Mortal Kombat 1 has joined the list of games being review-bombed after Starfield faced something quite similar. Mortal Kombat 1 is not being released in Russia and Belarus for political reasons, and this has not gone down well with the fans. Starfield was also review-bombed post-release, which saw the game plummet through the Metacritic charts.
Critic reviews for both games mentioned above have been quite good, while user reviews haven’t been favorable at all with most of the user reviews citing the game’s absence as the only reason for the bad reviews. This hasn’t, however, stopped gamers from bypassing the region block to gain access.
Mortal Kombat 1 Review Bombed for Blocking Gamers in Russia
Mortal Kombat 1‘s online services being blocked in Russia has led to the game getting heavily review-bombed, and as a result, has seen the game slide down Metacritic scores. This hasn’t stopped some gamers who have gained access by using a virtual private network (VPN) though. Fans in Russia and Belarus stated they were able to stress test the game back in June but that isn’t completely clear as fans may have switched regions using a VPN.
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Mortal Kombat 1 was heavily criticized for the Nintendo Switch version, as the game looked nowhere close to the visually-impacting graphics seen on PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series consoles. While critics and fans left disappointing reviews with respect to the Switch version of the game, review bombing the game in general hasn’t helped the game at all.
Mortal Kombat 1 is still being reviewed highly for the game’s impressive single-player story mode, overall gameplay, and all the gory details in its visuals. Critic’s score for Mortal Kombat 1 is at a very healthy 84 out of 100, while the user reviews have slid down to just a shade above 6 out of 10 and is estimated to go down further over the next few days.
This isn’t the first time that a highly rated game has received backlash in the form of review-bombing the game’s scores.
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Starfield and Another Major Game were also Heavily Review-Bombed
The Last of Us Part 2 is another good example of gamers using Metacritic user reviews to bomb the scores if they find something they don’t agree with, which in this case was believed to be around the protagonist’s gender choice. Starfield was also review-bombed as soon as it was officially released, with many users calling the game empty and leaving a rating between 0/10 and 1/10, with the reason believed to be the game not being available on PlayStation 5.
Metacritic also does not help with their little to no help in terms of filtering empty or bogus reviews. At the moment, just about anyone can get an account made on Metacritic, choose one of the platforms on which the game has been released, and leave a review and rating to their liking.
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While Mortal Kombat 1‘s absence in Russia and Belarus was a decision taken by WB Games, they are not the first or only ones to exclude the two regions for political reasons, as NVIDIA, and Ubisoft are two other major companies to have avoided Russia. Nintendo has also stopped the online services of Pokémon GO in Russia.
Russian authorities have in turn responded with a drastic move of legalizing piracy of video games and movies, which might hurt some gaming studios. Missing out on two regions might not hurt Mortal Kombat 1 as much, however, just like Starfield, the game is doing quite well, on all platforms except for Nintendo Switch.
What are your thoughts on critically-acclaimed games getting review-bombed? Make sure to leave a comment and let us know your thoughts.
Source: Metacritic
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