Luckily, I saw the game was highly reviewed by the usual suspect voices, so I suspected it wasn't one worth playing. You can't arbitrarily assume Game Journos will give good reviews to bad games, and bad reviews to good games, but you CAN reasonably assume that they will tend to give great reviews to bad games narratively, if you look at that aspect in particular.
The moment a journo says they liked the story, or the worldbuilding, or the characters, there's a 99% chance it's worthless as a game, since anything that makes sense through their twisted Clown World lens isn't going to be good to anyone sane, rational, logical, empathetic, or reasonable.
Luckily, I saw the game was highly reviewed by the usual suspect voices, so I suspected it wasn't one worth playing. You can't arbitrarily assume Game Journos will give good reviews to bad games, and bad reviews to good games, but you CAN reasonably assume that they will tend to give great reviews to bad games narratively, if you look at that aspect in particular.
The moment a journo says they liked the story, or the worldbuilding, or the characters, there's a 99% chance it's worthless as a game, since anything that makes sense through their twisted Clown World lens isn't going to be good to anyone sane, rational, logical, empathetic, or reasonable.