6 Video Games That Critics Loved But Couldn’t Settle Well With Fans

I’m sure there are many of you out there who simply can’t see eye to eye with the amount of high reception a particular game has accumulated over time. Being an industry professional myself, I get the sentiment, if nothing else, that the perspective of the average Joe may differ than that of an authentic reviewer, but hey, it doesn’t get any worse than it is for these particular games. 

I’ve singled out some of the most notorious titles out there in this regard that the gaming community is fairly divisive on. From the likes of The Last of Us Part 2 and Battlefield 2042, there have been a number of different games in recent memory that haven’t impressed users as much as they were expected to.  

These Titles Couldn’t Get A Lot Of Love From Fans

Before we go on, it bears mentioning that the forthcoming entries are subject to a personal opinion of mine, and aren’t definitive by any shape or form. If you disagree with my picks, feel free to spark a discussion in the comments section, and we’ll take it from there. 

1. Pathologic 

Did you know there are some games out there that are purposely designed not to be fun? I was shocked to discover this until I came face to face with the horror that is Pathologic. The title has some of the worst mechanics ever observed in a video game, so casuals and newcomers who remain unbeknownst to what they’re getting themselves into will find this a pure waste of time.

However, underlying the surface-level hum-drum nonsense, Pathologic actually comprises chilling secrets, a story that comes off as super involved, and meta-narratives that are just outright incredible to experience. Critics will say that they love this game, and then recommend not playing it—that’s just how it is with the Pathologic series.

• Check out Pathologic’s remastered version on Steam.

2. Deathloop

The aforementioned Deathloop easily deserves a spot on this list because it was rated so high by the likes of IGN and GameSpot but the general public didn’t truly see eye to eye with all that high regard. Some even went on to say that they feel “baited” by these reviews into buying Deathloop, likely because the shooter is not what they had in mind. 

An oversimplified gameplay that has you killing your target in the same way over and over again in one loop didn’t really sit well with fans at all. I don’t think there’s a game out that features this much of a contrast between its critical and user reception. I mean, Reddit is full of posts like these that label Deathloop as antithetical to its major selling point. 

3. Battlefield 2042

This entry is mostly taking into account the launch period of Battlefield 2042, where critics and popular gaming publications handed out 7s, 8s, and 9s to the DICE’s first-person shooter when the title didn’t even deserve a 5 coming to it from the side of the fans. For starters, the game’s User Score on Metacritic is 2.2, while the Metascore is considerably high at 68.

A vast portion of Battlefield 2042’s basic functionality was missing at launch, with no update from the side of the devs that small-scale features, such as a scoreboard for crying out loud, would be added soon enough. Then came the towering bugs, technical issues, and performance drops, all labeling the game a deep-dyed disaster and a surreal disappointment from fans across the board. 

4. Starfield 

While Starfield too hasn’t exactly been reviewed to be phenomenal, it’s clear that fans didn’t like it as much as the critics did, and this comes as a major let-down following big claims from Bethesda. Hell, even The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim has more concurrent players on Steam than this space-faring RPG. A few months into its launch, the realization came swift—Starfield has always been mid at best. 

5. Dark Souls 2

Now don’t get me wrong, Dark Souls 2 is fantastic in its own right and carries the mantle of FromSoftware’s brilliance up until the third title in the franchise, going on to inspire other works as well, but there are a lot of things that this Souls game fails to get right, and often ends up coming across as more of a prank than an actual video game. 

Considering a black sheep in the Dark Souls series, Dark Souls 2 has a nonsensical level design, artificial difficulty that takes away from the soul of the series, and lackluster, inadequate combat that always has the enemy having an upper hand over you, especially when it boils down to the title’s hitboxes.

6. The Last Of Us Part 2

Spoiler warning if you haven’t played the game yet. 

The Last of Us was a game-changer back in the day when it came out for the PlayStation 3, featuring a protagonist that everyone had fallen in love with at the end of the campaign. Now, if you wait 7 years for a sequel, you sure as hell hope to play as the same character after all that time, but how would you react if that character is killed off within the opening sequences of the game? 

That’s where the biggest contradiction came from because underneath this questionable plot lied yet another riveting action-packed PlayStation exclusive with groundbreaking combat, terrific visuals, and incredible world design that the critics couldn’t ignore. I still wish to this day that things could’ve gone differently, but alas.