At this point, we’re all expected to see huge gaps between Metacritic’s User versus Critic review scores. Unfortunately, Starfield did not get off lightly, as users started to review bomb the game.
After receiving very positive reviews on Steam, Starfield became victim to a toxic trend in recent years called “review-bombing”. For those unfamiliar, review-bombing is when a large group of users, gang up to ruin a brand’s reputation (this can be a local business, a movie, a TV series, or in our case, a video game) by leaving negative reviews, usually giving it the lowest rating possible. Metacritic users left negative reviews for Starfield, citing that the much-anticipated Sci-Fi role-playing game is boring, unfinished, repetitive, and ultimately a bad purchase. Here are some elements of the game most users are complaining about:
- Bad NPC AI
- A lot of loading screens
- Bad inventory system
- Lack of a competent map system
- Having too many NPC dialogues
- Generic storytelling and low-impact character decisions
- The game lacking a “soul” and a “direction”, or the game being “dull”
- A game that relies heavily on its marketing campaign
- Performance issues
- Plus so many more…
Starfield currently sits at 8.7 Critic score (from 52 reviewers), and at 5.4 User score (based on 3158 ratings, half of which are negative) for the PC version. The Xbox version received similar ratings, an 8.5 Critic score (from 60 reviewers), and a User score of 6.1 (based on 3578 Ratings). These negative user reviews will probably grow in the days to come, which will bring down the overall user score below 5/10.
This doesn’t seem to worry Bethesda, as they announced earlier today that Starfield has already surpassed 6 million players, making it the biggest Bethesda game launch of all time. So it’s hard to really tell, Is it the marketing that made the game so popular, or does it stand out as a really good game, outside of all the hype? In my opinion, only you, the player, can really tell. Try it for yourself, if you don’t like it, refund it, and that’s that. No drama is needed!
