Actually some reviews mentioned the game might get a cult following and I believe that. But yes, a Miiverse community consists of players that chose the game because they assume it might match their tastes, while reviewers get to play everything, if they like the genre/the style or not. This explains the discrepancy.

Reviewing a game is difficult. For everybody that craps on reviewers, recognize there is a huge difference between reviewing something and simply stating an opinion. People like to say no reviewer is reliable, but have never tried to write a review themselves to see how people receive it. "BUT REVIEWERS ARE BIASED!" Of course! They're reviewing something. You're specifically looking at how their own views and opinions mingle with the game handed to them. It wouldn't be a review if it lacked bias.

"If they didn't like the game though, why did they take it to begin with?"
Either because they thought they would like the game, or they were literally the only person available to handle it at the time it needed to be done. I'd say those are the two biggest factors. I've reviewed a couple of games now I really did not like. Not one bit. But I had the misfortune of being the only one available to take care of the game, so it fell on me. Reviewing is ultimately a responsibility and an obligation. If fun is had, that is a fantastic bonus, but it isn't a necessity or anything that even closely resembles a guarantee while playing a game for review.

In the end, you can crap on reviewers all you like, but all they're doing is what many people have asked them to do. They're providing an opinion and some facts on a game relevant to the interests of some number of people who wanted to build their opinion secondhand. And that's okay. A lot of opinions are built that way, and they're still valid, even if borrowed. That's the beauty of opinions. They aren't right or wrong. In the case of reviews, they are more like guidelines that you may or may not adhere to. In the case of meta scores, once again, a guideline. A slightly more conclusive one if the game rates incredibly highly or fairly poorly, but there will always be those that disagree because reviewing isn't some definitive thing.

Critics destroy industry? Lol. Liking a specific gaming company is one thing and blindly saying a bad game as good is totally different.

Who cares? The question is if you going to let yourself be influenced by either group without even trying to enjoy the game. The nintendo fans are having fun. I guess they are not having a bad deal.

And to be fair, the nintendo fans are more likely to be truthful than the commercial reviewers, because they arent paid to do this and because they represent the consumer wich paid full price for the game and is trying to enjoy it. That, in theory is your pov aswell, not that of a critic. Wich is why they don't match many times.

Its true though, people on miiverse tend to enjoy everything because they couldnt care less about review scores. They just care about having fun with the sweet game they just bought. The internet robs you of your neutral ground. Its quite sad.

The fact that you and others seem to assume every reviewer is paid for their time is absolutely hilarious. I'm writing for multiple sites now that get review codes for major games from big publishers and developers, and there is nary a penny to be seen. Getting codes from big publishers and developers doesn't mean your site is big time and is staffed by paid writers. It just means you have a PR person or three that are good at talking with the PR people from various companies and convincing them that x site is big enough to warrant receiving review codes. People seem to think being accepted on Metacritic means the review team is big time too. No, it just means they're turning out a decent number of reviews on relevant games with a consistently appropriate quality, and after contacting Metacritic, they were deemed a good fit to be added to the pool of critics.

In fact, fans of any kind are the worst measure for trying to ascertain the true worth of a game because they have no ability to look at the material objectively, primarily because they don't have to. People complain about reviews being biased, and then say "well x people liked it so reviewers must be wrong". wut? Is that person's bias somehow more valid than the reviewer's bias? Or is it just in line with your personal biases so you see it as more valid?

Isn't critical thinking fun?

Edit: Honestly, the biggest problem here is that people are trying to pick one group to have a definitive opinion. As if enjoyment isn't subjective enough that it's impossible to form an opinion that is accurate for every person. Neither reviewers or fans are right or wrong. Like I said, ultimately, reviews are guidelines, and fan opinions should be treated the same. Neither means x product is definitively good or bad.

We need a Totalbiscuit "wtf is..." for Nintendo games. Well, for all games, really.
Fuck reviews...

That seems like a good enough reason to love the game!

If I ever turn to Metacritic for solid advice on whether something is good you have permission to shoot me.

90s games for the win

I'm having a lot of fun with this game. It's far from being a masterpice. But is not shit either.

Bad things:

- Technically is a mess. Framerate drops sharply whenever lots of explosions are shown on screen, loading times take too long in the multiplayer mode, some textures take some time to charge... Fortunatley, there are no bugs or glitches, at least in my playtime.

- Graphics are irregular. The game as a whole looks correct in general with good character model for the main characters of the story. But some textures look like crap, random character faces are lame and the effects of explosions could have come from a 6th generation system.

- The story, while interesting at some points of the campaing, is just the same shit we have seen in tons of films, books and games over and over.

- Enemy AI sometimes is nowhere to be found.

Good Things:

+ It's fun to play. Adding melee/hack n slash elements to the core FPS experience is a total success. Thanks to that...

+ ...the gameplay becomes more varied than 95% of any FPS out there. You don't just shoot, cover and throw grenades: you can slice your enemies with katanas and knifes or smash them with hammers and iron bars in a third person perspective. Your enemies will do that as well, and you can block their attacks or dodge them.

+ There are a very generous amount of different kind of enemies. Each one requires a different strategy: shoot from distance, defeat them in close combat, combine both ways...

+ Boss battles are epic and quite challenging...

+ ...as is the game. Despite some moments of dumb enemy AI, you can't just run and kill everything you see. You need to study the area, find the enemies positions and act acording to it.

+ Multiplayer is just awesome, deep and has an over the top amount of content on it.

+ Music is just great. This is the aspect that surprised me the most about the game. The soundtrack is just too good for this game.