Random Nintendo Games Are Being Review Bombed But Nobody Knows Why
Nintendo owns a certain reputation. The Japanese veteran is known for its charming, family friendly, whimsical titles and cutesy cast of characters. It’s a veneer that has remained with the company. So it’s somewhat jarring to see various Nintendo games seemingly the target of review bombing.
The games affected include Advance Wars 1 + 2: Re-Boot Camp, Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon, and Fire Emblem Engage. The pattern was first picked up by a user on the NintendoSwitch subreddit with a thread that drew attention to how Advance Wars Reboot Camp was getting review bombed on Metacritic. The OP observed how the game has a high critical score, which stands at 82, but a significantly lower User Score, which is at 5.3 at the time of writing.
Meanwhile, Fire Emblem Enage has a high Metascore of 80 but is saddled with a User Score of 6.6. Then there’s Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon, which has a Metascore of 81 but a much lower User Score of 5.7.
Advance Wars Reboot Camp is receiving Review-Bombing on Metacritic? (Debate)
by u/_delriooo in NintendoSwitch
There is an ensuing debate over review bombing and why there is a need to target games with excessively low scores. Looking over the User Reviews of Advance Wars Reboot Camp there are a number of scores awarding the game zero or scores below five. “The problem with user scores is it’s either a 10 or a 0”, wrote one user, in a comment that received the most upvotes. “I never even look at them because they are not useful in any way. I find critic reviews to give a reasonable overview of the quality of a game though so just stick to that.”
Others chimed in with similar sentiments, saying how they might read User Reviews but make sure they stick to reading the actual comments or review made by the user but ignore the numbered score attached to it, deeming such scores arbitrary. “User reviews should always follow the Steam format of just ‘Like or Dislike'”, wrote another. “As you said, people only use the extreme ends of the scale anyways.”
We can see an example of this from some of the User Reviews. In one instance, in a review of Advance Wars Reboot Camp, a user called ‘whitesneaka’ lists their Pros and Cons of the game. In the Pro column, the user lists the online and multiplayer components of Reboot Camp as well as the “enhanced graphics” and that it is “fun as heck”. Meanwhile, in the Cons column the user says that controls can get stuck and that apart from the online play there hasn’t been much added (since Reboot Camp is a modern remake of the original GBA games) — but for some reason whitesneaka gives the game a score of ‘0’.
Metacritic does have a problem with review bombing and this was a particular problem with the recent Burning Shores DLC for Horizon Forbidden West with a mass of bigots bombing the game with low scores in protest of perceived bias towards “wokeness” whatever that means. Metacritic said that it is “evolving” its moderation processes and tools in response. However, this is not the same issue as users simply resorting to giving out low scores when they have a grievance toward the game that’s not politically minded. All in all, some gamers just perhaps need to mellow out when dishing out their scores.
Source: www.thegamer.com
.jpg "Bobby Kotick Says There Should Be More Mergers To Compete With Tencent")
