As their acclaimed JRPG gets review-bombed, indie publisher calls on Metacritic to do more

Chained Echoes is getting slammed, and its devs have no idea why - Calling on Metacritic to do more.

[BrainSyphoned]

Who doesn't have anything bad to write in these blank reviews and would benefit from sympathy sales?

[blackblades]

I still say they should just get rid of the user score. They are untrustworthy of both good and bad review and honestly user reviews arent even a review. Of course tie it with the psn/xb account would be better.

[lodossrage]

The problem is there's no exact science on the matter.

Remember, user scores came to be because people didn't trust mainstream scores. With people admitting to getting gifts, swag, access, etc for favorable reviews. And on the flip side, any group of fanboys can user score bomb a game for the pettiest of reasons, or even no reason at all.

That's why when I buy my games, the only review I count on is my own. If I think the game is good, I'll keep playing it. If I feel it's crap, I won't finish it. Trust nobody but yourself, only YOU know what you like and dislike

[shinoff2183]

Perfectly said. I count on myself when it comes to buying games, I usually don't let myself down.

[blackblades]

Right, the only thing count is your own opinion. Demos, your own research and judgement. Its just how this site is portraying things. If you had a business you don't want some bs crap going on with reviews on either side.

[gold_drake]

people are still gettin swag etc for a certain given scores,in alot of cases. they're just bound by contract.

i was given a nintendo first party game to review and was reminded to give it a "atleast above avarage score", to ensure that they give us stuff for contests or giveaways and to ensure future review copies. so yeh.

but i absolutely agree, i go out of my way to look at games myself and dont consider reviews

[DarXyde]

We do live in an age of technology where we can very often see things for ourselves. PlayStation has a great thing going with Share Play, which I think is an excellent way to test drive a full game. Also, we do have video reviews which is a far more objective assessment of things like visuals, frame rate, etc than reading about it. That's something I can say about the reviews of Demon's Souls back on PS3: I recall some written review mentioning the terrible frame rate, yet other reviews were making the game sound awesome. That one review seemed like a truth teller of sorts and it sounded like a deal breaker to me. Fortunately, one of the earlier clips showed the Valley of Defilement and I just remember thinking "that's aggressive... But I think I can manage". Sure enough, I've beaten that game so much that I've played with every starting class at least 3 times and level capped one save file.

My point is reviews—professional or otherwise— can be problematic, though we have means of verifying the claims made and see if it's within our personal tolerances. For example, reviews mentioning Redfall and its bugs can be verified with a quick trip to YouTube. I'll say this though: this strategy would be dangerous for a game that's very narrative like The Last of Us Part II because you can't really get at reviewer grievances about the story without spoilers.

[senorfartcushion]

Football commentary is my go-to comparison to “reviewing”, not for criticism. Criticism is pointing out a writer’s mistakes and/ or breaking down the logic of the art.

I.e Gear score doesn’t matter if the endgame doesn’t allow enemies to follow your level as you gain XP. Having a golden shotgun with 200 combat points means nothing when you’re in the area with level 1-10 enemies.

Criticism and reviewing are very different things reviewing is something anyone can do, like football commentary, there’s nothing stopping your drunk uncle at Thanksgiving from shouting player names and commenting on their “form.”

[MWH]

Sometimes friends make good recommendations. some of the best games i played were recommended by my friends which at first i didn't like, and mocked even, only to kiss the forhead of the one who recommended it later. Some reviewers too are still trustworthy, like the guys at Digital Foundry, and there was a very good guy at Gamespot but he left a long time ago.

[Lore]

Are you joking? User scores are always more accurate than the critic score except when it’s being review bombed.

[blackblades]

Na, user score can blindly lift the score with perfect scores so not always. Some use just a couple words like "The game is good"/ the game horrible" to a couple/few sentences. They arent even that detailed, like a short opinion and not a review. At least main stream actual review has info that the player can use to make the judegment to get the game. I wouldnt trust metecritic but steam on the other hand I look at there user experience time to time then metecritic

[franwex]

Absolutely not in my experience.

[AirRevenant]

so except almost always.

[FinalFantasyFanatic]

I take both into account, sometimes you get blind fanboys of crappy games, but you get pro reviewers who want to push a narrative or they've been paid to give a good review (sometimes the truth lies somewhere in the middle). Unfortunately, it's not always obvious where the truth lies unless you can play the game, either via a friend or via a demo.

[CrimsonWing69]

Like hell they are. People review bomb games due to console wars and other petty sh*t. Just as fanboys can give perfect scores.

[Kyizen]

Always and Except shouldn't be used in the same sentence 😕

[Linefix]

Always? Sure about that? The user scores are full of blind fanboys and trolls. Can't trust them, sorry.

[REDDURT]

How dare people have an opinion that is not sanctioned by the media.

[blackblades]

Shut up foo, you missed what i said

[staticall]

@blackblades
You can use Opencritic, it doesn't have user scores or reviews. And that's the reason why i'm not using it.

In this particular case, at least, according to original twitter thread, this have happened because of lack of spanish language and the dev have noticed it now. And this whole "bombing" did happen 6 months after the release. Someone, IMO, overreacted. And they used this attention to advertise something else.

Of course, i agree, some reviews are not even reviews (like the "there are too many positive/negative reviews, so i'm trying to even things out" kind, hate them; or "game sucks/amazing" without explanation crowd) and can be disregarded. Some just troll and want to see the world burn. But there are good reviews too - people are explaining what they love/hate, explaining the controversy and stuff. Those are very helpful.

What should happen, imo, is people should just stop giving too much credability to Metacritic and Opencritic (and alike) and use their score as some sort of metric of success (like Bethesda did with Fallout: New Vegas to screw over Obsidian).
First, they give Metacritic ammo and then act surprised when other people start using it to their advantage. And 'cause big publishers are trying to censor it, i think, it's a good tactic (because i don't see any other way to affect them, not buying doesn't work anymore, market is too big).

I don't trust most of the review sites, because big publishers are in good relations with review sites and invite them to exclusive pre-launch events, give them interviews, free games, good gifts, etc ('member duffel bag situation for Fallout 76? You know, when paying customers got a shitty bag but journos got a good ones for free?). That clouds their judgement, they're afraid to lose free things, so they don't critique much in their reviews.
Regular users are mostly safe from this.

P. S.: You can easily create new Xbox/PSN accounts. I have like 5 PSN accounts (thanks to DLC being tied to region). That wouldn't help anything, in my opinion. Trolls can easily create burner accounts en-masse and use them.

[ChasterMies]

I agree with this and I often leave user reviews on Metacritic. Maybe have some users vetted before they can post review. Maybe have a waiting period so we don’t see so many reactionary 10/10 and 0/10 that people post to adjust the user score.

[babadivad]

Nothing is more untrustworthy than professional reviewers.

[Christopher]

I wish Xbox and PSN allowed reviews by people who own and have played games for a specific amount of time or got at least the first achievement/trophy and those were made public. Then metacritic and others could just import those scores by game. Would be more accurate. Want to troll? Pay to play.

[blackblades]

I would say 50% mark also ps5 shows the hours you played so the amount of hours could work. The site owner doesnt care apparently after all these years.

[Obscure_Observer]

Perfect.

[victorMaje]

This is the way. Achievement/Trophy based reviews.

@blackblades
50% mark makes sense too but should be secondary, don’t forget one could just leave the game running which would increase hours played.

[Mr_cheese]

Perhaps the answer would be to link an account such as steam, psn, live so that it can verify that you've played the game before reviewing it

[gunnerforlife]

And critic reviews aren't trust worthy either, they've either been given loads of goodies by the devs or company or have an agenda of their own! Just look at the divide between critic and the average Joe reviews!! Worlds apart!! Especially in the movie industry the agendas are insane by the so called professional critics!! And it's slowly sipping into the gaming industry! Thankfully the hardcore fan base still had a strong hold in the gaming scene and we won't let sh1t like that slide.

[blackblades]

I never said they were trustworthy I believe. That's the problem with people on here. Movie critics are the worse they mostly give a lot of things a bad rating when I think its good. At times I do agree with them cause somtimes some things are bad.

[Tapani]

That is simply horrible! The game is one of the best games, if not the best game of last year. Play this! Forget the bugged and rigged system of review bombing, just buy it and support Matthias and his team. These guys are superb!! We need to fight this stuff as a community, because small indie devs are the ones who least deserve this type of mistreatment.

[thorstein]

This is the best comment on this whole story. This game is worth every penny. Such a great story, mechanics, etc.

Oh, and one of those rare launches that wasn't a bug ridden mess.

[just_looken]

just watching gameplay for shovel knight players that like that style of art and throwback this is a goty for sure.

Just like a atomic heart i am enjoying playing it but everyone is harassing me calling me a russia supporter even got death threats probably will now on here because i admitted to playing that game.

[jznrpg]

User reviews are screwed for obvious reason and so are “professional” reviews because of money that companies throw around in many ways.

I just buy games that I think I will enjoy. Some devs you know make good games. Some long lasting series I know I will enjoy. Mostly I know what a game I want to play looks like. On rare occasion I get it wrong but I just sell it on eBay but that’s rare these days.

By most accounts this is a good game. I haven’t played it yet waiting for my physical copy.

[GhostScholar]

Put it this way, I love jrpgs, but usually I play for 10 hours and move on. I had 80 hours in chained echoes and 100 percented it. The story is great and the game is beautiful. If you have game pass play it right now! If not buy it!

[kindi_boy]

aah if you only didn't say gamepass people would have upvoted you instead of downvoting you.

[GhostScholar]

You’re correct lol but I’d definitely pay for chained echoes if it wasn’t on game pass. It’s worth the money. I hope for a sequel.

[Vengeance1138]

User scores are the most irrelevant and useless scores though as everyone only rates games either 10 or 0, nothing in between.

[Stanjara]

Where are those bad user reviews? I don't see any. The game is great 9/10.

[PCgamer98]

Metacritic's user reviews is just the hotbed of fanboy wars. You're better off getting reviews from steam since these came from people that actually bought the game.

[GhostScholar]

Open critic seems to be the most accurate in my opinion. Not 100 percent but definitely better than Metacritic. Also true achievements/trophies has decent user reviews.

[Inverno]

The way they went about it is dumb. It happens, you contact Meta and they'll remove the 1 star ratings, don't just whine about it on Twitter and act like they only care when it's AAA. As if there aren't literally 1000s of games reviewed on that site, you can't keep track of all the ones that get reviewed bombed.

[franwex]

Such a strange game to review bomb.

[HeliosHex]

I don't think there's anyway of resolving this issue. The only thing I can think of is somehow accepting reviews of games the user actually completed. Not reviews from people who played for an hour or not at all. The only thing is metacritic would have to imbed itself in every console like an app you'll have to download it and metacritic would keep track of the games you play and know if you finished it or not. Similar to steam and how they keep track of your playtime. That might not completely help but I think it will cut down significantly on review bombs.

[REDDURT]

I trust the fans over the media. They both have agendas by the media is in all avenues has lost any kind for journalistic integrity.

[EternalTitan]

Why cant my fav games get the same treatment?
I want FFXV to get some perfect scores.

[gold_drake]

the games combat is fairly good. the first half of the game is ... ALOT tho.

[46player]

Censorship is never a good thing. I do however believe that Metacritic should actually check user reviews (without bias) before auto posting them. Check them for actual content. A review bomber is just jumping on the bandwagon and dropping bad reviews. Jedi Survivor is a great example. I have it on PS5. The only issue I experienced was having to turn off HDR in game. But there are PC reviews on the PS5 section discussing bugs not present on the PS5 version.

[Azurite]

Just checked, must be fixed.

[bangoskank]

The user review scores for this game are 8 and above across all platforms. If the game is being review bombed the number of idiots doing so is insignificant and this article is completely irrelevant.

[FinalFantasyFanatic]

Maybe they should use a system like Steam where you can see lifetime reviews vs recent reviews and hopefully that'll shed some light to potential purchasers.

[babadivad]

If it's happening, there's always a reason for it.

[antikbaka]

steam reviews are the best. Everything else is trash.

[antikbaka]

....

[CrimsonWing69]

So, I checked the meta and out of 40 some user reviews... only 3 are negative. The user scores actually align with the critic scores, so uhhh... what the f*ck is the problem, here?

From the sounds of things I thought this was getting dog-piled by negative user reviews.

[-Foxtrot]

Yeah I don’t get him

It’s like whining about not getting the user review you want

There’s no motive here, no obvious one so maybe that’s just how it is, maybe some didn’t care much for it.

What does he want? People to dictate Metacritic so they get the scores they want

[rippermcrip]

Look at the screenshots he provided. Metacritic has obviously cleaned it up at this point.

[Bobertt]

I don't know anyone who takes Metacritic reviews seriously other than Management at Game Developer companies who tie bonuses to the score the game gets. Even IGN and Gamespot reviews i don't pay attention to their scores anymore because the scoring system these days is just dumb. If a game gets a 7/10 it's considered bad so everything gets 8 or 9. I remember when the scoring system for game reviews used to be 1-4 means it's bad, 5 was medicore, 6-7 was good, 8-9 was great, and 10 was reserved for all time great games.

[PhillyDillyDee]

I think user reviews are an important metric so long as they are kept separate from critic reviews.

[MetroidFREAK21]

Glad I don't play games based on reviews

[Gregero]

So I haven't played a good JRPG in a while. Metacritic scores aside - Is this a good one with a quality story and with a good turned based battle system?

[BrockEmSockEm]

I was curious and the first negative review I saw was:

"It has those stupid "dumb down the game for me" option on the settings, so that's an instant garbage, lazy and boring game for me. Make a proper hard mode or something.
Thanks god we have refunds on PC."

How is accessibility options deserving of a 1/10?