Whats the most middle of the road game you've ever played?

[pokoko]

JRPGfan said:

pokoko said:

I assumed this was going to be about Avowed.

... its... just...okay.


Every journalist/site reviewer giving it a 8/10 score.
When its more like a 6 out of 10 (going by players opinions).

its crazy the amount of people that play it and go "its okay".
Then you read the review they gave, and it sounds worse than that.
like you can tell they are let down, but choose to review it as okay.

Reviewers generally overinflate the importance of two things in their review scores--polish and the state of not being offensive.

The praise of polish especially bothers me because one of the easiest way to make a game more polished is to simply remove complex elements.  Avowed's dead cities, for instance, look great in screenshots or if someone is rushing through a game for an article but at the expense of being boring and immersion-breaking. 

Not being offensive is essentially along the same lines.  Publishers would much rather be "okay" and get an 8 from IGN than to have features that might get criticized.  I think about Bethesda dropping dismemberment and the ability to loot clothing from a corpse in Starfield or BioWare lobotomizing the tactical combat of Dragon Age.

Games are steadily dropping components, where 10 or 15 years ago they were far more ambitious and willing to release something that was flawed.