It currently sits at an 84 on metacritic. The mainstream review sites have predictably sold out, and the ranks of the “professional reviewers” have been wildly inflated with a large number of extremely small and niche progressive websites giving insanely over-the-top praise.
But the real tell is how many fairly big YouTube reviewers didn’t receive review keys at all. Fextralife and ACG were both denied. And some of the ones who did get keys, like SkillUp and Matty, have absolutely shit all over the game. It’s not even close.
Watching SU’s painstakingly well-sourced video review after glancing through metacritic really shows the insane gaslighting that is still possible in the written media space. Also, the number of recognized pro reviewers who obsess over leftist politics on gaming has only grown.
Edit: the IGN reviewer who gave it a 9/10 is a tranny.
Edit again: I paged through a few more critic reviews, and I can honestly say I’ve never even heard of at least half these websites. I think big publishers are directly funding overly positive fly-by-night game review websites in order to manipulate metacritic. These are tiny ass websites with next to no readership, and yet they’ve received review codes ahead of massive YouTubers with millions of subs? It’s obvious bullshit.
I mean, I wouldn't expect a company to give review keys to someone they know is hostile to their brand. The pathetic part is the pro game journo shills. Does anyone remember the Kane and Lynch Gamespot fiasco? Is there anyone left like that in the industry who calls a turd a turd?
They're clearly shilling this because it's a tranny coded game and they don't want to "let the chuds win." They couldn't care less if the game is actually a good value or not.
If you only give keys to people who are positive to your brand, then that is literally buying good reviews with extra steps.
Its one thing to deny someone who breaks NDAs or has other legitimate grievances (like Kotaku showing how to pirate Nintendo games), but to not give them out because they might be negative defeats the entire purpose of reviews and is a sign of a complete failure of both the game and the system.
These aren’t even particularly hostile reviewers who are not getting keys. They’re just not members of the anointed mainstream video game press or part of an upstart progressive website. Publishers have run the numbers and realised exactly which categories of reviewer are problematic to the bottom line, and it’s anyone with the independence necessary to give truthful evaluations + uses video to back it up.
Apparently some random Twitch nobody said she was trans and non binary and got a key, lol.
Yeah, because that’s a public pledge of allegiance to the ideology behind the game.