reaction to something harmless and positive, it’s just over… nothing at all. Which I guess just shows how empty the rhetoric of idiots throwing ‘woke’ around is, if it doesn’t even need to be an reaction to anything other than ‘I don’t like thing for no particular reason!’. Weird.
 
PixelKnight said:
AW though… it’s literally the same cartoon character archetypes from 20 years ago, playing out their battles. It’s not even like there’s a twisted reaction to something harmless and positive, it’s just over… nothing at all.
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From what I've seen, for Advance Wars the usual morons complained that they kept the """censorship""" of the western GBA release (namely Nell's outfit and Red Star being renamed Orange Star), but also that they hired "woke voice actors" like ProZD and EgoRaptor (I don't know why they consider them "woke" and I'm not sure I wanna know the answer tbh)
 
Party Sklar said:
From what I've seen, for Advance Wars the usual morons complained that they kept the """censorship""" of the western GBA release (namely Nell's outfit and Red Star being renamed Orange Star), but also that they hired "woke voice actors" like ProZD and EgoRaptor (I don't know why they consider them "woke" and I'm not sure I wanna know the answer tbh)
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Ah thanks for the context. Yeah, wow. So ‘nothing at all’ then :) Agree there’s no point trying to understand the stretches and twisted logic required.
 
PixelKnight said:
If Advance Wars were review bombed for being ‘woke’, to me that’s different from the bigoted pearl-clutching over representation in games like Engage. I mean, at least there I can see what chuds don’t like (the merest hint of LGBT relationships) even if their fragile hate is really fucking stupid and easily set off over the tiniest hint of inclusivity. AW though… it’s literally the same cartoon character archetypes from 20 years ago, playing out their battles. It’s not even like there’s a twisted reaction to something harmless and positive, it’s just over… nothing at all. Which I guess just shows how empty the rhetoric of idiots throwing ‘woke’ around is, if it doesn’t even need to be an reaction to anything other than ‘I don’t like thing for no particular reason!’. Weird.
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It's not even only Nintendo first party games, it seems to just be almost every highly rated release from this year. Final Bar Line is sitting at a 4.0 userscore and as mentioned earlier games like DREDGE are effected too.
 
Raysu Delight said:
It's not even only Nintendo first party games, it seems to just be almost every highly rated release from this year. Final Bar Line is sitting at a 4.0 userscore and as mentioned earlier games like DREDGE are effected too.
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Wow. Someone really needs a new hobby.

Dredge is really cool, I’ve only played the demo but found it original and intriguing. I’ll pick up the full game later this year.
 
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Party Sklar said:
From what I've seen, for Advance Wars the usual morons complained that they kept the """censorship""" of the western GBA release (namely Nell's outfit and Red Star being renamed Orange Star), but also that they hired "woke voice actors" like ProZD and EgoRaptor (I don't know why they consider them "woke" and I'm not sure I wanna know the answer tbh)
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Oh snap, I had no idea the likes of ProZD and Egoraptor were in Advance Wars!
 
I think these are voting bots that some incel hackers use.

I don't know about metacritics security but on most websites its easy to manipulate such things.
 
I understand the OP's concern about what a low user score can mean for games like Advance Wars and Cereza and the Lost Demon.

If someone isn't sure they are going to buy a game, seeing a low user score can seal the deal in a negative way or make them even more unsure. We all like to think we're immune to this sort of stuff, but truth is we aren't.
 
Yep the user score is basically useless for sorting out older stuff on a console’s library
Maybe they could do like Rotten Tomatoes audience reviews and only calculate the score based on the verified purchases
 
Likely people mad at Nintendo over PointCrow and/or Gary Bowser.
Hailinel said:
I can't imagine that many people think this way.

And regardless, from what I understand, Advance Wars has already sold quite well compared to the expectations for it.
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What word has there been on this
 
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if that's the case then they should honestly get a life, what does review bombing accomplish?
 
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thoughthaver said:
this is why im giving every game a 0/10. even the ones i like. gotta keep these companies humble.
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Gonna announce free version of Tears of Kingdom any minute now.

But seriously it's amazing how much people hate success. The world is full of losers.
 
Raysu Delight said:
This seems to also be extending to smaller indie games which is just a shame.

DREDGE is currently sitting at a user score of 8.0 on PS5, and 5.1 on Switch, despite the fact that it runs well on the hardware.
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Doesn't matter to me, it's selling really well on Switch, second most downloaded eshop title in April, people are aware of its quality, 84 Metacritic, and it's a title I'll pick up somewhere down the line.
 
Cucufate said:
Even when they work "as intended" Metacritic's user scores are utterly worthless because almost everyone follows the "I like this game! 10/10; I don't like this game! 0/10" dogma, so the idea of someone wasting what has surely been a significant amount of time on trying to rig them is completely surreal to me.
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Nailed it.
 
Not related to this specifically, but I noticed that basically every recent Gamepass release has really high user scores on Metacritic, and many of them with mini reviews with them, and looking at their profiles these people just give 10/10 to anything that releases on Gamepass and sometimes also gave 0/10 to Sony games. Is this like an anti review bombing from an individual or 2, or are many Gamepass fans that desperate? Is hard to say and makes looking for real opinions from users about these games impossible lol.
 
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