There are very few game's journalists that I will even consider looking at. There are reasons beyond "but they're game jounalists" too. When they botch a puzzle, and can't open a door, the game is bugged beyond redemption, a very rough paraphrasing of Jim Stirling with Senua. I don't remember who the journalist was that was failing at jumps in the turtorial of cuphead? Why should I trust that "this time it's different, and it's really the game's fault"?
Metacritic can, and should be, ignored out of hand, since one isn't required to provide any proof that one's actually played the game in question*. Steam is a whole other world of mess when it comes to reviews. Vanilla Skyrim went from one of the best reviewed games on Steam, to one of the worst, over the Creation Club. The problem is, of course, that one can't access the Creation Club in the vanilla version of Skyrim, so it had absolutely no affect on that version of the game. Valve not only allows this to go on unchecked, but does seem to passively encourage it. Even on the SE, where you can access it, it's not required to play, so nothing about the base SE changed, but those review bombs sure would tell a different tale, eh?
If this EA had only been available through Steam, I wouldn't be here. I don't like their blackmail business model, "Do what we approve of, or get review bombed". "But Rob, it's not Valve, but the players that do that, you can't hold them accountable for that", except that I in fact can. They allowed a false review on their site, in fact they allowed review bombs, not just one, that's on them. It's to the point where if a game is available both on XBox and PC, but only through Steam on PC, I'll play it on my XBox. HZD made the right choice, from my perspective, going through anyone but Steam. Even if Epic is coming off a bit shady these days, I don't have to deal with them for anything but one game, HZD, and since I like that game well enough, and won't be buying a PS, ever, stemming from Sony's shady practices dating all the way back to the 90s, it's a better choice than not playing it, and missing out. If it's only through Steam, I'll miss out.
*A lot of negative reviews of DA I can be attributed to "the protagonist isn't the Warden/OGB so the game is bad". Not that I'm just going with that, the same game had a lot of high review scores from people that couldn't have played the game as well. It's another Steam type issue, only Steam at least requires ownership, if it doesn't do anything about shady practices where reviews are concerned.
