Topic: Masses of obviously fake 10/10 Balan Wonderworld reviews on Metacritic...

Wow, I didn't even think inverse review bombing existed.

What a dumpster fire this game is turning out to be.

As a fun fact, we also got a few suspicious accounts defending this game yesterday.

@Eel Yeah, that doesn't surprise me. But I never would have thought this innocent looking game would have led to such occurrences.

@Eel Yeah, I saw that guy in the comments, but it just seemed like a normal person, and so did the others who said they liked the game. It's pretty much just personal preference I believe, since some people unironically enjoy these types of games.

That's moreso why I'm of the impression it's less paid off, and more just a fan of the game trying to combat people who dislike it.

@VoidofLight at least two had the same ip, joined the same day, and had comments exclusively defending the game.

@Eel Maybe they were just identical twins who think similar things about the game and live together. ;p

Hmm.. that is weird. I know one of them had an ori pfp, but I swear I've seen them around in other places.

Perhaps you’re thinking of a different one.

@Eel Yeah, I feel like I am. I noticed a couple other people, but kind of skimmed over the review comment section.

I reckon I found the culprits

My friend and I were talking about this last night. While I'm still looking forward to playing this one, I have the unpopular opinion of enjoying the demo, this just proves why I really don't like Metacritic or really follow reviews much anymore, and much prefer to play a demo or the game itself to see whether I like it or not.

Reviews and opinions are subjective and different from person to person, but this is too fishy IMHO.

One thing that bugs me about this game in general, is the fact that the seizure inducing glitch was fixed with a day one patch. Eventually, the Nintendo Switch online servers are going to go down, and someone may get the game second-hand, not being able to update it. They'll be stuck with a copy of the game that'll either induce seizures or cause them to get violently ill, with no way of fixing it or knowing.

Yeah, that's gonna be a pretty big problem across the board for tons of games when online services start shutting down for good. Plenty of games released over the last decade or so that were broken or had serious problems at launch that were fixed by a day 1 patch.

Of course, the games industry would rather we quietly forget about the games they're less proud of (a list that will probably include Balan) and re-purchase the "remastered" versions of the games they're more proud of on their latest hardware

@Raylax Right. It also worries me for games like New Horizons, since that game relies heavily on updates for it's content, and eventually the game won't have those updates anymore, making it worthless to play, unlike the other games in the franchise. Same with games like Monster Hunter, albeit, there'll be other games to replace each entry, and each entry stands on it's own even without the title updates. I believe the expanded versions even come with the updated content in the game itself.

lol this is just funny

like imagine someone making this user reviews, thinking they will actually turn things around for the game

It's sad that user reviews, a feature that could potentially be useful to the public, is routinely abused to skew the score either in favor or against any game (although I find review bombing more justifiable if it's used to complain about a unfinished product) — had there been only a portion of these reviews, they might have passed off as legit.

The line is starting to become rather blurry and makes me a bit worried about what's to come in the future. Not everyone can voice their thoughts in adequate English. While the best idea in theory would be to implement some sort of playtime counter next to every user review, and perhaps a lower bound of hours required before being able to submit a review, how could Metacritic implement that for consoles at all?

Unrelated to the above, I do wonder if this is part of a bigger scale plan to leave a positive impression of the game, seeing as there have been a few suspicious accounts on this site. Does anyone know if other websites or platforms like YouTube have had new accounts created specifically for praising this game in the last few days?

@TheLightSpirit What do you mean?

@TheLightSpirit I mean, you're the one who clicked on the thread. If you don't really like the negativity surrounding an objectively bad game, then you don't have to really pay attention to it. If you like the game, then that's all that should really matter honestly. Our opinions shouldn't bog down yours.

I’m playing Balan Wonderworld right now on PS5. Certainly not a 10. But it’s not a “bad” game either at the moment. Probably in the 6 category. Weird level design structure, but it has charm.

@Kyloctopus the main reasoning for why I believe it's bad is because the unpatched version causing seizures.