A newly added Xbox Game Pass game that has received widely positive reviews in the trade press has been the victim of a “review bombing”.

 

 

Pentiment, the latest game from Obsidian Entertainment, joined the Xbox Game Pass subscription service last week. It has received very positive reviews from critics. However, on the Metacritic review aggregator site, some people seem to have taken fire at the game. Pentiment is a story-driven game with an art style inspired by medieval paintings, in which you have to solve a murder mystery. The catch is that players have to conclude it without always getting a definitive answer as to whether or not they solved the mystery correctly.

Pentiment’s reviews are very positive, praising, in particular, the game’s story.

Some reviewers were not as enthusiastic as others. But some went so far as to give the game a perfect score of 10/10. Pentiment’s positive reception contributed to the game’s respectable 85 rating on Metacritic. However, in recent days, attempts have been made in both directions to up or downgrade the game. Users are spamming both negative and positive reviews.

As is usually the case with efforts to bombard critics, users give the game a 0/10, regardless of whether this score makes sense.

Most negative user reviews seem to be about Pentiment’s narrative-driven nature, slowness, and the fact that it is more of a visual novel than a traditional video game. In contrast, some fans seem to have given the game a perfect score of 10/10 in response to the negative reviews. Thus trying to bias user reviews in the opposite direction.

Critic bashing on Metacritic is a practice that is unlikely to disappear any time soon. Many people seem to like to go to extremes when leaving user reviews of games. Often these reviews come from people who have clearly not played the games they are reviewing.

The solution to this recurring problem would seem to be to allow users to leave reviews only if more time has passed since the game was released. However, it is not clear if this will ever happen.

As for Pentiment, the good news is that you can draw conclusions about the game without relying on others. As mentioned earlier, Pentiment is readily available on Xbox Game Pass, and as it’s Microsoft’s own game, it’s unlikely ever to leave it.

Source: ComicBook.com, Metacritic