If you have somehow managed to get to today without hearing about the new Legend of Zelda game being released. Wow. Either you aren’t reading this article at all or you have just come out of some sort of digital abstinence.
As we mostly expected, Tears of the Kingdom got some smashing reviews, 9’s and 10’s all over the place, except one review, right down at the bottom of Metacritic’s page, giving Zelda TotK a 60/100.
I read an article on Kotaku that picked up the review, and the writer shed a little light on how important honest reviews can be. As I haven’t seen any other mention of the low-scoring review anywhere else, I thought that I would also voice an opinion and agree with the Kotaku writer, Luke Plunkett.
Luke mentions that “a good 6/10 review for a game that everybody else is giving 90-100 to is a good thing!”, and I agree. In the world we live in now, it can be tough to work your way through the internet to find good quality information on whatever the product is. Review bombing is ever so popular and I’m pretty sure paid-for reviews are out there, and if enough of either side of the coin jump on board, a review score can be dramatically skewed. Meaning we can’t just depend on the score alone.
We need to find reviewers and outlets that we can trust, trust enough to be honest and tell the world, “Hey, that game that most of you love, I hate it.”. Not everyone out there will love a game unless it’s Elden Ring, but that’s the nature of humans. We all have different tastes and likes, and we bond over different things. You like Racing games, and I like first-person shooters.
If I, as a reviewer, can get across how the game made me feel when I played it, I feel like I’ve done a good job, and the readers that enjoy, or at least read, what I have written will be able to take that review and make a decision on whether or not they want to get product XYZ. They don’t have to agree with my review, but an honest review will give them the information to choose.
So, if you see a review that falls a bit outside of the norm, maybe give that one a read. It may have something in it that could tip the scales one way or another.
