The Latest Victim of Metacritic Users: DmC

Metacritic is one of the most popular gaming sites on the internet, allowing all the reviews from around the internet to be compiled and aggregated , averaging all the reviews into one easy-to-consume final score. However since the dawn of Metacritic allowing users to rate games to average out a User Score for games, users have used this platform as a means to tear games to shreds, even if they haven’t necessary played them.

The Devil May Cry series has been sitting on the shelf for many years until the now recently released DmC title, developed by Ninja Theory. The game hasn’t exactly been a love-fest from fans, from character design changes, to issues with the performance of combat, the game has had its fair share of dislike from gamers. However it seems those fans are now voicing their concerns on Metacritic, and although some of these reviews seem to be 100% legit, many would assume statistically that many are abusing the user review system.

DmC now sits at an impressive 86% from critics, with not one single negative review to be seen from the 40 review currently available. However, the user side of the coin shows an average of 2.9 and has barely been able to gather 40 positive reviews out of the 119 currently online, with 81 negative reviews to show from users.

For example to quote user Wesker500 from Metacritic, “I’ll be trading this sack of **** in tomorrow. If you have the need to play a good Hack n Slash game, skip this pile of **** and pick up the Devil May Cry HD collection, then you’ll get 3 Hack n Slash games that are a lot better for a lot less money” Giving the game a solid 1, out of 10.

This isn’t the first time the user reviews of Metacritic have been bombarded with hateful and spiteful reviews, with games like Call of Duty Black Ops 2 (Critics 83, Users 4.4), Mass Effect 3 (Critics 93, Users 4.3) and Dragon Age II (Critics 82, Users 4.5) all seemingly the target of harsh user reviews.

The sad thing about these sort of issues, there are plenty of quality and truthful user reviews on Metacritic, yet they are drowned out by the unmitigated flurry of angry reviews. With many game developers paychecks and in some cases studios, depending on good Metacritic scores, situations like this can hurt those surrounding the game.

What are your thoughts on Metacritic? Should their be a way to police these user reviews? Let us know in the comments below.

Jamie Briggs manages Analog Addiction where you can find all his latest reviews, interviews and features and also like them on Facebook. Also follow his daily life on Twitter @AnalogAddiction and their videos on YouTube.

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