Metacritical
It’s been a wild summer for PlayStation as they have had two huge releases in the form of The Last of Us Part 2 and Ghost of Tsushima. And the reaction and conversation around the two couldn’t be more different.
The Last of Us Part 2 was found at the center of the latest gaming culture war where the ammunition used was negative reviews of the game in Metacritic. The game has 130,000 user comments on the site, probably 6 times more than any other game I’ve seen, and it’s been a constant war between those who loved the game and those who hated it for various reasons ranging from the twists of the plot up to “SJW’s agendas”. It has been a very ugly war, not only on that site, but through the reactionary YouTubers, Twitter fights and I’ve been documenting it for a while, if I don’t get carried away by it.
Well, uh, Ghost of Tsushima is almost exactly the opposite situation.
From what I can tell, Ghost of Tsushima has the highest user ratings of any PS4 game I’ve ever seen. And I play Xbox One. And change games. Yes.
Ghost of Tsushima is currently getting 9.3 / 10 as its Metacritic user score, the first game to test the site’s new system “you must wait 36 hours before posting a user review” that was implemented after thousands of reviews came in negative of TLOU2 after the first hours
Ghost
This doesn’t seem like just a small group of reviews leading to a higher score. There are already 11,000 comments, which is well above the total that almost all other games get on the site.
In comparison, very few games end up beating a total of 9/10 total. Breath of the Wild is an 8.6, Red Dead 2 is an 8.4. But those closest to Ghost are all-time greats like God of War (9.2), The Last of Us 1 (9.2), or The Witcher 3 (9.2). I can’t literally check all the games on the site, but Ghost’s 9.3 is the highest I can find … anywhere.
Is Ghost of Tsushima really the best game of all time? I mean, probably not, but it’s extremely good and shows at least some level of disconnect between critics and gamers here, this time in a reverse direction. Ghost of Tsushima’s 83 Metascore is certainly solid, but that makes it the highest-rated 17th exclusive PlayStation exclusive of all time. Players meanwhile seem to be calling it one of the best games of this generation, to say the least.
Ghost
I am somewhere in the middle. While I personally don’t think Tsushima is better than God of War or The Witcher 3, I think it is absolutely one of the best PS4 games of the generation. I haven’t done my official review yet, but as a preview I think I hit 9.5 / 10, the same score I play The Last of Us Part 2, despite the games being very different. I don’t need to extol all of Ghost’s virtues here, but the visuals, combat, and story combine for a truly epic experience, and I’m glad to see that the game sells well and is embraced by fans.
I don’t know if it will keep this highest score of all time forever, but 11,000 comments is a solid amount and I’d be surprised to see it fall too far below where it is now. Players are trying to make a statement here, effectively “love to bombard” the game with ultra high scores, but … as I think it deserves, I’m certainly not complaining.
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