Backhanded Box Quotes: ‘Tolerable With Friends … But So Is Dying Of Bowel Cancer’

Welcome back to “Backhanded Box Quotes” a collection of measured, thoughtful criticism from the user reviews of Metacritic, Amazon and elsewhere.

Two games this week released to nearly universal acclaim, unless you’re The Wall Street Journal. Borderlands 2 and Torchlight II. But in the great shining ideas marketplace and opinion democracy known as consumer reviews, both games have to answer to a harsher authority.

Borderlands 2

Released: September 18

Critic: neilsmif1980 (Metacritic)
• “I was stuck I couldn’t move forward or back just after I got past a really hard part at the beginning of the game. It froze on me! So I restarted it and I had to start nearly back to the beginning?”
• “The game itself is just like Borderlands EXCEPT you have a mini map.”
Score: 0.

Critic:Get bodied (Amazon)
• “It becomes tolerable if you do it with some friends around, but so is dying of bowel cancer.”
• “It’s been a while since I’ve seen in-game menus as bad as these. It’s like PowerPoint threw up on a Cluedo board and died.”
Score: 1 Star.

Critic: Sock_Factory (Metacritic)
•“Borderlands 2 is a game where you shoot guns at stuff till it dies.”
Score: 0.

Torchlight II

Released: September 20

Critic: disinterested (Metacritic)
• “TLDR: Diablo3″
Score: 1.

Critic: Token 40k (Metacritic)
• “crappy light gamma.”
Score: 0.