It seems that Fallout is receiving a lot of flack from user reviews in metacritic. While it is true that user reviews should not trusted, it is still interesting to observe them. When we talk about the big 3, the user reviews can be tainted by the console war, but what pushes gamers against a third party?

I believe that the answer would be both the hype culture and fandom. You either get pissed because you were lead to expect more/different things by the company or because the you created a false expectation by yourself as a hardcore fan, which turns bad when the game tries something new or forget its roots.

This seem to be the case. Most of user reviews are complaining about changes in fallout formula (truth be told there was not any effort from Bethesda to clarivy those core changes before launch, so a argument can be made for those fans expectations).

This is the current Situation:
PC - Score: 47 - 176 positive reviews x 351 negative reviews
Xbox One - Score: 53 - 50 positive reviews x 23 negative reviews
PS4 - Score: 55 - 100 positive reviews x 79 negative


Unfortunately, i think i do agree with some points. (But not the scores, obviously)

Examples:

Inductionist:

– Ridiculously dumbed down character development system: Most attributes have NO consequence, you can have 1 in intelligence and still hack computers or have most dialogue options, Perks have been messed up
– Skills are GONE (yes, you read right: GONE)
– You can use all weapons regardless of type right from when you find them (no more specialisation requirements)
– No hardcore mode (basically all improvements Obsidian made on Fallout 3 in New Vegas are gone)
– OK graphics, but terrible face animations
– Pointless build and craft system
– OK story (0/10)

Nikkolette:

Dumbed down piece of disappointmet. Awful witing, absolutely perimitive dialogue system. dumbed down leveling, axed skills, dumbed down perks, dumbed down EVERYTHING. Bethesda caters to the lowest common denominator among the gamers – action Call of Duty crowd, to whom reading more than a single paragraph is an affront. Complex sentences makes their head hurt, so Fallout 4 is ideal for using simple phrases. (0/10)

kiste333:

This isn’t an RPG anymore, it’s a straight up shooter now. Except for the settlement building stuff, every single quest so far involved going somewhere and murdering everthing. There are no alternative paths, there is no use of skills or speech to do thing differently. You go to the location, you kill everything that moves, grab the thing you need (if even) and that’s it.

Everything is boring. The quests are boring, the NPCs are boring, the story is boring, the dialogues are boring, the locations are boring and often annoying (having to “clear” every raider in a maze like factory is a pain). And you know what else is boring: Raffling through thousands of containers to looting everything not nailed to the ground because you need every piece of junk for crafting materials. If feels so incredibly tedious.

I’m absolutely speechless how bad this is. And no, Mods won’t be able to fix the bland story, the bad dialogue or the forgettable characters. Good grief, I had actually hoped that Bethesda might include some of the stuff that worked really well in Obisidan’s New Vegas – but no, they off in the opposite direction.

Not, this is not a 0 points game, but I’m giving this score because I find it shameful that the professional game Reviews are giving this abomination 90% scores (0/10)

Reviewes are a joke these days.

examples: the ones you posted. They should be embarassed

Does anybody even care about user reviews from Meta? Way too many troll reviews on that site to even take it seriously.

I think you summed it up pretty nicely with your second sentence. User reviews can't be trusted.

Take for instance this one:

"Fallout 4 is great game.. character model look terrible. dialogue is awesome.. gameplay/combat is great. voice acting is top notch.. there are some bugs/glitches and framerate sometimes dropped"

Try and guess the score. 8/10? 7/10? Heck, maybe 5/10? Nope, 0/10.

0/10 is a ridiculous score for this game or, for any game, even if it's Sonic Boom. I don't like Bethesda games, I admit it, but I think they deserve credit. I've played Oblivion and Fallout 3, and I don't like them, but they're good games. That's easy to see. And that's why I don't trust user scores. They are way over the top.

Normally you'd get troll reviews from fanboys of an opposing persuasion -- but the user scores often still aggregate relatively close to the metascore for many games.

I hope this gives reviews the shock they deserve. 9/10 or higher games have to be considered near-essential. Fallout 4 simply doesn't look to have advanced the series to really be worthy of that esteem. There's no shame giving this game a 8, 7, or 6 out of 10 like this game probably actually deserved.

User reviews are no less trustworthy than "professional" ones.

While the obvious problems of trolling and faboyism do exist, users are slightly more likely to have played the game for more than 2 hours before making up their mind about it (only slightly, mind you). Users are also much less afraid of giving a low score to a hugely hyped game from an established franchise. If your livlihood depends on your reputation as a reviewer, it's going to be pretty to give a low score to a game that everyone is hyped about, even if you think it's terrible; it's much safer to give the score that you think other people will expect you to give.

Anonymity gives you a lot more opportunities to be a dick, but it also gives you a lot more opportunities to be honest. Anyone with more than half a brain will look at both user and critic reviews before making up their mind over whether to spend their bandwidth parents' hard-earned money on a game.

This is leaving aside the obvious and well-known issues of corruption and conflicts of interest in video game reviewing, which I'm sure I'd get banned for talking candidly about.

I'm fairly early in the game, but I have to agree with those user reviews - this is neither RPG nor Fallout anymore (even bigger slap in the face is if you're fan of FO 1/2).

Is it a bad game per se? Well, can't say right now, but so far it's not really good.
Is it bad Fallout? Yes, it's pretty shameful what Bethesda did with FO4 after Obsidian tried to fix their FO3 mess and made NV more like originals.

I'm not assuming these users haven't played the game, but what could've stopped them to read in-depth articles and reviews and post an over-the-top review without actually not having played the game?

And even if they played the game, all of this reeks of hyperbole and hate, and a lack of capacity of being reasonable with the game's strengths and talking about them. More reasons to ignore user reviews.

Is this true?
– Ridiculously dumbed down character development system: Most attributes have NO consequence, you can have 1 in intelligence and still hack computers or have most dialogue options, Perks have been messed up