How this trust score was computed
Trust blends alignment (40%): does the outlet rank games the way players do; decoded accuracy (30%): after translating the outlet's own scale habits (a '7/10 means mediocre' scale is decoded, not punished), how well its reviews predict player sentiment; and player-side (30%): on games where press consensus and players sharply disagreed, whose side it took. Recent reviews weigh more (2-year half-life), and the blend is shrunk toward a neutral prior (60) so small samples can't peg the scale. Player quality is launch-window Steam sentiment, so outlets aren't punished for reviewing a launch build that later got patched.
Controversy record: on 14 games where press consensus and players sharply disagreed, this reviewer sided with players 3 times.
Computed 6m ago · full methodology →
Outlet vs. players
Each dot is a game both this outlet and players scored. The dashed line is perfect agreement: dots above it mean the outlet was more generous than players, below it more harsh.
Biggest disagreements with players
The receipts: games where this outlet's verdict landed furthest from player sentiment.
- +31Skylanders Swap Forceoutlet 100 · players 69 · Oct 2013
- -49Arma 3outlet 40 · players 89 · Sep 2013
- -63Company of Heroes 2outlet 20 · players 83 · Jun 2013
- -41inFamous: Second Sonoutlet 40 · players 81 · Apr 2014
- -53Max Payne 3outlet 40 · players 93 · May 2012
- -66Banishedoutlet 20 · players 86 · Feb 2014
- -57Stellarisoutlet 20 · players 77 · May 2016
- +14Batman™: Arkham Knightoutlet 80 · players 66 · Jul 2015
- -62Batman™: Arkham Originsoutlet 20 · players 82 · Nov 2013
- -49Alien: Isolationoutlet 40 · players 89 · Oct 2014
Recent reviews (97 tracked)
- 20Ratchet & Clank: Rift ApartAug 4, 2021
“There was a kind of magic in the early Ratchet & Clank games, and then a competence in the later lesser games. The frenetic onscreen chaos of wacky cartoon monsters, smashed crates, imaginative gunplay, and a swarm of bouncing coins was a true joy as we all discovered it twenty years ago. These days, it’s all on offer in a hundred different games. But without the magic or at least the competence, it’s just a flurry of sloppy colors and shapes, a whirlwind of ineffectual nostalgia, absent any innovation, creativity, confidence, or finesse. It took many years, but now that it’s being used to prop up a piece of hardware, Ratchet & Clank finally feels like the soulless corporate property it’s become.”
read full review ↗ - 80Desperados IIIJan 4, 2021
“It’s got what it needs: a keen appreciation for how to smooth the tedium out of stealth games, adroitly presented by its rakish cast on a picante Western stage.”
read full review ↗ - 40Cyberpunk 2077Dec 16, 2020
“Cyberpunk’s running time is littered with familiar problems and zero interest in their solutions. It’s a design cluttered with the failings of a hundred other designs. The safe and familiar failings of the medium that can’t be pinned to CD Projekt specifically, but are nevertheless embraced with something that feels like enthusiasm. So I sigh and carry on to the ending of my choice, looking in vain for the actual cyberpunk in a sprawl of contrived and bland sci-fi.”
read full review ↗ - 100HadesOct 14, 2020
“Hades success is very much indebted to its pacing. Game pacing is difficult in the best of circumstances; it’s impossible without extensive testing, consideration, and willingness to change things for the sake of player experience. This is all easy for people like me to say, with our monocles and berets and copies of the Chicago Manual of Style, plus maybe some Foucault if really pressed. “It’s all about the player experience.” “Design is law.” You can talk all day. But when the player starts getting frustrated at the lack of progress, or insufficient game cues, you might find yourself in a tough spot as a designer. How you get out of it, or if you even do, says a lot about your skill with design and production.”
read full review ↗ - 60CARRIONAug 17, 2020
“All the blood and gore and screaming and gnashing of teeth turn into an aggravating set of puzzles. The chaos grinds to a halt, waiting for you to parse some this-then-that-next puzzle logic. Do you even know where to go next? This tunnel looks like every other tunnel. There’s nothing left to eat. The roiling protoplasm is restless and impatient. It’s tempted to grow a foot just so it can tap it peevishly, but that would be too cheeky. It’s beneath a shoggoth’s dignity. So it waits while you lead it around and try to figure out how to open that door. Such an amazing monster, trapped in such a middling game.”
read full review ↗ - 60DOOM EternalApr 1, 2020
“It can be tedious and exhausting. Its faux angst and exuberance and hellstory can be grating. It’s probably a level or two too long. But in the end, there’s something so lovable about Doom Eternal, so endearingly goofy about the gory glory kills, so affectionate in the way a monster looks at me cross-eyed as I shove a blade up through its chin and out of the top of its skull. The conventional wisdom is that the monsters in this rebooted Doom gameplay are resources, and what I call shortage is just the necessary harvesting of a monster crop. But more to the point, they’re my playmates in this hopped-up jungle gym with its trampolines and swing bars and tunnels. We’re all in this together to make a colorful over-the-top playground with blaring metal music and blazing quick movement and splatter gunplay and chainsawyering. It’s enough to win over even the coldest critical heart.”
read full review ↗ - 100One Finger Death Punch 2Feb 10, 2020
“There’s never been a fighting game like this (One Finger Death Punch 1 excepted) and you’ll never be as Jackie Chan or John Wick as you are here.”
read full review ↗ - 80Transport Fever 2Jan 13, 2020
“Like Anno 1800, it gives you plenty of tools to watch and admire, but unlike Anno 1800, it’s got all the time in the world for watching and admiring. The scenery goes by, the tracks rattle, the whistle blows, the truck’s engine purrs, the boat drifts lazily downriver, the plane banks and dips toward the runway. No one is pushing me to get out and build new plantain farms. There is no opponent AI whose company might get in the way of whatever railroad route I build later. There is no multiplayer. It’s just me and a map of stuff that wants to get somewhere else, waiting patiently for me to build it a way.”
read full review ↗ - 20Borderlands 3Nov 3, 2019
“Gearbox is at their best when they’re engineering the act of shooting something. If their game would just shut up and let the gleeful gunplay speak for itself, Borderlands would go a lot further. Instead, the gunplay is clogged up with meaningless loot, smugly unfunny jokes, and lots of using the same ol’ gun while waiting for the parsimonious skill point drip to finally drop. Where’s the glee in all that?”
read full review ↗ - 80Children of MortaSep 10, 2019
“But what the elevator pitch and basic description don’t convey is Children of Morta’s unique charm.”
read full review ↗ - 100Diablo III: Eternal CollectionNov 29, 2018
“It’s insane. It’s absolutely insane. Utter havoc. It’s what makes Diablo 3 the preeminent action RPG, even if there are newer and arguably better designs out there. I still grin, shake my head, and marvel at Blizzard’s ability to fuse charm, character, and technical prowess. They are the masters of swirling cartoonish videogame power fantasies, they belong on the Switch, and they’re here at last.”
read full review ↗ - 100Red Dead Redemption 2Oct 25, 2018
“Imagine an arthouse movie with summer blockbuster production values, as if Terrence Malick had been given a Star Wars movie. Imagine if Ubisoft had made Gone Home. Like Arthur Morgan himself, Red Dead Redemption 2 is meditative, laconic, a slow burn, drawn out and unhurried, sometimes even morose, more concerned with characters than spectacle. Let us go then, it suggests.”
read full review ↗ - 80Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of WarAug 27, 2018
“Too many strategy games mistake detail for design, activity for gameplay. Gladius knows better.”
read full review ↗ - 100WreckfestJun 24, 2018
“It is the anti-Forza. It luxuriates in the dents on a day-to-day sedan instead of the aerodynamic swoop of something Italian and impossibly expensive. It’s too serious for Electronic Arts, but too wild for Papyrus. It’s not interested in car culture or faux social media or sexy street racing. It hasn’t seen any of the Fast and Furious movies. It loves tough cars, not sleek cars. It knows dents add character. You don’t need to drive these beasts around in the desert to make them look like they’ve been scavenging the wasteland. They come that way.”
read full review ↗ - 80Doki Doki Literature Club!Jan 19, 2018
“The first hour or so are intentionally insufferable. Some of the best horror takes its time establishing what’s normal, because it has to show you what it’s going to break. Without normal, you wouldn’t know what’s weird. Without real, you wouldn’t know what’s surreal. Without victims, you wouldn’t know what’s monstrous. Without the anime dating sim, you wouldn’t know Doki Doki Literature Club.”
read full review ↗