Jim Sterling’s site under attack after Zelda: BotW review

[Jaicee]

Anyone who watches online game review videos for long will notice a pattern: the higher the score the reviewer gives just about any game, the higher their video's up-vote meter will be...and vice versa. Gamers like to see positive reviews of the games they already planned on buying, and perhaps even pre-bought, long in advance of possessing any non-propaganda analysis thereof. (Always a brilliant move.) Professional reviewers therefore know which games they have to score higher than others by which are new installments of long-running franchises with established, dedicated fan bases. To this end, almost all reviewers knew that frustrated Nintendo fans needed a win and gave The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild a perfect 10, often going so far as to describe it as "the best game Nintendo has ever made", etc. One reviewer breaks the mold, suggesting that the game is good, but imperfect, and all hell breaks loose with his site being hijacked, straw polls with titles like "Should the Fat, SJW, Deceitful, Attention-Seeking, Japanophobic, Cuckolded, Thrush-infected CUNT that is Jim Sterling be Lynched by a Mob of Rightful Believers in Zelda?" being created, nonsensical "clickbait" accusations being floated (they make no sense, as Jim's site isn't monetized in any way), etc. That's ridiculous.

I've not yet finished the game myself, but up to where I am now in it, my impression is that it is indeed imperfect. I'd personally score it an 8 out of 10, as I feel the shift into the survival genre makes Breath of the Wild an above-average adventure game, but that it's nonetheless bogged down by tired, sexist tropes (Nintendo's continued dependence on damsel in distress scenarios feels more than a little dated at this point), a weak, self-serving pro-tech theme, and indeed, as Jim has suggested, far too many arbitrary irritations that serve to remind you that you're definitely playing a game, preventing the full immersion into the experience that the new survival elements otherwise help to foster. Whatever you think of the game though, this kind of over-the-top fan behavior (the cyber mobbing stuff) needs to stop because it disincentivizes game critics from even trying to give you their honest opinions.