It looks like the fact that Gone Home is currently the top rated game for currently out games on Metacritic is screwing over a bunch of COD players. They see it on the front page, see a scary house, and then buy it without looking at anything else and then they go and complain in a user review.

It's pretty hilarious, especially when you read the reviews. For most of them, it's clear that they both missed most of the story in the first place and were never the target audience at all, for all they go on about "gameplay".

That's what you all get for buying a game just because it's on the front page. I bought Gone Home after making sure it was the kind of game that I wanted. Heck, I do that for all my game purchases and have yet to be disappointed with something i've bought.

You almost had me there

Ugh, Vitaminwater. I'll take the crackers, thanks. If they ever manage to make Vitaminwater actually taste good, you let me know.

Anyways, if the majority of dissenting user reviews on Metacritic were actually indepth comments on why they disliked the game (and some of them are and are valid because of it), then it would be fine. But most of them boil down to "I expected to be shooting spooky things. Where are the spooky things and where is my ghost shooter 9000?"

Isn't the top rated game this year The Last of Us so far? I also suspect that many of the people writing user reviews may not have actually purchased or played Gone Home and are doing so on some kind of principle. Either way, clapping yourself on the back for having superior common sense and/or game taste to the dudes who write Metacritic user reviews seems kinda pointless.

Okay, good point there. I just wanted to point out how funny some of the comments are over there.

And it certainly seems like the reviewers played it. It's a short enough game that they don't really have an excuse to not have finished it, unlike with other games.

I'd like to attend this soiree, but only if I can wear my scarf and monocle.

So what? The game made money off them because they're to stupid to see what a game is before they purchase it.

Alls fair in smart versus dumb.

Metacritic.

I know a lot and I mean a lot of Call of Duty fans. I am pretty sure they don't even know what metacritic is and don't post user reviews anywhere. Just the usually trolls.

lol

Andy Warhol doesn't have any masterpieces. -____-

You go on about free speech. If they have the right of free speech to make not-thoughtful opinions (and they certainly have that right, I wouldn't gainsay them that at all), then don't I have the right of free speech to criticize their opinions?

I mock them because they are not thoughtful. I mock them because their reviews boil down to that they bought a game without even looking at what it was and then go and complain about it, when it is entirely their fault they bought the game without investigating it first.

Again, I have no problem with the people who actually left long, thoughtful critiques on Metacritic (though those are far and few between), those people were expressing an opinion after fully experiencing the game and then thinking about it and explaining their results. Those reviews are very different from the gamers who speed play through the game (if you finished it in under an hour, you're doing something wrong) and then complain about things relating to the story or otherwise.

In almost every case, it is completely evident that they didn't actually experience the game because they make complaints about the story that are very clearly explained within the game. I swear, the next time I see one of them say, "So, what happened to the parents? They never explained that."

I read a comment today complaining that they're literally coming for our AAA games and that we need to fight back these newcomers who are "invading our home". LOOOOOL

Damn it, do I hate Vitamin Water. It's just sugar water with a few vitamins added to it. Go drink some mineral water instead; You'll be better off for it.

Oh, and who is this seemingly misinformed PC-gamer CoD crowd? I thought we were deriding CoD players for being console jockeys. Did someone forget to send me the memo? Well now I gotta go check my inbox... *grumble*... can never keep up with the latest trends...

That's a good point. :P But they do keep going on about lack of gameplay involving things to fight and several of them discuss the lack of shooting, so they're some sort of FPS PC crowd. I just went with CoD because it's the most well-known of the genre.

What IS the most common PC-based FPS anyways?

It looks cool, but I'm happy to wait for a steam sale. I think I'll enjoy it more knowing I got a bargain on it.

I'm not a COD player and I think the game is absolutely terrible.

It is just a structurally poor story.

I'm not michelangelo, but I am an artist and I have studied art in college and am a professional. I also have studied writing, acting, and storytelling, if not collegiately, all my life. I've read all the books from the Disney and Pixar people. I've read books like Save The Cat and other storytelling/screenwriting books.

Nothing pisses me off more in games than gamers who pretentiously talk about games as art, but then refuse to hold games up the same scrutiny that other art would get because they hide behind a bizarre pretense that a) the only games that exist are ones that came out in the past 10 years, and b) videogaming is a "young industry", so everything it does is genius.

Whether it's Gone Home, or Spec Ops The Line, the storytellers just tell their stories badly.

To the OP, it is HARDLY the fault of a gamer who picks up Gone Home expecting a horror game and is dissapointed. GONE HOME PRETENTDS TO BE A HORROR GAME. It is really spectacularly bizarre. It's on par with something like if Dawson's Creek shot the whole series like a horror film, complete with jumps scares and musical stingers. Any professor in the world would read that script and go

"... why did you dress your story up like a horror story when it's not a horror story?"

It shows a complete misunderstanding of the concept of tone, and all the people who "don't get it" are exactly WHY it's a problem.

Don't mistake people being confused or disliking the game as a sign of the game's "heady nature". It's just a poorly put together game.

I'm gonna guess that you don't think very highly of Scooby Doo. Spoiler: there's never actually a ghost.

How betrayed did you feel by The Village? Planet of the Apes?

@gregalor: SICK BURN!

"To be considered a game there needs to be some way to lose"

Someone seriously just said this in a user review. It is comments like these that show that there are just some people that both shouldn't play this game and have no room to comment on this game.

Saying everyone who disliked the game is a "CoD kid" who didn't look what they were buying is idiotic. You talked to every single one of them have you? I thought the game wad average at best and I've not played a CoD game since CoD4. May go and rate it here on metacritic.

The story was uninteresting.

I have stated multiple times that the people who actually left in depth good negative reviews are fine. But the vast majority of the reviews are things like "where's the gameplay? why isn't there anything to shoot?".

I do question how much of the story you actually found and put together though. There have been a ton of negative reviews that tried to sum up why the story was bad and I was appalled at how little they knew about the storyline.

I rather see it as the difference between live theatre and an action movie. Just because there are no gunfights or car chases, that doesn't mean it can't still be entertaining. It may not be to everybody's tastes, but if there is an audience that does appreciate it, surely that's the main thing?

Personally I loved it, although Sam's musical taste didn't intersect with mine.

I don't know if getting all uppity about user reviews is as dumb or dumber then the overly negative user reviews.

This is great. I came here to do this but you did it better than I ever could. Thread should be over after the first post.

lol at this thread. Fantastic example of why nobody wins on the internet.

Dumber.

If we're trying to make fun of the poor wording of specific reviews, and not just watch this devolve into an "opinion vs backlash vs counter-backlash" circlejerk like it seems to be doing, maybe we should try actually posting some hilarious examples of these hilariously misinformed user reviews.

Because that's what the thread is ostensibly supposed to be about.

Ostensibly.

Think of your favorite game. Look it up on metacritic and read the negative reviews. Happens with every game. Nothing new.

HAH! Rocket Jockey doesn't have a single negative review! BOOM.

...but it doesn't have any positive reviews either. In fact, it doesn't have any reviews, by users or critics...

...so, I'll go away now.

That's a damn shame. Rocket Jockey was AWESOME. I never even played the full version... the demo was all I needed.

Seriously a lot of those reviews were pretty dumb, some make good points but not many. I love the guys complaining that it's not a guy game because there aren't enemies to fight and shoot, it's not scary enough and it has lesbians. Or the other side claiming game journalists have reached a new low by giving the game a high score. But then again these are probably comments that pop up on a lot of games. I haven't played it but it seems kinda interesting however if it really is only like 2-3 hours then I think I'll wait till it's on sale or something.

I think the OP's point is not that they are to be derided because didn't like the game, I think he's just poitig out how superficial was their appreciation for the "experience" the game provided. Nonetheless I disagree that these people are the COD crowd. It's more likely that the majority are your typical RPG nerds who are complaining that the "art" games are taking their favourite hobby away, because the game is mechanically barebone and it's two-to-three hours long.

I'm actually pretty astouned by the rage this game seemed to provoke. I mean, when I play something unusual and I don't like it, I'm happy to express a critical opininon. I'm HAPPY to discuss it, I HAPPILY say my piece and talk with my peers. I didn't like Heavy Rain, not at all, I found it very poorly executed in every aspect it should have delivered (storyteling, pacing, acting). I'm happy I played and experienced it. Maybe I'm not satisfied but I'm happy I can express this opinion to you. I'm not enraged at all by this kind of conversation, on the contrary I think that the conversation and the awareness within the gaming community may raise the common standard for this kind of games. Maybe I'm just getting... old ;)

This is largely my reaction too. People complaining that they were expecting a horror game or puzzles clearly didn't do ANY research prior to buying the game. The length of the game may be a more valid complaint as I don't think early reviews mentioned that. It would have been nice if it had been longer or had gone into the other characters more than they did. But given that it was produced by a team of four indies, I'm happy with what they produced and had no complaints about the price. What I paid to play Gone Home was roughly the same as what I paid at the cinema last time I went to see a movie (don't get me started on THAT). And I got a lot more enjoyment for a longer period of time from Gone Home than I did from the movie.

There are lots of different kinds of games out there that can happily coexist in this thing we call the "video games industry". Personally, I don't like FPS or survival horror games, but I don't go posting low-score reviews in the mistaken belief that they don't "deserve" a high score. I think of Gone Home as being a bit like live theatre. Some people love that, other people are bored by it because it doesn't have any gunfights or car chases.

For me, the truly stupid reviews are the ones that say "this game sucks because I can beat it in under two minutes". Well I could turn to the last page of an Agatha Christie novel, or skip to the last chapter on a DVD. But that's rather missing the point of the experience. (Not to mention that you don't really "beat" Gone Home).

I'm astounded by the number of people buying a game just because it has a high metacritic score. Maybe it is more important then we like to think. I find the "intellectual elitism" just as hilarious as the "this game is for feminists" crowd.

The user reviews are in counter to what are felt to be overly-positive press reviews, I'd imagine. This is the kind of game where the reviewer should say up front a few things about what kind of person would like the game, but reviewers on this are for some reason just saying "go out and buy it," and attaching glowingly positive scores. This is not the kind of game that will appeal to most and that is why it's getting a big backlash. That's not going into how many games in the past have done everything this game has and more but received worse scores, for ostensibly no reason other than the story's "appeal." This game to me is nothing special, if you like it or love it fair enough, in my opinion it's derivative, short-lived and extortionately-priced. If it was given a lower score on average I wouldn't care, but I have seen literally hundreds of negative comments about how players felt tricked into buying this game because of vague reviews saying this was another Journey, when objectively it is hugely lacking by comparison.

To sum up the long spiel, this sort of thing only hurts the relationship between games press and gamers. I know next time I read a score for an indie game like this, I'll think twice before I consider a purchase. The trust is gone.

Yep, a lot of people on the internet got mad because they didn't like the game.

I liked it a lot.....that's all I got.

This is the same internet that decided the user score for DMC needed to be 1 because 'THEY CHANGDED DANTE!!!'

Metacritic user scores, proving there is still a reason for proper game reviews.

@dark: I enjoyed DmC, but even I have to admit the backlash against it was justified when the game failed to live up to Devil May Cry 4 in literally every way. Truth is, the average games enthusiast knows more about their craft than the average journalist. This creates an awkward disparity between what sells and who's the consumer.