"Perusing the user reviews for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, there is very little evidence to suggest Horizon‘s zealous devotees (I’m sure it has them) have been orchestrating anything of the sort.  Yes, a handful of user reviews that gave Zelda a 0 also gave Horizon a 10. Going over the accounts myself, I’ve been able to spot a grand total of two users that did it.

Both skilly225 and Skyerls-Pidar fit the profile of somebody who is theoretically spiting Breath of the Wild in some irrational attempt to elevate Zero Dawn. Even among those two, only one of them has a clear axe to grind against Nintendo games – Skylerlst is clearly creaming themselves over PlayStation titles and applying zeroes to Nintendo’s output. The other one has rated various Nintendo games highly and claims to predominantly be a PC user.

If we expand the search to 1/10 reviews, we can find some more evidence. Lampiaobr is blatantly on Metacritic for one specific purpose, and AmazedBunion gave Horizon an 8… while also giving Black Ops III a 9/10. They might just be doing their own bizarre thing.

As we go through the 2/10 scores and 3/10 scores, any Horizon in the history of the reviewers seems to evaporate entirely. Meanwhile, the vast majority of negative reviews appear to be genuinely critical of various aspects of the game or are random drive-by shitposts that have no ulterior motive other than to kick the wasp’s nest.

What happens, however, if we flip the script? How many reviewers who gave Breath of the Wild a perfect 10 went ahead and slapped a big ol’ zilch on a scathing writeup of Guerilla Games’ production?

Say hello to Jimmyrustle22, estenoriega, MORJ, Linknlogs227, ivanmd09, navaga, csgopro, and ivand88! That’s just a selection of users who simultaneously wrote reviews issuing a 0/10 for Horizon and a 10/10 for Zelda.

They’re not the only ones, either. Here’s a negative Zero Dawn review from skysayrain that cheerily admits to what they’re doing:

“The game score is way too high,” they said of Horizon. “Don’t have the game will buy it, probably will enjoy it. giving this game 0 out of 10 in the name of Zelda for all those PS fan boys. good day! =)”"

So, presented with evidence you attack the one presenting you the evidence? For shame!

Also, he didnt say it was the zelda fans that bombed Horizon's score. But that there were more that did it than the other way around.

See, thing about Jim is, he isn't attacking the game. He is attacking the fans (who attacked him first). And i applaud him for that. These reactions are shameful and we should be above them.

So, presented with evidence you attack the one presenting you the evidence? For shame!

Also, he didnt say it was the zelda fans that bombed Horizon's score. But that there were more that did it than the other way around.

See, thing about Jim is, he isn't attacking the game. He is attacking the fans (who attacked him first). And i applaud him for that. These reactions are shameful and we should be above them.

When presented with cherry-picked "evidence", certainly. Notice how he has to categorize the reviews by their score, as if a 0 is any worse than a 1 when neither reviewer played the game. Furthermore, he makes the assumption that none of the people who voted a zero for BoTW and did not vote anything for Horizon are Horizon (or Sony fans.) A positive review entails more work than a negative review, because you are actually reviewing the game and not pretending to. For most of the voters, the 0 for BOTW is their only review, likely newly created accounts for that sole purpose. You also can find plenty of people who gave 10's to Nioh, Bloodborne, Demon's Souls, etc are the ones doing the 0's in BoTW comments, and since you can't see all of their reviews on their page (only the most recently voted high one) , you don't know if they also voted 10 for Horizon or not. 

"There were more that did it than the other way around." How can he make that conclusion from his cherry-picked examples?  Here are a dozen links, including many Jim somehow skimmed over in his "investigation."  And there are also the points I brought up about not all reviews are shown on a profile, yet they still affect the score. There are >7000 BOTW user reviews, but only a hundred or so show up on the Metacritic page. 


http://www.metacritic.com/user/Caramelo

http://www.metacritic.com/user/skilly225

http://www.metacritic.com/user/Ytrerio

http://www.metacritic.com/user/Hunter2020

http://www.metacritic.com/user/Lampiaobr

http://www.metacritic.com/user/AmazedBunion

http://www.metacritic.com/user/GamingTV

http://www.metacritic.com/user/Kayno1 (Reviewed Mar 4th)

http://www.metacritic.com/user/Razv (Reviewed Mar 3rd)

http://www.metacritic.com/user/GK0

http://www.metacritic.com/user/Inanis

http://www.metacritic.com/user/Juhiz

Three of the links in Jim's article for Nintendo fans either have no reviews or there is no account, so he even inflated his "evidence" with false examples, but I am sure you didn't check that. 

http://www.metacritic.com/user/JimmyRustle22

http://www.metacritic.com/user/ivand88

http://www.metacritic.com/user/skysayrain

What is  "for shame" is that you didn't look into it yourself. 

Anything on Amiibo is pointless. You can find horses in game that are as good or better than Epons.

The tunics are just asthetic things. The actual game has it's own hero tunic, that does the same bonuses as the amiibo ones do, and I think might be stronger as well. So the amiibo ones are basically just a costume.

When presented with cherry-picked "evidence", certainly. Notice how he has to categorize the reviews by their score, as if a 0 is any worse than a 1 when neither reviewer played the game. Furthermore, he makes the assumption that none of the people who voted a zero for BoTW and did not vote anything for Horizon are Horizon (or Sony fans.) A positive review entails more work than a negative review, because you are actually reviewing the game and not pretending to. For most of the voters, the 0 for BOTW is their only review, likely newly created accounts for that sole purpose. You also can find plenty of people who gave 10's to Nioh, Bloodborne, Demon's Souls, etc are the ones doing the 0's in BoTW comments, and since you can't see all of their reviews/ratings on their page (only the most recently voted high one) , you don't know if they also voted 10 for Horizon or not. 

"There were more that did it than the other way around." How can he make that conclusion from his cherry-picked examples?  Here are a dozen links, including many Jim somehow skimmed over in his "investigation."  And there are also the points I brought up about not all reviews are shown on a profile, yet they still affect the score. There are >7000 BOTW user reviews, but only a hundred or so show up on the Metacritic page. 


http://www.metacritic.com/user/Caramelo

http://www.metacritic.com/user/skilly225

http://www.metacritic.com/user/Ytrerio

http://www.metacritic.com/user/Hunter2020

http://www.metacritic.com/user/Lampiaobr

http://www.metacritic.com/user/AmazedBunion

http://www.metacritic.com/user/GamingTV

http://www.metacritic.com/user/Kayno1 (Reviewed Mar 4th)

http://www.metacritic.com/user/Razv (Reviewed Mar 3rd)

http://www.metacritic.com/user/GK0

http://www.metacritic.com/user/Inanis

http://www.metacritic.com/user/Juhiz

Three of the links in Jim's article for Nintendo fans either have no reviews or there is no account, so he even inflated his "evidence" with false examples, but I am sure you didn't check that. 

http://www.metacritic.com/user/JimmyRustle22

http://www.metacritic.com/user/ivand88

http://www.metacritic.com/user/skysayrain

What is  "for shame" is that you didn't look into it yourself. 

From his website 

"The frenzy surrounding The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a whole new level of fan overreaction, and this is coming from someone who’s seen what happens when you say Uncharted isn’t perfect.

When they’re not busy launching DDoS attacks against outlets that didn’t like the game as much as they did, they’re being really very angry at Horizon: Zero Dawn, a game with very little connection to Zelda but has become a popular target of BotW‘s most delirious fanbabies.

Both games are huge open world experiences, and both are exclusive to particular consoles. This is of course a recipe for disaster where the two games were destined to be compared in the most vitriolic ways imaginable. Plenty of Nintendo’s zealots were furious when they learned of my own highly favorable review, and if you believe them, Zero Dawn‘s fanbase has had an axe to grind against Breath of the Wild for a long time.

The reality, however, is not quite as these wearers of green, pointy, tinfoil-lined hats would lead you to believe."

Is he fucking serious? It were BOTW fans who bombed Horizon's user score? And not the opposite scenario? Guess which user score applies to which game. 

 Now his intentions behind his shitty review are quite clear. He is bitter that BotW scored better than Horizon: Zero Dawn, a game he really likes.