Now this is just really immature. Critics have given Modern Warfare 3 a very nice score of 90, but users who think their reviews honestly mean that much when they get a trolling streak have brought the average rating down to a score below 3.
There are 541 ratings for Modern Warfare 3, and over 280 user reviews, 183 of the reviews being negative, along with several obvious countertrolls and trolls alike making the whole thing a meaningless cacophony of immaturity. In wake of some companies trying to cherrypick reviewers, along with many believing good reviews are bought (which if I recall prompted FCC action a while ago), what weight a review can carry has been damaged, and someone might just give something a bad review for free advertizing from the resulting internet backlash.
As you can see at Metacritic, the reviews are quite wild, but some digging around in the user profiles shows that these exact same people gave Battlefield 3 which is also an excellent FPS a perfect score. Of course the inverse is true, with many giving MW3 a stellar score and ruining Battlefield’s good name in the process.
Similarly on Battlefield 3 which has gotten an 89 score and some very positive reviews from users, it has been ripped apart down to a score of 7.0 by either trolls or people who do not know how a review score works. I personally reverse the lowest numbers for games that are just downright unplayable.
In the end this is just a warfare of trolls who are slamming their heads together screaming as much as they can, and I doubt most of those reviewers even own the game in the first place. Unfortunately you can’t demand a receipt from someone to prove they have the game in order to review it, but then again, I just give reviews a once-over and look over some forums about it. Failing that I pester my friends who as snarky as they are have never recommended me a truly bad game.
Rian Quenlin
I really do hate 98% of the vocal FPS community, I really do. They’re among the most immature people on the internet and really need to take a chill pill.
Tim
Children + internet + testosterone + adults = not pretty.
The internet should have an age limit, when I was 13 I had to ask to go on a crappy dial-up and had parental controls prohibiting me from doing anything untowards. It is entirely the parent’s fault for allowing their children to behave like that online, but with such little control over them under threat of lawsuits and/or cases of battery or unlawful discipline, it was the only natural progression for society to head down.
Who’s to say if it will get any better in 20 years time when the trolls of today are grown up? Maybe sites like Metacritic should just allow professional reviewers and only allow trusted users to review games?
Rian Quenlin
Or a system where you rate the review. I can look at any review and say “Good”, “Bad”, “Biased”, etc.