Metacritic Implements 36-Hour Delay On User Reviews, To Ensure "Gamers Have Time To Play"

It's not going to change much in the long run. No one even talks about the fact that some people just give high scores to spite the low ones.

It’s better than nothing. Literally the easiest solution is to implement a log-in system that proves you own the game. It would be easy to link Xbox, Steam and PlayStation because you can do that on other sites but I dunno if Nintendo would allow that.

Now, Implement a rule where every game journalist has to actually finish the game they're reviewing.

People still use Metacritic?

I think it'll delay review bombing by about 36 hours.

this will probably help prevent review bombing

Sorry nice try but its not going to do anything.

I like it that they did this, because the game gets REALLY good after a while. The first couple hours are just dialogue and battles. Super boring I almost gave up on it. Glad I didn’t.

@Rika_Yoshitake There's so many reasons this might be hard for some:

1) The game is 100+ hours long, and the publishers send the review codes 2 days before. And gamers are impatient w***** who want reviews day 1.
2) The game is so bad, and so broken, you simply can't beat it.
3) It's stupid hard, and the developers forgot to have difficulty settings.
4) The game is beyond repetitive, and there is no clear indicator that's going to change.
5) It's a MMO, and has no end
6) It's a... whatever you call Fortnite, and it has no end
7) It's a puzzle game, and it has no end

I agree, MOST times, yes, get to the end. But can't happen all the times, especially when there is no end.

Yeah, that's not gonna work. I'm not a fan of what they're doing with the series, but review bombing is so dumb and childish. Just don't play it.

Well that's gonna help as much as The Incredible Hulk helps people understand the MCU.

Even though they did this people are always just going to hate on a game because its not what they want

Abolish review score numbers!!

Wow, took them long enough to implement such a system. And conveniently when a Mario game (a very divisive one at that, given the state of the Paper fanbase) is about to release. (Not to mention the extremely controversial TLOU2).

Can't have those negative numbers on the precious Mario game, right? Where was this little idea when Astral Chain and Fire Emblem Three Houses got review bombed last year?

I don't like review-bombing (as I mentioned regarding AC and FE3H just now), and better late than never I suppose. But at the same time, I see right through this.

@JR150 It’s far more likely to be because of Ghost of Tsushima releasing given what happened with the last PS4 exclusive.

Dang, it’s gotten that bad huh? May not change much but it’s something.

@nessisonett
Yup. It's clear they more than likely want to low-key shill by only allowing Critic Scores for the first day so potential buyers won't see any real reviews from real people. This is still a horrible idea and a double-edged sword because now, players won't have any human reviews on day 1 to reference.

Regardless, this feels like a decision made for themselves, not the players.

@BenAV same for the trolls who give it a 10 because "it's a nintendo game and poor compamy that gives us these games for free".

It has the grades ut deserves, and an 80 from professional reviewers it's no good from a company which normally gives us stellar games... or used to

They could try the socialism route so games with low scores can take points from games with high scores and every game is even.

I feel like this is not going to do enough to curtail the problem of review-bombing. Metacritic should take it a step further and require that users upload a valid proof of purchase (i.e. store receipt, e-mail from Amazon or Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft's digital storefronts) before they can leave a user review.
And if they upload a fraudulent proof of purchase, then the user could be permanently banned and ALL of their reviews could be deleted.

@Rika_Yoshitake Animal Crossing will never get a single review then ;p

@JR150 I really can't understand how you could have "human reviewed on day 1." No way they'll play long enough on a day 1 purchase, whatever it is!

(If I had reviewed xenoblade chronicles in it's first weekend of playing I would have obliterated it. That game needed about a solid 15 to 20 hours to really start heading anywhere! )

Doesn't change the fact that people can still spam "reviews" by creating alts.

I don’t see how this fixes negative review bombing. Sure, it slows it down very slightly in some ways, but that’s it.

To me it's fascinating that games media only cares when review bombs are negative.
But blind 10/10's that say "I'm so hyped for this game" are perfectly fine.

@JR150 Real reviews from real people? Those exist on Metacritic?
@Fulgor_Astral You'd be hard press to find those "10/10 because it's Nintendo" scores than the sea of low scores that don't even bother to leave a proper review. And an 80 is now considered no good? That's a first.
@PcTV Like I said, those types of reviews aren't that noticeable when you have tons of low scores hiding them.

Why only apply this to user reviews? Apply this system to ALL reviews so you can (pretend to) do something about acces journalism.

The professional reviews are just as trustworthy as the user reviews.

Ubisoft likes this

On a serious note tho. If they are not going to fix user reviews by inventing some sort of validation system then they should at least rebrand it to "social opinion" or "user temperature".
I think "review" is not the correct word when anyone can create multiple scores without ever playing the game.

@BenAV what the hell are you talking about? Ignore the "professional" critic score, not the user one.

@Snesionetty no the user reviews are more trustworthy

@XCWarrior That's literally the worst excuses ever... It's your job to review a game completely and judge it by having experienced most of what it has to offer and that's mostly measured by rolling credits. (with few exceptions)
I don't care how many clicks you're missing out on because you have to put out a review day 1. Do the job right and do it well should be your #1 priority.

Only a few genres don't apply like online focused games where there's constantly a new slate of content but even then said content is reviewed on it's own.

@BenAV
Indeed, i never pay attention to these so called user scores.

@MBII I can't tell if you're being serious since you said "user scores are more trustworthy" when those scores are from people who don't even have to verify if they even own the game. Not only that, but there's nothing stopping them from making fake accounts just to leave a few extra low scores.

As it is, it's not in Metacritic's interest to make it harder for review bombers. All those clicks are generating money, as is the extra publicity, every time it happens to a major game. Only when it's in their financial interest to make real changes will they do so. The review bombing of the Last of Us 2 alone must have made a tidy sum.

The world apparently only exists in binary now- yes or no, the best or the worst, with us or against us. There isn’t any ‘not bad’, or even ‘I like it even though everyone else hates it’.

Metacritic may not show how the world perceives the quality of a game, but it does boil down how the internet rages and picks a side in this strange cyber culture war.

This makes so much sense, not sure why it wasn't implemented before.

there is a solution... connecting Metacritic to your Nintendo ID or whatever you use so the system could check whether you own the game

@MrGawain It doesn't help that the first thing you see on a game's Metacritic page is giant numbers that are supposed to represent a game's score.

@RazumikhinPG Not really. All it does is delay the inevitable review bombing.

This game has been nothing but red flags for me. Now Metacritic decides to take a stand on this game? Yeah, I'm smelling some cold hard cash changing hands. Nintendo is worried about this game.

Scrap it all altogether. People put too much emphasis on numbers and not enough on reading the actual praise and critiques.

They should just try to work with Sony, Microsoft, Steam and Nintendo to try have some “verified time played” flag. If the player has not accrued a required play time (let’s say, 2 hours) let them post a review but don’t count it towards the average, and don’t make the review text public.

@JR150 I was going to come here to write about this, but I'm glad someone else said it first.

@Tuulenpoika
Thank you, but which part exactly? XD

One of my favourite things about gaming is the reviews. Always has been always will. There are several franchises that I’m gonna get no matter what anyone says. New Mario or Zelda for instance. I tend to prefer written rather than YouTube. I like to read about the features game length is it fun things that could be improved etc. I read several reviews for enjoyment and it’s all subjective anyway. Have fun off to play SNES games xx

@JR150 About this whole thing basically being first and foremost a way to cull the launch day hype criticism from sources outside the ones officially accepted and given instructions on how to approach the reviewed game to by the publisher. Just like others here have said, the time limit just delays the inevitable for 36 hours, while giving the publisher a "problem-free" day of launch (depending on if their review guidelines given to sites have been dubious) and potential unaware buyers who base their purchase decisions on Metacritic score alone.

I don't care for any reviews, doesn't matter if "professional" or whatever.
If not sure to get a game, I read about it, watch some videos and then if my guts tell me this is a good game, I will buy it. And my guts never failed me (at least on this one).

@Kalmaro exactly.

@Apportal hallmarks of a great game, not enjoying it then later enjoying it..

In all seriousness though, i have it but haven't had a chance to play it yet. I do have to say artstyle gets 100% /5stars/10 from me, this game is so innovative when it comes to art.

Look forward to playing it somewhere this month.

@Tuulenpoika
Yeah, this really just comes off as a way for Metacritic to prop up their fellow journos while real players are forced to wait to give opinions. Personally, imo everyone should be given an extra 36 hours. That way the journos can actually play the game THOROUGHLY for a change instead of only playing a part of it and giving an inaccurate take.

That way, both journos and players alike are given enough time to voice actual criticism rather than rushing to get their (probably paid) 10/10 review (for journos) and review bomb with 0s/counter bomb with 10s (for players) on day 1.

And overall it just seems mega sketchy that they would suddenly incorporate this now all the sudden after an extremely controversial PS4 game from last month (TLOU2) and a somewhat divisive Switch game that just released (Origami King). You mean to tell me that nobody, not once considered this idea before now and they suddenly magically thought it up on a rather convenient day? Yeah, not buying it.

@JR150 this, its like blizz all of a sudden after controversy introducing a gender neutral character. I have always assumed characters where such. FYI naturally the implementation is not happening in CN..

@JR150 I'm confused. Are you suggesting some sort of Metacritic-Nintendo-Sony conspiracy to prevent review bombing of these two specific titles?

@shazbot
No, I'm just saying it's rather odd that they would only JUST NOW decide to implement such a thing. Something that should've been part of the site since last year. At worst, I suspect they want to give their fellow journos more clout.

@JR150 What you're saying makes no sense. User Reviews have been delayed for for 36 hours because people have been "reviewing" games they couldn't have possibly played.

Journalists get preview/review copies weeks in advance. If they needed an extra 36 hours then the publishers could send them the copy a day or two early.

If anything delaying Journalist reviews would just be a cynical way to let a game avoid scrutiny.

@JR150 Sure, it's 'odd' or 'convenient', but are you saying it's coincidental, or that it's conspiratorial?

Should be a week I'd say. That way the trolls/review bombers will lose interest and gives people who are really interested in the game time to fully play the game before sharing their opinion.

Review bombing is really pathetic. Who are these people who take video games so seriously that they decide any transgression from what they personally feel is acceptable for a video game must be punished? Who is so insecure about their own opinions that they feel the need to have it validated by manipulating the user score on metacritic? And yes, the same goes for people who will rate games 10/10, when they don't actually believe it's that good, but just because they want to raise the user score more effectively.

I wish there could be a safe way to make sure that before you post a review, you hve to prove that you own the game and has completed it. I am * sick of these 0 score reviews of games and movies. I almost skipped some good games and movies. In my opinion, paid reviewers usually gives games a too high score. I usually just read player comments who scored the game about 6-8, they are usually the legit ones.

@shazbot
It's a coincidence that seems rather too convenient. But like I said, better late than never.

@Dr_Lugae
And yet journos almost never seem to be able to play a game properly enough to review it in the first place. Clearly someone somewhere needs more time.

All I'm saying is that this should've been incorporated into the site a long time ago. Not out of the blue after a massive review bombing incident occurred for a PS4 game. This is proof the site is reactionary. They don't act, they react. They don't think for others, they think only of themselves.

I wouldn't wait to get a security system AFTER I've already been robbed. I'd get it as soon as I move in.

I don't go by Metacritic anymore. Almost every game gets review bombed over there. So there is absolutely no point to the site. That 36 hour rule really does absolutely 0% against that.

I'm actually working on a new site that will handle game reviews differently. Which requires the reviewer to show proof they bought the game. (So, free games given by the publishers are a no-go). It also requires them to show that they cleared at least 75% of the game. And the review score will be calculated out of pros and cons. Giving the reviewer no direct control over final score. Each review will then be moderated by a (review-) moderator and only then will it be posted.

@Collette I get that, to a point, but what happened to nuance? I can't stand hyperbole. Also, some gamers (and people in general, as this isn't exclusive to video game discussions) need to understand that just because they and their online echo chamber like/dislike something, doesn't mean they are representative of the feelings of the community or society as a whole. More often than not, they're a very vocal minority.

@tseliot "This game has been nothing but red flags for me. Now Metacritic decides to take a stand on this game? Yeah, I'm smelling some cold hard cash changing hands. Nintendo is worried about this game."

Quite a conspiracy there, my friend. But review bombing has been a thing for a while now. I bet few have missed the controversy surrounding The Last of Us Part 2. That was probably the straw that broke the camel's back and now they're trying this. Don't think it will work though, only delay the inevitable.

Origami King is great though. Probably not a 10/10 in the end, but maybe an 8 (at least I feel that way). The divide between critics and users isn't as huge as TLoUP2.

Edit: Also, do people in general really care about review scores and especially the collected ones on Metacritic? I see some of you here are implying that this tactic of delaying the user scores, gives the companies time to sell games to unsuspecting consumers that aren't aware of the controversies. But are the same consumers even aware of Metacritic? Just curious.

@JR150 Heh well if you got robbed without a security system it wouldn't be "too late" to implement one.

The reason this wasn't in place before is because review bombing is a relatively new occurrence. Look at 5th/6th/7th and early 8th gen games on the site and the scores aren't review bombed. It's only within the last 4-5 years that new releases have been getting this.

Using a review site that is funded by several high profile devs and even has their game adverts on.

Yh no thanks not rly reading reviews anyways from either critic or user on big profile high funded games .

Cant say for all sites.
But running an advert on your site for a game your review? smells like an unhonest review anyways.

Critics usually also look for different things in a game.

Tlou2 and paper mario would be more heavily judged on their story and less on gameplay. While 3d mario and splatoon would for me be heavyier judged on their gameplay. As that is how developers intended the games made

Presentation is Nice and all.
But i can still enjoy a fun gameplay, great story and lesser quality Presentation.

But even if a game has the best possible presentation ever, if the game isnt fun to play or doesnt have an interest story would be a waste nonetheless

This won't do anything. Games that are painted as a target will still be review-bombed, just 36 hours later.

Just get rid of user reviews

Origami King is great so far. Sure the combat isn't ideal but at least they tried something new and the overall world just pops with fun charm.

Point to the Critics.

@Crockin that’s it right there. If the reviewer actually has to write a review and explain the pros and cons thoughtfully, that should be able to tell you whether there’s any weight to their opinions. Just a sentence or two followed up by a number is what you see too often and those really have no merit.

This would make a difference if the review bombers also waited till they had played a game before scoring it...

Here’s an idea. Every game should reveal a unique code after rolling credits. Each code can only be used once (so bad luck if it’s a secondhand game), but the code is required before submitting a review score to sites like Metacritic.

Downside, bad games will have few completions, and the ones who do beat them will likely skew more positive than the general feeling. Upside, scores come from people who have actually played the game and have seen most of what it has to offer. I’ll take that.

@tseliot this is simply not true. The same things applies to Sony with Ghost of Tsushima. Unless they both paid metacritic but that seems unlikely.

we know there will still be people who haven't played Origami King, have no plan to but will still give it a 0/10 and make it sound like they did play the game when they haven't because they have no life

@rosenband I think this would hurt Indies the most. High profile triple AAA stuff has tons of media, but for the niche stuff sometimes all you can find is a single user score on metacritic. Ban that, and I, and several people I know, will be less likely to splash on Indies, especially with some of the shovelware out there. Not sure it's a solvable problem, tbh

This is pointless.

@shazbot that's a super valid point.

@Entrr_username I didn't say it fixes the review-bombing issue. But it's something that makes sense. No one should be able to review games on the same day they come out (except journalists).
And it allows actual proper reviews to endure a few days longer during release day, so people can make up their mind without referring to obviously manipulated scores.

Why don’t they just lose the rating part of user reviews so there’s no score and just have written reviews?

That would fix review bombing but still allow genuine people that want to write a review to be able to do so...

Metacritic Might as well do away with the ten point scale for user reviews. It’s always either a 10, from the mindless fanboys, or a 0, from the tantrum throwing man children.

I mean it's a start but ultimately pointless. If someone wants to score a game they haven't played, waiting 2 days won't stop them. The only way to prevent scores from people who haven't played the game is to verify their purchase preferably with playtime attached to it aswell. They can even keep the current system to let people vent/troll but add an additional verification symbol to the reviews of people who purchased the games so you know which reviews to ignore and which ones to pay attention to.

The MP accounts should be linked to Steam, PSN, Nintendo etc account and apart from the play time it should show percentage of completion. If you have never played the game, you can’t review it. Simple. And if you want to review bomb it, at least you’d have to buy or rent a game. Until that time, user reviews shouldn’t be allowed at all.

Like many before me have already stated, there should be some kind of verification system, that way we can get rid of all the review bombing AND paid shill-reviews like the gazillion of 10's with exactly the same text that elevated TLOU II.

Unfortunately we live in times nowadays where "behave decently" isn't enough anymore. This "cool off period" now implemented in the long run is pointless though.

And also I find it funny how certain review sites always complain about review bombing and controversy while sacking huge gains due to increased traffic and ad revenue...

All these user review things should make people prove they own the game somehow. Implement a way of inputting a code from the purchase somehow. Same as I don't think you should be able to review products on Amazon unless you've purchased it, but it's easier to implement there as it's logged in your account already.

@XCWarrior what swear starts with a w?

If metacritic likes using info collected from users, then I'm not sure metacritic has any incentive to lessen the amount of users that leave user reviews.

@Collette I don't disagree with you. That's why I was careful to also mention the fanboys who feel the need to defend their games to the death and mass rate them 10/10, even if they're flawed entries in beloved franchises. What you outlined is equally infantile and silly. As long as people can articulate why they don't enjoy or do enjoy a game and are respectful, I don't see an issue.

Trolling is an overused and misused word nowadays, but I don't think silly exaggerations and childish language is constructive. I guarantee not a single game that has been mass rated 0/10, or 10/10 on the other end of the spectrum, as part of some petty protest, is actually a 0/10 or 10/10 game.

To be honest, going back to your original point about sending messages to developers or publishers, well there's already a way to do that: Sales. Don't like it? Don't buy it. Like it? Buy it. If sales are strong but you think the game sucks or if sales are weak but you think the game is the best thing ever (and people in your favourite sub reddit or wherever agrees with you well), as I said, you're probably part of a vocal minority...

don't think there should be a delay, there could be stuff people wanna know about beforehand that could be a deal breaker for them. do people just look at the score? i think looking at the bad about a game and judging for yourself if you can take those issues is the way to go rather than a number grade without a rubric.

@ancientlii advocating personal responsibility on the internet?! Outrageous.

What we need is a poorly thought out and equally poorly implemented one-size-fits-all solution that drives people to other sites without these onerous conditions for contributors.

... Or, we could recognize that the problem is limited to a small number of titles that generate a lot of heat and coverage, while most games are reviewed relatively fairly by non professionals... Like most articles are written by hobbyists on Wikipedia, with a small number of articles on controversial topics generating a lot of heat and coverage...

Like others have said, that 36 hour cool-down period isn't going to work, it'll just delay the inevitable.

So, instead of that, I have the perfect solution: simply remove any and all user scores, and just leave it up to the professionals. Metacritic is supposed to be an aggregate score site anyways, so an aggregate of all professional and actually serious reviews is all we need anyways.

This will protect games from both review-bombing and fanboy hype praising.

@XCWarrior so, basically you don’t like the game because it has a lot of play time? That makes games cool dude!

"Professional" reviewers are far from perfect, but at least many of them actually understand that "I don't like this game" =/= "This game is objectively bad".

If there's one thing I've really come to believe in recent years it's that the majority of people think their own opinions and preferences somehow equal fact.

And especially with things like this, when regular people "review" a game - it often comes down to whether the game meets their personal tastes.

Why are we still so focused on scores ? Just read a review and make your own mind up. I’m still surprised Edge hasn’t gone scoreless in its reviews. And looking at various forum sites it seems less and less people actually finish games these days anyway....which Makes the whole idea of people complaining about short games or not value for money game laughable

@Apportal Im on the same page. Havent played it yet.

@ThanosReXXX who reviews the reviewers then? What standard are they held at, that average joe's don't adhere to?

Leave user reviews, you don't have to look at those. Taking them away is silencing a whole group of people because you don't agree with what they have to say good, or bad.

Sign of the times.

@Reprise agree.

@ThanosReXXX A lot of the "professionals" are hyper biased as well and will give scores that games don't even deserve, both good and bad.

I hope it works and I think it should be a 72 hour hour delay.

@RazumikhinPG True. But I doubt a day and a half is enough time. IMO, a week at least is enough.

@Incarna 1) Looking for objectivity in reviews of art is stupid and wrongheaded, and 2) Metacritic is literally the closest thing to objectivity there is in game reviews.

@FrowningCoach @Kalmaro Well, professional reviewers can be far more easily checked/controlled as opposed to the average Joe, who might either have a beef with a company, a console or a certain game, so to put rules and regulations on them to see to it that the scores will be fair is far easier to do than to try and control the insane masses that are just giving out 0's or 10's for the hell of it.

@ThanosReXXX That's sounds good in theory, until one realizes that a lot of the professional reviews are motivated by money and pressure from the developers to give good scores.

TLoU2 made this even more obvious, we even have people with emails from devs asking them about negative reviews they gave the game.

So essentially, the “people power” era where user opinion mattered most might be coming to an end purely because we can’t be trusted (well, except for starting twitter trends, that seems to work still). Typical of the human race to somehow mess up a good thing

Can a 'profesional' reviewer give an honest review to a game genre they don't like/play. No.

But you offer get reviews from reviewers who do review games they don't otherwise play. I don't like football games, so my score would always be low, I would not have to play it to give it a low score.

So I guess if you allow 'Jo Public' to score a game you have to accept the result, even after 36 hours.

For a consumer who waits for review scores before purchasing games, it isn't gonna change much, just less sales on day one.

@ThanosReXXX But journalism should not be censored or controlled, and again no one is obligated to check "user" reviews. user reviews to me can on occasion be more informative, objective and validating than a "critic" review.

There needs to be a way to verify that someone has played the game, played a good amount of it, and are willing to go into detail about it. These aren't easy to do, but until it happens, people are better off ignoring Metacritic and just trying to find reviewers with similar tastes as them. The site is useless until it can do something about idiots spamming 0's and 10's for the sake of it because they're knee-jerking over what the internet generally says. Nothing stops people from putting high or low scores down out of spite. Astral Chain for one was DEFINITELY review bombed without any good reason or remotely controversial reasons-it was brand loyalty from Sony fans. As far as I can tell, there's no reason for something like that not to happen again unless someone is actively monitoring reviews and getting rid of junk ones, and that has problems too, if only because they'd focus on negative reviews over positive ones.

Seriously, just forget this stupid site until they team up with actual companies that figure out a way to cut through internet outrage-from all sources.

Review bombing is a form of protest.

This is a pointless move by Metacritic. They are just delaying the review bombing by 36 hours. Also the critic reviews are just as broken as they always have been.
We don't see much talk about practices of companies like SquareEnix and EA who have asked reviewers to change review content or improve their overall review score.

Here's the situation.

Critic reviews are broken because of the developer interference (mentioned above) and the fact that most developers don't post out review copies to people who give bad scores to their games.

User reviews are broken due to overly good and overly bad revirw bombing.

In theory Metacritic is a good concept. In practice it's broken because the critics and public abuse the system.

@Kalmaro
Yeah I heard that about TLOU2 also. This practice runs really deep in the industry. Makes any score at all hard to trust on Metacritic. The sad part is when the developers ask the reviewers to change review content, not just the final score.

That's why I don't frequent metacritic anymore. I just watch a few review videos from reviewers I trust and the digital foundry video if one exists to make up my mind.

I’ll trust an amazon product review no problem, but I’ve never trusted metacritic user scores. I’ve read too much trash from gamers online to trust an open system like that lol

I don't understand the usefulness of review aggregators. In what way does knowing the average opinion of gamers and critics help me decide if a game is worth playing? Or if a movie is worth watching? It's not as if the average of people's opinions creates an objective truth.

We all have a particular preference in the kind of games we enjoy playing. I can't speak for the rest of you, but my preference isn't "what people like on average."

Not only will this not change anything, it's not nearly a long enough delay. They should force a full week delay to make any meaningful impact, and even then it won't stop review bombing.

@Snesionetty Critics and journalists often get early access to games from the developers so that they can have reviews ready on launch day. That’s not to say that all journalistic reviews of games are any good but there’s no conspiracy there. User scores from people who not only haven’t played the games in question but actively want to harm sales are a much more serious problem.

I think it's a great idea but it isn't enough. I think that a better idea would be to have each user create an account on metacriric and for each game they want to review they have to send in a video recording of 20 minutes of them playing the game plus a screenshot of when they eventually stop playing the game, noting whether they finished or not. Maybe with a downloadable screen recording app? I think that would drastically cut down on review bombing. Rotten tomatoes should do something similar.

It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out. It might help, but the review-bombing segment of the gaming community is exceptionally whiny and wrongly think they are owed something. 36 hours will likely not be enough to do a whole lot about that.

@SSJW journalism has no ethical code. Or rather, if it does, journalists don't follow it.

At this point, who even relies on Metacritic when buying games? It's pretty much common sense how there are going to be review-bombers on there for every game.

in the past years, maybe decade, I have not given much attention to actual scores of official sites.
I would rather hear a youtuber who has a similair taste as mine adress the games pros and cons and even then the game has to be on my radar and scratch a specific gaming itch if I want to buy it.

Anyone remember Nintendo's built in review system on wii and 3ds? Maybe it was wiiU its been a while, but basically after playing an hour you can go into the eshop and rate your games. It would be nice to see that system return to switch

This is an interesting concept that I have mixed feelings about. It will be great for stopping day one review bombs, but it will also not be good for consumers that need to know if there is an actually legitimate reason to buy or avoid the game.

This is only going to strengthen my defensive stance on buying new games. The trend these days is that companies are just begging for the preorder, but I think it’s better to wait and see. Too many broken and buggy day one releases over the past decade alone. It’s always better to wait and see.

NEVER preorder games!! That’s my advice.

@Marioman64 Nintendo had a great thing going on the 3ds eshop (not sure about wiiU) Why did they abandon it, well you can theorize that the switch was going to be their last system and put all their chips into the mobile market. That or they just didn't care at the time and had no plans on making anything consumer friendly...

Doubt this will do much, but maybe here an idea. Most of the review bombing reviews have simular text. For example this game is perfect 10 out of 10 or this game is trash. 0 out of 10.

Why not just delete reviews like that. Make it so that an review can't be almost 90 procent simular to another review. This would likely help an little with negative and positive review bombing

@Rika_Yoshitake or and IGN's case make sure they're not plagiarizing other people's reviews LOL

@Arnold-Kage I agree they should get rid of the lowest 5% the highest 5% as most people review bombing aren't being clever about it and generally just do a one or a zero and then you just don't accept those unless the vast majority of them are negative for a certain of time. there's so many algorithms and AI systems they could use for this that would work but all of these are review places refuse to use them.

@status-204 I didn't say it was or wasn't, that's up to the player to decide for themselves. I, personally, have no interest in it for my own reasons.

I'm glad you enjoyed your purchase.

I'm still trying to figure out why Paper Mario The Origami King is controversial. The Last of Us Part 2 makes sense the game had outright false advertising (namely that you didn't have to kill dogs in the game when that's an outright lie), reports of employee abuse from within Naughty Dog. That and the game advertised heavily on its story and that story was very divisive with how it treated its characters (that and falsely advertised the extent of a certain character's involvement in the story).

Paper Mario OK, had none of that and it was clear what the franchise was doing and Nintendo has been very transparent with how they feel about crunch and a healthy work-life balance. The last Paper Mario game that was a full-on RPG was The Thousand-Year Door a game that was released over a decade ago and a half ago. The franchise has been clear with the direction it wants to go an eon ago with how much of an RPG it wants to be. If you don't like just don't buy the game instead of just posting "reviews" like "it's not TTYD!" because the franchise is not going back in that direction. If it does that's awesome, but whining and moaning on Metacritic is not going to make that happen.

I think Metacritic should implement a "verified purchase" tag on all User Reviews. When you submit your review you have to provide a proof of purchase. If that is a receipt, a photo of the game either physically or on your Switch. Then have a filter when you can filter out all non-verified purchases. That can be easy for Steam, PSN and Xbox Live through linking your account to Metacritic. For Nintendo Network it could be just linking a MyNintendo account as that keeps track of your purchases.

I hate review bombing in general as it rarely does anything of impact. As unless the game is using predatory tactics like Loot Boxes (cough EA, Ubisoft, Activision cough), or is an outright broken game like WarCraft III Reforged, or there are legitimate bad employee practices going on within the company (cough Rockstar, Take 2, Ubisoft, Naughty Dog, EA cough) then it's not going to work. If you don't plan to support Paper Mario don't! If you don't like the direction the series is going then don't buy it. If the sales slump because of it then Nintendo will re-invent the franchise. If the sales are good and people are enjoying it then maybe it's just not a franchise for you anymore. We still have Paper Mario (64), The Thousand-Year Door, and Super Paper Mario we can enjoy. And so far the Origami King is quite excellent even if the battle system makes me sigh at times.

I don't think 36 hours is that unreasonable. Sure, I've been told by people, "I know in two hours if I like a game!" And in many cases that's true, but can you still give it an honest score beyond like vs dislike. For me, my opinion of games has often changed within the first few days of playing and my first impression is rarely my final opinion. I'll be honest, I didn't like Astral Chain at first but it grew on me the more I played. For about two days, I loved Super Mario Party, but the more I played it, the more I saw it as being a load of arbitrary BS and now it's one of my least favorite Mario Party games.

@Cool_Squirtle John Pilger for example. Great dude.

@JR150 quick question how can there be user reviews on Day One that are any bit helpful to create an informed purchase about? I get it if the game arrived early for some players, but that is rarer than people think. That and most Day One "reviews" are a more knee-jerk reaction that is hard to filter through. Seriously go through any console exclusive on launch day and try to filter out the constant stream of console fanboy-ism i.e. "Bayonetta 2 is one a FAILD PLATFORM would be 10/10 if it was on PS4!" or "Ghost of Tsushima would be an awesome game if it was on PC. Console peasants!" I can live without that and I find fewer people actually use Metacritic because of that non-sense and review bombing. They tend to ask friends and family before sourcing Metacritic. The number of times I was asked at work if X game was worth buying would blow your mind.

That and I highly doubt Nintendo had any say about this. Metacritic was probably already sick of what I was talking about and how it is ruining the reputation of their site. That and after the Last of Us Part 2 mess... they probably were like "Oh great another "controversial" game that will have articles written about our site in regards to review bombing. Let's do something...' I bet it had way more to do with that.

@SSJW So you want a nannny state, no own responsibility? And your statement on an editor..is just plain wrong. Also you clearly do not know what journalism is supposed to be.

Yeah, sadly this won't stop the review bombing. I like some of the ideas people have already said: Like, neutral, dislike ratings or just eliminate the scores altogether and make it a text review.

No matter what though, no amount of review bombing will stop games from selling well. Astral Chain got review bombed by salty Sony fanboys, but that has already surpassed 1M sold. Three Houses has already become the best selling Fire Emblem game. Etc.

@JR150 critics aren't human now lol.

@Marioman64 I really like that idea, my only problem is that you can’t award a game for specific things (i.e. music, visuals, gameplay).

@SSJW Typical. Look up the word "forum" and what it represents. Also i notice a very condescending attitude toward people you do not agree with. Very intolerant, considering our inclusive times.

Metacritic just isn't trustworthy because they'll make up scores for games that have none. The best way to use metacritic is to use it as an aggregator for links to actual reviews and pay attention to what those say.

@Dr_Lugae
Not really.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Review_bomb#:~:text=The%20website%20Metacritic%20was%20criticized,on%20the%20site%20in%202012.

"The website Metacritic was criticized in 2011 for poor oversight of their user reviews, leading to rampant review bombing on popular games such as Bastion and Toy Soldiers: Cold War that brought their user rating to low levels.[8] The game Mass Effect 3 was also review bombed on the site in 2012.[9]"

Review bombing has gone on for a long time, but nobody really bothered to do anything about it until now. The system should've been in place a long time ago.

i believe to prevent Review Bomb in any game, all Review agregate like Metacritic should make the Users who are revewing the games,make them prove in some way they actualy played the game and completed in 100%in the game or close to it, to prevent Review Bombing in a game or other form of media, show for exemple that this player have completed the game and then allow him/her to review the game.

So for huge 20 hr plus games the 3 day waiting period is great and makes total sense. But what about games that last 2-6 hours that can be completed in an afternoon? a 3 day wait seems a bit excessive there. Does Metacritic take avg completion time into account?

People should keep in mind Metacritic is not a Video Game review site. It is a movie, video game, TV show, and music review site. They are not simply going to add 20 layers of verification to the video game section. It doesn't even make sense to. Not everyone who plays a game has proof of purchase. Maybe it's a rental, or borrowed from a friend, or given as a gift, or any number of things. Studies have found that a majority of gamers for a majority of games never finish a game to completion. That doesn't necessarily mean that they don't have a valid opinion on the game they played.

For those suspicious of the timing, of course it's not a coincidence that this change happened after LoU2 was review bombed. It has nothing to do with money changing hands though. Think of it as the straw that broke the camel's back. Review bombing has been a problem for a while, but it took to this point to get Metacritic try to do something to mitigate the problem. Will it work? We'll see. The next time a highly controversial game releases, the new policy will be tested, and we'll see if there is any effect. I'm cautiously optimistic though myself.

@Rika_Yoshitake If the first few hours of a game are a broken, unenjoyable mess, an unfinished review is good enough. It's one person's experience and opinion, and that's valid for a review. I'd just need some others as well, but would appreciate it equally. But I get your point and would mostly agree.
@Franklin maybe that's enough time to not get an angry mob. Even if some are dedicated enough to build up anger throughout 36 hours of waiting to spit their poison, they can't rate under zero, and most will have come to their senses, or find something else to be upset about by then.

@JR150 Yeah it's gone on for a long time. But, it feels like within the last few years it's been almost EVERY big AAA game or console exclusive gets review bombed. You go to the PS3 and 360 generation and all the top-rated games of any given year tended to line-up between the critic and user scores. The original Last of Us, Halo 3, Uncharted 2, Bioshock Infinite, I cannot remember any kind of review bombing campaign for those. That and the wiki article had to group the 2008-2015 section together because they were that rare. You had the odd fanboy BS, but it was way less common than it is now. That and in Mass Effect 3's case it actually leads to something where BioWare actually went back and expanded the ending. Review bombing actually meant something in the 7th Generation.

From the top of my head within the last year I can name a ton. Spider-Man (PS4), Gears 5, Death Stranding, Fire Emblem Three Houses, Astral Chain, Animal Crossing, Last of Us Part 2... anything that is exclusive to the Epic Store. It gets a little bit silly when you start thinking about how common this has become. I don't think anyone will disagree that something should had been done sooner. But I bet till this point it was few and far between major releases... until now where these review-bombing article cycles have become almost routine at this point. They aren't even that helpful to the average consumer as they just look at it as a bunch of angry nerds, or alt-righters or SJWS or whatever buzzword you want to attach to this cyclical non-sense.

@Rika_Yoshitake you don't always have to finish a game to know if it's bad

Regardless of review bombing, doesn't this make sense anyway? 🤔

Even if I like the game, reviewing it after 5 minutes of gameplay is not a real review.

@Kalmaro I saw a lot of people mention that game already, but seeing as I don't own any console from Sony, that one completely flew over my radar. Still, as I said, it's easier to control and/or sift through professional reviews, than through the myriad of user reviews, of which only a small part is actually useful.

On Breath of the Wild for example, I've seen the most ridiculous comments, even when people did not give it a zero, but they were still overly negative. Professional reviewers can of course also express their personal opinion, but any good reviewer should always be able to point out the good stuff as well, something that most negative user reviews don't do: they're just negative, and focusing on the bad stuff, or rather: perceived bad stuff, because at the end of the day, it's just a largely uninformed opinion of someone who isn't capable of writing a well-thought out and professional review.

@FrowningCoach True, journalism shouldn't be censored or controlled, but that's not what I meant. My idea was that since official game sites and/or journalists will be easily able to prove that they own a review copy of a game, and as such, will also have written an actual, contextual review (or preview) of it, their ratings can be taken far more seriously, 9 out of 10 times, whereas those useful user reviews you mentioned, are more like a handful, so maybe 2 or 3 out of 10 that are actually useful, so these are few and far between.

So, it would be about verified play time sessions, and actual, extensive experience with a game, instead of any kind of opinion largely or fully based upon nothing but a dislike or hate of a game, platform or publisher.

@ThanosReXXX I think what you're saying could make sense if we were dealing with unbiased reviewers. As it stands, we have people who, largely, are motivated by money and are reviewing Only because of money.

That's why I prefer to go for user reviews. The downside to that, though, is the massive amount of review bombing both positive and negative that's been going on. Usually though, a game's score starts to settle after about a week or so.

If professional reviewers would stop voting with who gives them the most money and kickbacks, I'd trust them more. Sometimes, they vote just on how woke a game is.

At the end of the day, I find it best just to look at a few people I trust on YouTube and look at gameplay myself to see if I'll like a game or not. If I'm not sure, I'll just get it on sale.

What a good idea!

let's call it like it is... the video game community is beyond toxic and probably shouldn't have a chance to speak at all. User reviews, for video games, is a terrible idea.

@JR150 Who are these idiots that review bomb anyway? Goddamn, get a life, people!

@daveh30 They should just have a way for the user to prove they played the game... although now that I think about it... how would one DO that?

Maybe, a short questionnaire setup with multiple choice by the developers, involving key scenes? But that would mean that players that didn’t get far enough might not have seen the content yet...

Maybe they could work with Amazon and other sites that claim “verified purchase”, but that could get messy and would exclude “brick&mortar” shops.

Oh— I know, how about everyone disregard the User Score aggregate and actually READ the reviews instead? You can very easily tell who is just trolling or not.

I'm all for this. Hell, I'd extend the period to a whole week after release, because by then hopefully everyone will have gotten the console or culture warring out of their system.

Paper Mario TOK deserves the 6.1 average from users. I'm having trouble enjoying this one and it's repetition.

While it's a good idea in principle, it doesn't matter much. There's so many reviews out for games that you can get a good medium feel of a game. If you listen to Joe Nobody from Anytown who scored 0 for Zelda, you have mental problems.

Probably pressure from Naughty Dog and Sony after The Last of Us 2 debacle as to not damage early sales.

Nintendo should create a review system on the online service, this way, only people who completed or played the game for X hours can review. The info could be displayed on the store and be used to sort through the shovelware. It would be a bit like what Google play has. As for metacritic, I never really take reviews that seriously. Half the "professional" reviewers, have not played the games (unsubstantiated contentious claim lol). Took me a while to realise that a Nintendolife 7 means average at best.

I personally have no real massive problem with review bombing. I always read the best and worst comments to see justification for the scores and ultimately form my own opinion. I do have a problem with "professional" reviewers abusing their platform, exaggerating scores based on political issues of representation and signalling virtue or having some kind of relationship with the developer (see gamergate), especially if they didn't play the game. The reason user scores and averaging out scores is so valued, is because many "big" reviewers cannot be trusted. I trust all the 7s Nintendolife gives though, they are honest in that normally a 10 is actually a good game. If anything gets a 6, you know it has real problems.

@Apportal I love games that have tons of play time. Not sure why you think I don't? I'm just saying they are hard to review when people don't read reviews after say day 3 after a game's release. And honestly, they don't read the first days either. They just scroll to the bottom, look at the number, and MAYBE read a sentence or two. Maybe.

@Roam85 Dude, come on. If you don't know, you aren't old enough to get to know.

@Rika_Yoshitake But you said every game had to be seen to the end. Even the endless ones. Can't go back on that now. Or... maybe... learn not use absolutes.

@Jokerwolf

Think you could increase it to 10 procent, but yeah that would also work.

Secondly maybe do something about professional reviews as well. As something you read an review that makes an game seem average, but it still gets an 10

Sounds more like a way to keep that high score for corporations a few days longer, since the release day is the most important one for AAA developers. It's not about review bombing, it's about being anti-consumer.
Video game journalists are afraid of actually criticizing big games for fear of blacklisting or lowered ad revenue. Gamers are not. They tend to be more honest.
Literally same thing as Rotten Tomatoes meddling with audience score. Corporate money chocking what's supposed to be a free market.

I personally think reviews in general don't do any good, they only either spoil the experience or predispose people into a certain view of the thing being reviewed, but certainly user reviews are absolutely pointless. Might as well remove them entirely.

@Wexter Paper Mario is divisive because to long-time fans, it feels like a genre swap, from RPG to puzzle game w/story elements.

@nab1 Just saw this and had to say, some of my best purchases have been from looking into user reviews. I’ve also dodged lots of bug-infested games, thanks to user reviews. It’s not the only piece of the puzzle, but sometimes a user review can feel more in line with the truth than a sponsored or paid review.

That’s a pretty neat idea; review bombing trolls are heckin’ worst. Hope this new idea sticks.

It's a good idea to try and prevent false reviews, but I am not sure if it will be enough. Hopefuy this trend of giving exaggerated reviews without playing goes away. Most people don't really pay attention to user scores anyway, they only scroll down to look at opinions on less popular games.

It worked! The game hasn't been bombed into the ground (it now has a average of 6.8). Otherwise it would have definitely been bombed into the ground.

@ThanosReXXX Agreed with you from the start. It should be like steam where you can see how many hours someone put in and go from there.

I don't quite get the "10/10's should be removed too". There's always going to be some margin for personal preference. The critic reviews pretty much have a +/- 2 around the games average.

The user reviews have a [+3 / -7] distribution about its current average. There's something very wrong and it's not the + 3.

@Damo,

Usually people state this is the case when a game they personally do not like gets some good reviews, they totally ignore the fact any review good or bad is down to the individual critics personal opinions.

@Franklin.

So true. this will make little to no difference at all.

@Damo is not really up for debate, we already have proof that done reviewers are motivated by perks and are almost expected to give good reviews, depending on what game they are reviewing.

It's why I brought up The Last of us part 2 and how reviewers were getting emails from Sony about their low scores if they gave one.

I don't think everyone is like that but it is a thing.

@johnvboy It would be nice if it wasn't true and all reviewers were only making reviews based off their opinions.

Here's an example of what I mean. Getting invites to parties and getting freebies are a thing.

You also get events like this where companies will pay you tubers for reviews to post gameplay footage and then not mention or hide the fact that they were paid.

I'm not saying you guys are doing this, just that it's a thing that happens.

@XCWarrior I’m older than most people on this site. Maybe it’s the difference of cultures (some words are worse in the US than in the UK and vice versa)?

Or you’re using the n word with a w in the front of it as a term I don’t think I’ve heard since 2002.

@Damo It works, not all the time but it does work occasionally and it's more apparent when you see AAA games with glowing professional reviewer scores but terrible user scores. One could argue though that said reviewers are just out of touch with what the majority of people want but we still have evidence of rthem being wined and dined.

Just to reiterate, I'm not accusing you guys of doing anything shady. I like the reviews here better than most sites. I just don't trust every reviewer out there is only doing reviews motivated purely by their opinions. I should have clarified that. There's still evidence that some reviewers are being influenced though, like at IGN.

I wouldn't come to this site if I thought it was scummy.

@Roam85 I'll give you a hint, it's a synonym for someone who enjoys horizontal anti-social distancing, and it rhymes with door.

36 hours isn't going to stop people from review bombing games and being childish on the internet. They need to have a way to confirm each user has actually played and owns the games they are submitting reviews for like some kind of picture taken with the users face or proof of purchase.

This is only going to strengthen my defensive stance on buying new games. The trend these days is that companies are just begging for the preorder, but I think it’s better to wait and see. Too many broken and buggy day one releases over the past decade alone.

@TG16_IS_BAE I have, on multiple occasions, purchased games (meaning I've been fairly sure about them) and refrained from breaking the shrink-wrap for 3-5 days before opening them. I've only once been forced by the community reaction to return a game for refund in this way, but I am glad I implement the practice. You are only too right.

@Kalmaro Yeah, if you feel like that, then it's probably the best thing to do, to get some useful insight on a game. Personally, I don't have such a negative view on professional reviewers. Sure, the fact that they ARE professional automatically means that they get paid to write, but I don't suspect them to simply be paid shills that write exactly whatever the publisher wants them to write.

Maybe slightly influenced by, so not entirely unbiased, but not a full-blown hand puppet of any kind of company, regardless of any perks they'll be offered. And at the end of the day, their job is what will still to some extent hold them back from becoming a raging fanboy or completely mindless review-bomber, so I'd still expect a professional review to be more well-thought out and written than something that joey25371 wrote...

But anyway, 'nuff said. We each have our own views on this, and I can respect that yours differ from mine, so I'll leave it at that.

@FrowningCoach Yeah, something like that would be a good solution as well. Probably not going to happen, though, seeing as they've only now implemented this bare bones solution, so if it takes them that long to implement something that simple, they'll probably not want to put in the effort to apply something that could be more effective, because that'll more than likely be too much work/time/energy, with minimal rewards in return for them.

@Zenszulu @Krzysztof @Tyranexx @Cool_Squirtle @Wexter

I have to say that I am kind of disturbed to see how many people seem to want the "verified purchase" route. Personally, I do not want Nintendo, Sony or Steam to share any more of my personal data with outside organizations (they already know far too much about me and you!). Do we really need draconian, mass surveillance-style verification just to contribute on the Internet?

Should we force people to submit or post their names and addresses just to make anonymous comments in forums? People have proposed that ere now...

As TG16_IS_BAE says above, user reviews, with some sound personal judgment applied, can be quite useful. We can all trust our noses when it comes to separating the thoughtful ones from the reactionary, can't we?

The XBox One launch encountered serious difficulty when people saw that their purchases were going to be "verified" continuously, as if MS is a parole officer and the players are criminals (as J. Sterling said).

@COVIDberry It's not like the systems we're talking about don't already exist on sites like Amazon. And, it could be completely optional and just have a tag on the review that says "verified purchase" and can be filtered. It's not like they'd be collecting your credit card information or social insurance number rather it be you just uploading a picture of the physical game/or it downloaded on your console to be manually checked or linking to your Steam, PSN, XboxLive or MyNintendo account to verify the purchase which would be all automated. That and thanks to trophies and achievements it would be rather easy for the site to just check your list to see if you actually played the game.

And a lot of people would greatly love it if we could just use a site like Metacritic for a quick slice of what people think of the game. But, when so much of the discourse is blind fanboys going "this game sux" or "best game evar!" for like 90% of reviews it makes it hard to filter through the noise. It would be hardly draconian if it's optional and can be opted in or out of.

@XCWarrior oh!

That’s a swear?

General Hooker will be shocked.

Sad review bombing is a thing. Sadder if it prevents someone from trying a game they might like, although that seem less likely with high profile titles like Animal Crossing and more for smaller games that may not sell as well. I hate shopping sites that let people review products that aren't even out yet too.

@COVIDberry Thats why GDPR exists in europe and for example AVG as a added bonus in The Netherlands. Ik know Germany has its equivalent. Proceed.

@SSJW Quite a few people do it for money and ego.

Also, YouTubers can review games. Anyone can review games, I'm not understanding your point.

All reviewing rewrites is your opinion. My issue is that some opinions are motivated by money and clout.

@SSJW I'd have to disagree with that. Not everyone takes a certain job because they want it, like doing it or have pride in it. Some people just take what they can because they have no better options available.

Just ask the folks working at Walmart if they are proud and excite to be there. I'm pretty sure most of them aren't going to be giving their position glowing reviews.

That's a bit off topic though, my point was never that some reviewers would trash their own reviews because of money. Rather, that they had no real opinion to begin with and just go with whoever they can get the most benefits from. Like when you see the now infamous RAID SHADOWLEGENDS commercials.

The truth is, not everyone is honest, that's just how things are. The reason I come to this site is because I feel like most of the reviewers here are. That's also why I avoid sites like IGN, who make wonderful reviews like picking at a Pokémon game that's literally on multiple islands for having "Too much water".

@SSJW I'm not sure I follow what you mean.

I'm any case, that's why I don't put too much faith in most reviewers. Not everyone uses their opinions. Money and pressure from developers is also a factor.