Ori Creator Evaluates Media Scores and Notes Discrepancies With Player Opinions

Ori creator Thomas Mahler recently launched the VideogamesCritic portal, which compares gaming media scores with player reviews to show which outlets can be trusted.

In the gaming industry, critic scores increasingly diverge from player opinions, as seen with the heavily inflated scores for Dragon’s Age: The Veilguard. The game, which lacks depth in its story, locations, and combat system, received praise from numerous media outlets with scores of 10/10 (including Eurogamer and Game Rant). However, the community rating for The Veilguard on Metacritic is only 4/10. On Steam, The Veilguard holds a “mixed” average rating, with 68% of players recommending it.

A similar situation surrounds Mixtape: the playthrough takes three hours, featuring simple gameplay and a controversial story. The project received a 10/10 score from IGN and other outlets while facing criticism from players. The average Metacritic user score for Mixtape is only 5.9/10.

The VideogamesCritic portal analyzes how often specific outlets’ scores match player ratings on Metacritic and Steam. The current leaders are The Big Bois, Pure Nintendo, and Nintendo Life. At the bottom of the rankings are COGConnected, Forbes, and Video Chums.

Image source: Videogamescritic

When compiling the rankings, the primary focus is placed on customer reviews on Steam. Metacritic scores are also factored in with a lower weight because it is impossible to verify whether a user actually purchased the game there.