Jason Scheier: "Starfield 83 Metacritic Score was only possible because of Xbox outlets"

I don't disagree, but surely this is not unique to just XBox games.
Yeah i agree with the assessment that Starfield would score lower if wasn't thanks to the shill sites, but the same logic applies to Playstations and nintendo. How many beloved games would fall below 90 if you remove the shill sites?
 
And he is right, Xbox has a multitude of pages on the list that will rate sky-high any first release or one that comes out in GP day one to raise the average, and in the case of Starfield we already saw how before the launch similar media were selected for manipulate the note the first few days.
 
Wonder if we'll see a No Man Sky/Cybperpunk level of post release brand rebuild by Bethesda? They did it with Fallout 76, I imagine they can do it here too.
 
Yep. 83 is really far too high for how poor this game actually is

If it wasn't majorly hyped as a messiah game of the millennium/forever with a big early access push to favorable outlets, the score would be in the 70s where it belongs

I also feel like outlets got pressured as this was a "too big to fail" type game and felt bad for MS after Redfall


Please, if any other company besides bethesda produced this people would be claiming it's brilliance. High expectations can only hurt a game, not help it. Kind of like it's exclusiveness on a certain platform... Sorry bro but this take is just lost.
 
Starfield is not a bad game. It was just massively overhyped. I've been saying for a while now that Avowed would be the better videogame.

Starfield is not a bad game but it shouldn't be "just ok" (7/10) with what it had:

- beloved developer (by mamy people, not me)
- exclusivity (they don't have to optimize for many platforms etc.)
- massive amount of money MS has
- long development time

They fucked up.
 
friday the 13th jason GIF
 
I recall reading a lot of divisiveness around Spiderman 2. It just almost never shows up in reviews, just audience conversation. It's a well made game, but certainly divisive. Same thing happened with Ragnarok. Same thing happened with FFXVI.
Nah, thats just internet outrage over the woke elements. The game itself was received very well as you can see from the user scores being the same as the critic score. 90 for both.

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Meanwhile starfield, god of war ragnorak and horizon forbidden west all drop 10-13 points because they are far more divisive.
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Nah, thats just internet outrage over the woke elements. The game itself was received very well as you can see from the user scores being the same as the critic score. 90 for both.

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Meanwhile starfield, god of war ragnorak and horizon forbidden west all drop 10-13 points because they are far more divisive.
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Whats crazy is, theres no way that Starfield should have more user reviews than those 3 games though. Based on their popularity and sales....But there ya go.
 
Starfield is not a bad game but it shouldn't be "just ok" (7/10) with what it had:

- beloved developer (by mamy people, not me)
- exclusivity (they don't have to optimize for many platforms etc.)
- massive amount of money MS has
- long development time

They fucked up.

Long development time because they were overhauling that old ass engine of theirs. The stuff the engine does well I don't even care about anymore. Building bases and collecting a bunch of cheese wheels in a room.
 
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Every day is Starfield day. Just a few more weeks and it's a half year since release and we're still getting new threads. Can't say people don't love to talk about Starfield. That's what we call engagement. Keep 'em coming. Love the game.
 
Not even gunna lie but fo4 won goty and its by far one of the worst games bethesda has ever made, not even mods can save it but starfield is definitely a game under 75
 
It launched in September right, and it's still brought up every single day....is referenced randomly in any review thread.

Xbox and STarfield is the literal definition of "Rent Free"
 
Who knew Forbes, Guardian, VGC and DualShockers were Xbox sites. DualShockers started as a PS site.

DualShockers also gave 100/100 to Horizon, BOTW, Okami, Spiderman, GOW, Undertale etc... But I can what the original tweeter is trying to do. Exclude as many high ratings as possible for Starfield.

 
What a bullshit tweet. You could say the same thing for both Nintendo and Sony, they all have outlets that favor them and raise the meta for mid games.
 
Starfield is not a bad game but it shouldn't be "just ok" (7/10) with what it had:

- beloved developer (by mamy people, not me)
- exclusivity (they don't have to optimize for many platforms etc.)
- massive amount of money MS has
- long development time

They fucked up.
I think Starfield is an example of just how difficult it is to create a game nowadays. They gave themselves enough time to create a new IP. 7 years. MS then gave them an extra year for polish. Something zenimax never gave them before. They put in the work to make the graphics look way better than their past games when other bethesda devs like Arkhane and Machine Games simply phoned it in. The marketing showed that it had the elements to make a truly great game, but unfortunately, it just didnt come together at the end. I think the devs made the game they wanted to make. They just didnt realize that it didnt work.

Todd said he wanted to make a talky game to stand out from the crowd because there are so many open world games out there today. Well, he did that. It's just that the writing sucks and talking to people simply isnt as fun as going out there and exploring those Bethesda worlds.

I had the same feeling with cyberpunk. We take for granted how all these AAA games just work and hit 90 on metacritic, but one thing off and it doesnt work. Cyberpunk had the graphics, the city, and the combat, but it just felt like it was lacking something that the only managed to truly capture 3 years later with phantom liberty.

TLDR; making great games isnt just hard, it's a miracle we all seem to take for granted nowadays.
 
Whats crazy is, theres no way that Starfield should have more user reviews than those 3 games though. Based on their popularity and sales....But there ya go.
Why? Starfield is multiplatform. These Sony games arent.

Bethesda games sell most on PC. just like CD Project games. Those are mostly PC bros rating it down. Not PS fanboys.
 
What's next he's going to tell us Microsoft and Sony buy reviews and all of gaming journalism is a glorified marketing department for the big corps ?
Him tweeting stuff like that is proof enough every vg journalist working at a somewhat big outlet is full of crap.
 
I recall reading a lot of divisiveness around Spiderman 2. It just almost never shows up in reviews, just audience conversation. Same thing happened with Ragnarok. Same thing happened with FFXVI.
Spider-Man 2:
Critics: 90
Users: 90

Same score

God of War Ragnarok:
Critics: 94
Users: 81

13 points of difference

FFXVI:
Critics: 87
Users: 81

6 points of difference

Starfield:
Critics: 83
Users: 69

14 points of different

Seems like the worst one was Starfield, following closely by Ragnarok. The other 2 don't deserve to be included in this comparison.

Even if i play mostly on Playstation, that 94 for Ragnarok was not deserved...like, at all.
 
Xbox Addict - 100
Generacion Xbox - 99
SomosXbox - 98
MondoXbox - 97
Xbox Tavern - 97

Also:
TheXboxHub - 90
WindowsCentral - 90
TrueAchievements - 90
PureXbox - 90

Only two Xbox sites seem to have given it under a 90, one an 89 and one an 85.
Pretty damning.
 
83 seems about right. I'd give it a 8/10. Had a great time with it. Solid, good game.

As for researching the outlets who "made this possible". Come on, is this really what you spend your precious work time as a "gaming journalist" doing, Jason? Fuck off and get a real job then. No one needs this utter bullshit.
 
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I recall reading a lot of divisiveness around Spiderman 2. It just almost never shows up in reviews, just audience conversation. Same thing happened with Ragnarok. Same thing happened with FFXVI.

From memory FFXVI was review bombed by a few activist outlets who marked it down due to the lack of diversity and devs wanting to create a game based on Europe with no coloured characters. Without these review bombs it would have got a meta score around 90 instead of 87.
 
83 seems about right when you figure in the bullshit hype scores. But it doesn't feel like an 8/10 game for me. Maybe a 7/10 after a few years of patches.
 
Same applies to many Sony games, I don't see what's the matter. Many put 90+ to TLOU which is pretty mediocre, I didn't like Startfield but at least that thing has more gameplay to be considered a game and no one complained about the former, let's just admit everyone does it
 
He isn't wrong. But isn't that the case for many first party games? I mean we basically have those sites for Nintendo and PlayStation as well, so it should balance it out in a way. You could make the same argument for other games and if you weigh these sites not as much because they're biased you could deduct a few points for some Nintendo and PS games, too.
 
yep, I called that long ago
They also faked METRO's score lol
It was 3/5 "Starfield review – the final verdict: outdated, unambitious and disjointed"

They got the "wrong" Metro
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Same applies to many Sony games, I don't see what's the matter. Many put 90+ to TLOU which is pretty mediocre, I didn't like Startfield but at least that thing has more gameplay to be considered a game and no one complained about the former, let's just admit everyone does it
The issue here is you think The Last of Us was mediocre. Most outlets did not. In Starfield's case, the score is higher because of the Xbox sites.

In fact, I challenge those of you claiming "but Nintendo/SonyToo™" to show what the other scores looked like for high scoring (90+) games. Outlets that don't represent the brand. Post them. Then let's compare that to Starfield. :p
 
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Spider-Man 2:
Critics: 90
Users: 90

Same score

God of War Ragnarok:
Critics: 94
Users: 81

13 points of difference

FFXVI:
Critics: 87
Users: 81

6 points of difference

Starfield:
Critics: 83
Users: 69

14 points of different

Seems like the worst one was Starfield, following closely by Ragnarok. The other 2 don't deserve to be included in this comparison.

Even if i play mostly on Playstation, that 94 for Ragnarok was not deserved...like, at all.
Just no. You can be unhappy about Gow Ragnarok all you want, but the game was polished as fuck, and a huge game that ended the Norse saga decisively. And the DLC Valhalla only made that even more definitive. The game deserved his 90+, and the fact that people wanted something else and were dissapointed don't change that IMHO. As for Scheier, he could have taken his tweet from Neogaf because this is a non story. Bethesda gave copies to Digital Foundry but not Eurogamer. You can't show how they gamed the process more than that.
 
I'm continuously amazed at how many people misspell Schreier's name when it's in the twitter link that's posted.

Also, the fact that Starfield is still melting off IQ points for several people is more entertaining than the game ever could've been, honestly.
 
I've said it since launch and i'll say it again, remove the Bethesda name alone and it's not scoring above 75, maybe not even 70.

An extremely outdated game in every way such as gameplay, animations, quest design, voice acting and God knows what else, it is just isn't good in almost every possible way.
 
To me, user scores are more unreliable than MC scores since all it takes is some internet bombing and a game can go down the drain. As much as people like to hate FIFA, WOW, COD etc.... these games can get user score bombed to 1 or 2/10. Thats worse than Big Rigs Racing. So for you guys comparing MC scores to user scores, dont forget these if user scores are so accurate.


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