"Metacritic is a garbage website!": Horizon Forbidden West players lose their cool over the game's 88 metascore

February has already seen some significant releases, and Horizon Forbidden West belongs at the top.

The 2022 release is a direct sequel to Horizon Zero Dawn, and the first receptions have been extremely bright. The game contains everything from beautiful graphics to a solid story and has duly delivered on the promise.

While there have been bugs and optimization issues in minor senses, there hasn't been any news of game-breaking bugs so far.

Given the quality of the Horizon Forbidden West, Metacritic has awarded it with a 88 rating. This is based on 106 critics' ratings at the time of writing, and it's an excellent score.

However, some fans were expecting a higher rating, and the score of 88 hasn't gone down well, despite being a very good number.

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Fans flood social media with reactions over Horizon Forbidden West's 88 rating

It appears that many fans were expecting the game to cross 90 rating which would have made it a 'must play'. However, it should be kept in mind that the 'must play' tag is generated automatically based on the metascore. There isn't any significant difference between an 88 and a 90 metascore.

Fans seem to think otherwise, and since the game's launch, its metascore of 88 has become a raging topic on social media. Quite naturally, there have been direct comparisons to ratings of other games even if they are of completely different genres.

Users have also stated how little significance the score carries. It should be noted that metascores are based on critics' reviews and often contain elements that are almost insignificant to common players. Hence, it's quite immaterial to judge a game as 'good' or 'bad' by a margin of just two points.

There were also certain premonitions over how the community could react if the early reports of Horizon Forbidden West's metascore turned out to be true.

There were also tweets of disagreement with the metascore.

Incidentally, the game has received the same rating on Open Critic, which nullifies the argument that Metacritic is biased.

Another user directly blamed a review, which all adds up to form the average, based on which every game is given a metascore.

Ultimately, it all comes down to what the reviews are and they don't always fall in the same line as players.

The best thing to do is to just play and enjoy a video game because that's what every video game is made for in the first place.