The Last of Us Part II received nearly unanimous praise from traditional games media outlets, but the same cannot be said for gamers. The game currently has a 95 on Metacritic, making it one of the highest-rated games of the generation.
The user score, however, is currently sitting at an abysmal 3.3, with over 20,000 reviews after being out for less than two days at the time of this writing. For some added context, God of War, which came out over two years ago, doesn’t even have 13,000 user reviews.
The hate started flowing as soon as the game released, so it doesn’t exactly take a genius to recognize that a lot of this was premeditated. It’s safe to assume that many of these reviews came from users that haven’t even played The Last of Us Part II, but instead judged the game by what the highly publicized leaks revealed weeks ago. That’s not to say that some of the reviews aren’t legitimate, however.
The game’s writing is what most users are finding disappointing, as many expressed their disdain for the game’s plot and characters. One user wrote “disappointing follow up filled with inconsistencies, disrespect, a general lack of logic in decision making. despite the possibility of experiencing sensible, realistic, and above all interesting journeys with new and returning characters, the developers decide to shove mostly dry garbage in your face and force you to drudgingly eat it for hours on end.”
Social politics are also playing a role, with many users taking issue with the game’s LBGT themes. “This game is nothin but forced Left-Wing LGBT propaganda First game was a masterpiece, but this jëw shill of a game is nothing but pushing leftist propaganda that anyone with any common sense can see, don’t buy this game let these little SJW filths know that no one will buy a game with a forced agenda,” another user wrote.
As a final wrinkle, some of the game’s stars argued on Twitter that bots may also be playing a role in the ordeal, but the tweets have since been deleted.
This also highlights how flawed Metacritic is. Not only do certain outlet’s scores have more weight than others, but users aren’t required to own the game in order to post a review. This makes for an easily abusable system, and hopefully, Metacritic can make a change for the better in the future.
