Trolls are now hitting Metacritic with Death Stranding review bombing, artificially inflating the amount of negative reviews that the game has to drive down its rating. Oddly enough, a large number of the reviews are in Spanish, though no one’s sure just what people have against Hideo Kojima there for now.
Review bombing is nothing new in video games, as most high-profile releases will get review-bombed on release, whether by trolls that just want to be negative about something, or because something has been done that makes gamers from a certain region angry.
For instance, Astral Chain, Platinum Games’s most recent character action game, got review bombings on its release simply because it’s a Nintendo Switch exclusive. Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age also got review bombs in the past for being on the Nintendo Switch. Oddly enough, those bad reviews were also in Spanish.
Mortal Kombat 11 also got review bombings because trolls were upset that the female characters were actually dressed realistically and because of Jax’s arcade ending, where he time-travelled to make sure that various injustices like slavery never happened.
There are, however, also positive review bombings happening to Death Stranding to cancel out the negative Death Stranding review bombings. While there are more negative than positive reviews, it’s happening on both ends, not surprising since the game is so divisive.
Metacritic isn’t like other reviewing sites, so there’s no curating to stop bad reviews without substance from coming in. Other websites like Steam have systems in place to prevent review bombing, with Steam wiping review bombings off of its games’ pages and other websites wanting proof of purchase before you can write a review.
Another reason for the Death Stranding review bombing is likely because Death Stranding is divisive among many critics, some of whom claim there’s nothing of substance to it or takes too long to get going while others claim it’s a great follow up for Hideo Kojima’s first post-Metal Gear game.
Either way, since Death Stranding is out on Playstation 4 now, you can buy the game and see how it is for yourself and form your own opinion. A PC version will come out in the summer of 2020.
