What the hell is going on with some of these reviews? What the hell is going on with Metacritic?
I'm not saying there's some ulterior motive at play, but the range of reasonings I'm seeing for some of the lower reviews are extremely generic and could be applicable to any number of other games. The one that rated Forbidden West low for having the "same old Save The World story", for example; how is that now suddenly a problem with Forbidden West but wasn't a criticism worth enough to dock the thousands of other games before it with the same thing? Or better to ask, how does the reviewer who takes that specific thing as a reason to rate a game low, conveniently get in the spot to review Forbidden West, and incidentally contribute to an ongoing meta narrative taking shape that is being drawn along console warring lines?
Look I have no problem with review scores in general, but where is the consistency? How is Elden Ring a 97-worthy MC when it is riddled with performance issues and borderline unplayable on PC without lots of crashes that impact the experience? Why did almost none of the reviews mention these technical issues? How are games being graded differently when it comes to technical, objective measures that should be consistent among all of them in terms of weight towards a final score? Why are certain websites weighed much higher towards the final MC than others, and is the only criteria the amount of traffic they bring, or is there an actual periodic review process that looks at the quality of their reviews and consistency of logic applied in their reviews from a period of time, that rewards weighing in the system based on actual merit?
I think it's time to finally start asking these questions because some things aren't sitting right with some of the more recent rounds of releases and their MC scores, all things considered.