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The stir created in the video game community when a high-profile game receives an unexpectedly high or low score from a major reviewer, especially when it significantly differs from the general consensus. Especially jarring because professional video game reviewers tend to give out very similar scores.

Whether or not this stir is justified is up for debate. On the one hand, a reviewer shouldn't just automatically go along with the crowd, even for nigh-universally-loved games. On the other, sometimes you get the feeling that they're doing it intentionally to create controversy and attract attention. After all, professional game reviewers aren't exactly entirely trustworthy.

Sometimes you get the feeling that Eight Point Eight situations are simply the fans are making a mountain out of a molehill. It's worth noting that reviews tend to be published a day or two before the game is actually released, meaning that many people are decrying the score awarded to a game they haven't yet played themselves. Such is the behavior of a console or series fanboy: Complaining About People Not Liking The Show. Naturally caused by the fact that many gamers believe that Reviews Are The Gospel.

Often, the score may be controversial because it adversely affects the game's overall average score on review compendium sites such as Game Rankings and Meta Critic. Alternatively, animosity can be generated from detractors of the game who all start to act as if the low score is the only 'correct' one, so no matter how many good reviews it got, if GameSpot says it's not that great, it's officially a rubbish game.

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Examples:

• The Trope Namer comes from the unimaginable havoc created by Gamespot's review of The Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess in November 2006, which awarded the game a great-but-not-amazing score of 8.8 out of 10. The Internet erupted in anger and chaos as the game was one of the most anticipated games of all-time, and near-perfect scores were expected.
  • It Got Worse when the GameCube version of the game receieved an 8.9, from the same reviewer. This was in spite of the fact that the review's text recommended buying the Wii version instead if the option was available. Repeat, he gave the game he thought was superior a lower score. Even for a tenth of a point, it was still a tenth in the wrong direction of his recommendation. The reviewer in question was blackballed for this logical inconsistency, and reportedly received death threats. The number "8.8" has since become an Internet fad in some gaming circles. In fact, as proof of its infamy, as of this writing typing ' 8.8 ' into Google and clicking "I'm feeling lucky" will yield the review.
  • Interestingly, when he later got fired, accusations started flying that he was fired for breaking the opposite rule: the Four Point Scale. See that entry for more details.
  • For the record, statistics show that any score lower than 9.3 (on Gamespot's own scale) would be significantly below the average for Twilight Princess. For those wondering where the statistics came from, it was This Troper doing a single-tailed student's t-distribution test with 95% confidence on Meta Critic's scores.
• Tommy Tallarico on "Judgement Day" had a VERY nasty habit of this. One of many examples was his review of Psychonauts, giving the game a 7.5 because its protagonist (Raz) was "annoying." Then Raz went on to be nominated for several "character of the year" awards. The game currently holds an 86% percent positive rating on Metacritic for its PS 2 version (considered the worst version available).
  • It didn't help that he gave a game that he worked on an 8.0 because of the music (which he worked on) and the fact that it didn't have "annoying footstep sounds." That game? The massive critical and commercial flop "Advent Rising."
• IGN's 7.9 score for Mario Kart: Double Dash led to the expression "7.9'd", another name for this trope, and is still used in the IGN community.
  • Coincidentally, Gamespot gave it the exact same score. They probably didn't get as much heck for it since they already got heck for giving its predecessor an even lower score: their 1996 6.4 review of the near-universally loved Mario Kart 64.
• IGN's 7.6 score for Kingdom Hearts II.
• Gamespot's 8.7 review of Metal Gear Solid 3.
• Gamespot's 8.3 review of The Legend Of Zelda: Majora's Mask. Especially odd since they gave Ocarina of Time a perfect 10.
• EGM's Greg Sewart giving Chrono Cross a 9.0, denying it a Platinum Award (perfect 10s). Some readers began sending in hate mail to Seward.
  • Before that, EGM gave Tekken 3 three 10s and a 9.0.
    • On a similar note, EGM giving Phantasy Star Online three 9s and a 7.0, denying it a "gold" award and preventing it from becoming game of the month.
• Inside Pulse's game reviews often fall into this category, due to their complete and utter rejection of the Four Point Scale. This has earned them a number of threatening letters from video game companies. Recently, having been caught between their ethics and the game companies, they finally stopped doing numeric ratings at all, instead having a set of clear, unambiguous adjectives to use to rate games.
• It's been argued that the UK's Edge magazine makes a living out of this, with its notoriously strict scoring system. Some are lamented goofs (Doom got 7/10 because the player could not "talk to the monsters"◊ for example), but in most cases, it's simply because the magazine hates to give out anything higher than an 8/10 score. Inverting the trope, when the magazine gives a 10/10 score, all hell breaks loose.
  • They just gave Super Mario Galaxy 10/10 while giving Call Of Duty 4 9/10. I can hear the COD 4 fans protesting now...
  • A spate of seemingly-lenient 10/10 ratings didn't help things. Xbox 360's Halo 3: 10/10. Wii's Mario Galaxy: 10/10. PS3's MGS4: 8/10. Uh-oh.
• Gamespot's 8.5 review of Metroid Prime 3. Various "problems" cited included controls that were too good, lack of multiplayer (notable for a 20 year old franchise that has almost never had a multiplayer component. Then again, this game came after the multiplayer-focused Metroid Prime Hunters...), and not being Halo.
  • It didn't help that Gamespot had recently altered their review system, making all score multiples of .5 .
• Gamespot and IGN's scores of Lair, which were 4.5 and 4.9 respectively. PS 3 fans continue to insist that all reviewers that had problems with the controls are wrong and that the reviewers were probably 'paid off' by Microsoft or Nintendo.
  • Sony didn't help by insisting the former as well, to the point of even sending "clarified" manuals to show them "how" to play it right. Most people countered that if you have to go that far for people to play the game right, that's a problem in and of itself.
• The magazine Game Pro gave the cult classic Xenogears an unusually low 3.5 out of 5, a score usually reserved for completely horrible games. It didn't help that the forgettable Kagero: Deception II was given a 4.5 on the other side of the page.
  • Game Pro in general had a ton of these, especially when Role Playing Games were concerned. Nobody on the staff had any real appreciation for the genre, so they tended to give poor reviews that admonished the very traits of the genre. They gave Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete a 2.5, complaining that the game was a remake of an older game and making a point over how the auto-battle system is flawed. Then in what can only be interpreted as a cynical review, they gave Lunar: Eternal Blue Complete a 4 star review without really describing the game.
  • A Play Station Game Guide from said magazine lists Xenogears at 1.5 out of 5, as a result of an "updated" score or some other Hand Wave.
• Not so much lampooned as harpooned by the comedy site Something Awful. An infrequently updated section of the site called "Truth Media" publishes excessively critical and factually incorrect reviews of hyped games, films and so on. They then harvest the delicious backlash for the amusement of their readership.
• Gamespot's 7.5 review of Ratchet And Clank: Tools of Destruction.
• IGN's reviews of Assassin's Creed range from 6.8 (IGN UK)-7.7 (US). It would appear they're not quite pleased with the game's AI. The fans would appear to not be quite pleased with IGN.
• Gamespot's 6.0 review of Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn seemed to put the game in the crap pile with Gamespot's other "6" games. The argument was that it had dated graphics and was very, very hard, even compared to other Fire Emblem games. And they said that the story was crap. And then docked it for not providing Mii support.
  • The magazine Game Informer gave the game a 7 and a 5.5 for similar reasons.
  • The game was also given 76 by Australian magazine Hyper, for the same two reasons above. And it's obscene difficulty. The same magazine awarded a 85 to Super Smash Bros. Brawl, contrasting with the 90+ scores it had been getting.
• Gamespot also gave a similarly low score of 7.7 to Silent Hill 2, a game which received almost universal critical acclaim (average 8.9).
• An issue of PC Gamer printed a letter from a reader decrying their score of "only" 90% for Quake while awarding Duke Nukem 3D a score of 93%. Their response - "only?" Note that at the time, a game with a score of 88% or higher was recommended without reservation. Even now, that line is at 90%.
• X-Play gave Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core a 2/5, in stark contrast to the 3.5/4 range most other reviews gave it.
• A Final Fantasy review site reviewed all of the different party combinations for Final Fantasy I. However, his blatant dislike of the Black Belt made him refuse to see any good of having one, and he rated any party with a Black Belt unfairly low. In fact the all Black Belt party was rated at 0, even lower than all Black Mage or White Mage parties who simply put do not have the defensive/offensive power (respectively) to win the game. After public outcry he reluctantly gave them a better score, but after brooding he went back and gave the all Black Belt party a -9999 on a scale of 0 to 10.
  • Revised to a -43/10 as of 3/19/09
• IGN's 3.0 review of cult favorite beat-em-up God Hand, a rating a full five points lower than the reader average of 8.0 and a frequently brought up justification against trusting anything IGN says, ever (especially when compared to their review of the Cory In The House game, which garnered an equivalent score).
  • The Imagine series always has had flak from most gamers, but nothing is more offensive then when a freelance reviewer on IGN gave Imagine Party Babyz a 7.5. Now that was an definite insult. In other words: They prefer a shovelware title over a sleeper hit.
• Edge Magazine rated Mario Kart Wii with a 6/10. Average on Metacritic: 84/100.
• IGN's 7.6 review of No More Heroes. Different sources gave scores in the 8.5 range (Gamespot gave it 9.0, N Gamer gave it 9.4, X-Play gave it a 5 out of 5; hell, even IGN AU gave it 8.9).
• Even though he doesn't actually give out scores, Ben 'Yahtzee' Croshaw's (even more negative than usual) Zero Punctuation review of Super Smash Bros. Brawl managed to cause mass amounts of controversy as soon as it was released. The fact that he actually made a video responding to it for the first time doesn't help either.
  • The situation seems to be repeating itself again in his recent review of Bionic Commando Rearmed, whereupon he insists that the remake could have been better had it not followed the original game as precisely as it did, and that nostalgia in itself is a futile emotion.
    • Pure irony coming from the man who initially made a career out of making homages to early 80s adventure games.
    • As bizarre as it is to be defending Yahtzee, you've impressed me by cramming a lot of wrongness into one sentence. For a start, he didn't make any sort of career out of it. Secondly, almost none of his games were adventure game homages - as you would expect given the number of times he has trashed the genre (usually over tropes such as pixel-hunting that are rampant in his own games anyway..). The Rob Blanc series were simply the limit of what could be acheived with Adventure Game Studio at the time (being the first games made with it!) and his later games were all explorations on dramatic storytelling - the only homage was The Adventures of Odysseus Kent, which barely anybody's played anyway. Finally, that was a homage to the Lucas Arts adventures of the early 90s. If they were early 80s you could expect a lot more parsing and grue references.
• IGN, again, gave a surprisingly negative score of 4.5 out of 10 for the anticipated PS 3 "Halo Killer" Haze. And there was much rejoicing, mostly from people who don't like the PS 3 very much.
• In a bizarre inversion, IGN awarded scores of 9.1 to both WWE Raw for Xbox and its sequel, way out of sync with the games' average scores of 6s and 7s.
  • Suspiciously, the review for the first Raw game had quotes from the developer in the text of the review. Think about what would happen if a film critic had a conversation with Uwe Boll in the middle of a review of one of his movies....
• Gamer website Eurogamer.com has a review up for Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, in which the site gave the game an 8.0 rating. The fans decrying the review as lies, as well as being biased towards the Xbox 360 in the article's comment section (over 1700 replies and growing) were especially troubling, as many of them hadn't played the game yet at the time of review, since it hadn't been released at that time.
  • Edge gave the game the same. Revealingly, the praises and criticisms in the 8/10 reviews are the same as those listed in the 10/10 and 9.5/10 reviews given elsewhere, so clearly it's just the numerical stamp of approval the fanboys are gagging for.
  • This Penny Arcade comic illustrates yet another MGS4 example.
  • MGS4 is a particular magnet for this because not-perfect review scores are almost universally in agreement that the game falls just short of perfect for just one single major issue: long cutscenes. Naturally, since long-time fans of the series with emotional investment in the plot view the long cutscenes as a good thing, they're not liable to understand why others might consider it a flaw. The fact that professional reviewers seem like they never have that same emotional investment in the games they review is only gas on the fire, too...
• GameSpot seems to cap at an 8.0 for shoot-em-ups. Space Invaders Extreme, for example, has a Game Rankings rating of 84% for both versions; GameSpot gave it a 7.5. The last time they handed out at least a 9 to a shmup was to Radiant Silvergun, in 1998. Perhaps their worst shmup moment was giving the Dreamcast version of Giga Wing a 4.4, which is exactly 8.8 divided by 2!
• The uber-anticipated Spore is receiving anywhere from 7s-9s. The average critic score, according to GameSpot is - wait for it - 8.8. Gamespot themselves gave it an 8.0, Drama indeed...
  • And, adversely, people are calling the peeps at X-Play sell-outs cause they gave this game a perfect 5/5.
• Game Informer seems to make a habit of doing this. Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door was given a score of 6.75... and the subtitle "The Thousand-Year Bore".
  • They also did this with Sonic Advance 3. GI has been getting better about this around 2006 though.
  • Elite Beat Agents. Metacritic average: 8.7, GI's Score: 6.75
  • After a multitude of complaints about the 6.75, one of the reviewers posted this quote on the forums - reproduced [1]here:
  ''"...we had to score it low. Remember, we aren't scoring games strictly on our personal opinions, we're also scoring them based on how much we think THE GAMING PUBLIC will like them."
• IGN's 6.7 score for Disgaea 3 compared to the average score of 8.13 (before review) primarily for its graphics and lack of improvements. Controversial enough to warrant a second opinion immediately after the review.
  • Their 6.5 score of Sonic Chronicles (Same average as Disgaea 3 before their review) is quickly becoming another example.
  • Nippon Ichi titles regularly lose points for still using 2-D sprites for their characters. Because 3-D is really that much better and really that important.
• X-Play is notorious for being biased against Mega Man. They consistently give games in this series a considerably lower score compared to the average (average is about 1.5-2 points lower).
• Most hilarious example of all time would be Old Man Murray's review of Freedom: First Resistance. Almost the entire thing is a rant about how the game "BLEW UP MY MONITOR."
  "At this point, you might be wondering whether my monitor was about to die anyway. All I can say is that why don't you try using that same logic on the surviving family members of people killed in a plane crash and see how it holds up there."
• "This game sucks." (Though, as the Nerd points out himself in an interview, it was a joke review, with a lot of mistaken viewers taking it seriously.)
• IGN scores again with Wii Music, giving it a square 5.0 (with the average Metacritic rating somewhere in the sixties range) and igniting more heated debating about IGN's "bias", regardless of whether or not there actually is any bias to talk of.
  • A shocking inversion of this and Hype Backlash occurred when 1Up gave Wii Music a 9.0. Fans immediately jumped down the reviewer's throat due to their massive buildup of negative hype accumulated over months.
• The magazine Hyper just gave Dead Space a 6/10 and Sonic Chronicles a 4/10.
• NGamer faced heavy criticism after "only" giving Super Smash Bros Brawl a score of 91%. In response they gave away a free gift of a 95% sticker to paste over the next review score you disagree with.
• Gametrailers' 6.7 for Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts compared to the average 8. Though one of their criticisms was the old and tired They Changed It Now It Sucks towards the vehicles, which most got over it...
• When PSM was under the command of Chris Slate, they'd sometimes have a highly-anticipated game wanked over in the reviews... and come review month, it's on the cover. And it's rated lower than the game of the month (the game that scores the highest that year). Lampshaded when a guy sent a letter to them asking why they had Golden Eye: Rogue Agent on the cover, and gave it a six-point-five. One of the editor's responses? "Never... EVER... trust a preview."
• IGN has been getting hate-mail over their 8.8 score of the DS port for Chrono Trigger. Others are just noting the irony of the meme actually being applied to a game often heralded as one of the greatest of all time (including by IGN).
• An episode of 1Up's Retronauts discussed Chrono Cross. The review in question was positive, though it discussed the game's flaws and noted its Contested Sequel status. The webmaster of the Chrono Compendium responded with a front-page tirade (later mirrored to the forums) deriding the credibility and intelligence of the reviewers and ending with a truly epic image promoting Cross featuring "YOU ARE WRONG. SHUT UP." as a caption to a man flipping the bird.
  • This was also backlash from an earlier Retronauts episode that noted the re-translated script of the original game on the Compendium's site, then delivered a Take That with the exact words of "die in a fire".
• IGN and Gamespot's reviews of Sonic Unleashed for the 360, giving it 4.5 and 3.5, respectively. They blamed the Werehog levels and the hub levels for ruining the entire game. And with the Gamespot review, it was rated lower than the universally considered So Bad It's Horrible Sonic 2006 (which got 4.0).
  • In fact, Sonic fans have been going apeshit over Unleashed's scores in general, being lower than expectations. They even find it outrageous that the supposedly "inferior" Wii version is statistically superior to its HD counterparts.
  • And history repeats itself with Sonic and the Black Knight. Nintendo Power gave it an 8. GameDaily a 7. IGN? Three point nine.
• IGN US gave Football Manager 2009 2.0, IGN UK gave the same game 9.1. Far from simply reflecting the varying popularity of the game in different regions, the IGN US review compared the game with action football games rather than reviewing it as a management sim.
  • And amazingly, the reviewer actually recommended it for management fans, while clearly hating the game and having no idea of what makes a good one in its genre.
• The now-defunct Gaming Intelligence Agency gained some infamy for completely rejecting the Four Point Scale in its review of Legend Of Dragoon, which they gave a 1 out of 5. With the reviewer specifically saying he'd have given it a score of zero if their scale allowed it. While LoD usually isn't regarded as a great game, few gamers considered it anywhere near that bad. The GIA's letter column raged with debate over the validity of the score (and the rest of the review, which was every bit as negative as the score implied) for months afterward.
• Computerandvideogames.com have given Killzone 2 8.7. Stand back and watch the fireworks in the Comments.
  • You think that's bad? X Play was called biased toward the Xbox and against the game for its review of Killzone 2. The score? Five out of a possible five. This led to Adam Sessler devoting an entire rant against console fanboys where he read and mocked several of the comments (including one who accused them of not sounding happy enough while reviewing the game) and begging intelligent people to start grouping up on message boards just to raise the level of discourse by drowning them out.
• When NGC Magazine gave Star Fox Adventures 72% when most other Nintendo magazines put it somewhere in the 90s, people perceived it as 'punishment' for Rare being bought out by Microsoft.
• MadWorld is on the brink of release and the reviews start rolling in. It's getting 4/5s and 9/10s almost across the board. Here comes Gamespot with a 7.5. Uh-oh.
• A recent review by RPGamer of Star Ocean 4: The Last Hope resulted in a 2.5/5. This resulted in a slough of people spluttering rage, including several who had migrated from Game FA Qs and started up an account on the RP Gamer forums specifically to denounce the review, and resulting in what may be the longest discussion thread on a "site update" ever. There was also a strange hacking attemptcoincidental forum bug that changed everyone's avatars to the same Star Ocean 4 avatar.
  • Similar uproars in the past have stemmed from the likes of Operation Darkness and Phantasy Star Universe, both of which were heavily panned. While all three games were critically panned anyway, the RP Gamer scores were dramatically lower than other sources.
• While not giving scores, Insomnia's Team Fortress 2 review. Bonus "points" for its Eight Point Eightness steaming from the Stop Having Fun Guys and "It's not Team Fortress Classic, so it sucks" mentality driving the writing as well as the site admin's Small Name Big Ego, both of which caused more hysteria on both the site's forum [2] and GameFAQs' TF2 board [3].
• The now-defunct magazine Game Fan had a rather infamous pair of Final Fantasy reviews. When Final Fantasy VII came out, they couldn't stop gushing about it. Reviewers called it "the best game of all time," "The best entertainment product ever produced," and "a possible life-altering experience for all who play it." Perfect 100's all around. Okay, fine. A year later, Final Fantasy VIII came along, and the same reviewers trashed it with low scores and general derision. Why? Because it was "the same as FFVII." Especially ironic in that while FFVIII is seen as the black sheep of the franchise in some circles, its detractors dislike it because it's so DIFFERENT from the other titles, not because it's the same. The review also complained about the heavy sci-fi influence compared to earlier games...even though Final Fantasy VII had even more sci-fi influences than its successor.
  • Similar to Game Pro's dismissal of Lunar and Xenogears, Game Fan gave Suikoden II a score in the 60 range and no preview whatsoever. This is very odd considering their editor in chief would and still does go crazy over any game that is 1) Japanese, 2)2D, and 3) is heavily story based, even at the expense of gameplay.
• Right now, everyone on the board for The Conduit on Game FA Qs is mad that Nintendo Power gave The Conduit an 8... [4]
• America is just unkind to the Dynasty Warrior Series, giving it lower ratings then they do in Japan. Apparently it has gotten so bad that the Warriors Orochi sequel has been declared as No Export For You. This troper knew one day those negative reviews will get to Koei...
  • It gets shit on critically and by the FPS-loving crowd, but Dynasty games are million sellers, largely due to the throngs of history buffs who play it for the "plot," so there is probably something else at work here. If the above troper is talking about Warriors Orochi Z, it's probably because the additions from the last game are at best cosmetic.
• Ign gave Pokemon Diamond an 8.5.
  • Game Spot gave Crystal,which a majority of Pokemon fans think is the best game in the series to date(counting out Heartgold and Soulsilver),a 8.4. Yet,they gave Pokemon Diamond,though it's still considered one of the better Pokemon games,an 8.5.
  • Gamespot also gave Emerald an 7.5.
• Gamespot recently awarded The Conduit 6.5/10, which again is around 1 to 1.5 lower than what most other reviewers have given it.
  • And according to Metacritic, 1UP's C+ rating for The Conduit rounded out to 58.
    • Giant Bomb gave it a 2 out of 5. That review was also written by Gerstmann, who notably spent time ripping on the Wii in his Twilight Princess review as well.

Non-gaming examples:

• At a Roger Ebert lecture. one of the questioners asked directly why he had given Fight Club 2 stars but Booty Call 3.
  • Two further examples from the Ebert reviews, one rather old and one quite new: the 2/4 for Dead Poets Society and the 2.5/4 for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
• Carl Kimlinger's review of Death Note at Anime News Network in which he gave the thing a C+ was met with much fandom complaining and some bannings for calling the reviewer an asshole on the forums.
  • Similarly, his review for Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha was a C-, and put particular (some would say unfair) emphasis on the lolicon elements of the series. Given the sheer amount of love for that series on this wiki, one can imagine the Internet Backdraft that ensued.
• Movie example: Plenty of people have already gone apeshit over IGN giving Coraline (the movie) a 6/10 even though the movie wasn't even out yet so none of the people complaining had actually seen it.
  • People do that all the time. On websites where it's possible for users to "rate" games before they're released, it's entirely possible to see games that aren't even officially completed yet with 10.0 scores.
    • Other users will often try to counter these early reviews with 0.0 reviews which, if they even have text, generally consist of rants against people who give games early 10.0 ratings.
• There's an article talking about how Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen may become the worst-reviewed movie to surpass the $400 million mark. The article points out how there's a clear disconnect between what the critics are saying and what the audiences want and expect. For the most part, it seems as though critics hate it because it's really nothing more than giant robots making shit blow up, whereas fans and the general audience okay, just the fans love it for the exact same reasons.

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