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Breath of The Wild has enraptured fans and critics alike in the week since its launch. Touted as one of the greatest open world games in a decade, the most awesome Zelda since Ocarina of Time, and the most excellent video game to come out in recent memory.

Flawless and perfection are the adjectives that echo in everyone's words that talk about this newest iteration of Zelda. But not everyone has been echoing the same sentiment, and one man, in particular, is paying pretty dearly for his opinion.

Jim Sterling, known for his no-nonsense and polarizing views on the gaming industry, has taken fire for seemingly being responsible for Breath of The Wilds drop from 98 to 97 on Metacritic after publishing his review giving the game a 7/10. (Boy that sure looks familiar.)

“At its absolute best, Breath of the Wild offers some of the most absorbing experiences a Zelda game ever has.

“Unfortunately, it makes you work harder for it than you should, buried as it is under a pile of small but constant irritations that collaborate to form a thick crust of frustration around a delectable center.

“Breath of the Wild is a delightful adventure, one that tries its utmost to be as big a pain in the arse as possible.”

In the hours since publishing his review, Sterlings website has gone down and is currently inaccessible at the time of this writing. He has also received numerous public death threats and even has shared straw polls demanding he be hanged for his opinion.

Truly, I wish I could say I understood what all the critics were raving about in their onslaught of 10/10 reviews, but I don’t. I see too many things getting in the way of the brilliance, too much repetitive busywork and full-on dick moves for me to say this is even close to my favorite Zelda game, much less in the top five.

Close, but no Triforce.

Silencing criticism with DDoS's and hate speech is an unfortunate and unnecessary consequence of modern internet media. No one should be silenced for their opinion as everyone has a right to their views.

What does our community make of this recent news? How do you all feel about what happened to Sterling?

 

[Psionic Roshambo]

Zelda review score
Salty tears melting snow flakes
Butthurt fanboys derp

I made this Haiku just for fun, just remember if you disagree with a review it's not the end of the world. I would rather some one give a game a low score and be pleasantly surprised, than to buy a game expecting 10 out 10 no need to buy any other games ever again, only to find out it's meh at best.

 

[Bladexdsl]

serves him right I fucking hate youtuberz leeching off the public by doing fuck all and getting rich from it!

 

[SaffronXL]

I find myself agreeing with every single point he makes, especially about framerate issues. Games have looked good enough for a while, why hinder emersion and playability for slightly better graphics.

BotW would be a better game if the graphics had been worse.

 

[spiderman1216]

WTF is wrong with our community, first harassing a woman over facial animations, now DDOSing reviewers over a video game.

 

[FAST6191]

What was the facial animations thing? I missed that entirely.

Anyway the answer would be if you are going to have no real barrier to entry and be inclusive of everybody then you are going to have a few cunts in the mix as well.

 

[Hi-Dro]

people who think Devs do not pay media outlets to "review" their games, are seriously deluded.
Have you ever watched the news this is the corporate world and has been happening since even before Rise of the Robots and Driver 3 , there is evidence and proof that it happens.
And its exactly this kind of thing that started the whole disgusting 'gamer gate community losers' spreading their sexist hate from behind the comforts of their keyboard.
A community of delusional adults acting like children, for the sake of animation is pathetic.

 

[invaderyoyo]

Well, looks like NicheGamer just gave BOTW a 7. Looking through the comments, I can see they're already getting crap.

Hope they don't ddos'd, too. I think they made some good points, but were a bit harsh towards the end.

 

[coolpokemon]

you people know jim sterling likes to bait people right also in my opinion he shouldnt be a critic in metacritic in my opinion also i seen his videos and hes kind of biased to nintendo just stating my own opinion of him also i think he didnt get ddos he passably did this to himself on purpose for attention

 

[Fronic]

Problem is, gamer "reviews" are opinions rather than criticisms. If all of you gamers defend people like Jim Sterling you are making gaming a terrible form of media because it can't be good by itself.

 

[ihaveahax]

Problem is, gamer "reviews" are opinions rather than criticisms. If all of you gamers defend people like Jim Sterling you are making gaming a terrible form of media because it can't be good by itself.

I don't get what you're saying here. reviews always have opinions in them, not exclusive to Jim.

 

[FAST6191]

I have serious problems with a lot of what were once dubbed "forum reviews", though I guess a new term has been invented. Rarely is it that I have problems with the intent (people genuinely seem to want to share their assessment of a work or item), though how neutral or not their position might be is a different matter and is actually part of my misgivings with scores -- it is hard to dishonestly write something, far easier to give a fluff score. Likewise there might be a slight correlation between "professional" (whatever that can be judged to be) and certain qualities and attributes that are useful but it is a fairly weak one, so much so that with the usual "if you saw a professional review in the street" test I could not justifiably assume it is going to be useful.

Opinions vs objective whatever is not necessarily a red herring but it does seem to be a distraction from whether a review is useful or not. There are some that might seek a purely objective assessment of things (are there graphics glitches, what sort, is the game able to be completed, for a reasonable reading of the story are there plot holes or notably unexplained events...), and such things have some merit for some things if they in turn avoid spoiling a story or something and I want such a mechanical assessment. If you are going to tell me the graphics are good we are in opinion country -- graphics design rules will probably generate something that works if you follow them, however stick some yellow text on a white background and where the player stops to decipher it they get snuck up on by a monster and you have good game design, or at least an attempt at it.

Beyond that I may want opinions. If nothing else it may give me a clue as to the likes of the reviewer and thus whether they align well with mine.

Short version. Try not to be an elitist prick, something good can come from anywhere.

Edit. Not necessarily a mindset I share but worth considering as part of all this