A barrage of fake user reviews has hit the Metacritic page for Assassin’s Creed Origins, all of them positive, and all of them gibberish.
“Ways better than assassins creed unity and assassins creed syndicate,” reads a review that appears roughly a dozen times, each from a different username. “it is more mature and bayek is interseting character, and de historical characters are handeld well.”
It’s not clear just how many of Assassin’s Creed Origins’ Metacritic reviews are fake, but the game currently has an 8.0 user rating from over 600 reviews. Just one scan through the page is enough to notice that something is fishy, even by Metacritic user review standards.
There are a number of blurbs repeated among different reviews, and quite a bit of nonsensical English.
In an e-mail to Kotaku, Metacritic boss Marc Doyle said that this sort of thing has happened before. “It’s not a frequent occurrence – maybe 2 – 3 games a year,” Doyle said. “And yes, we’ve been aware of this case, and we’ve been moderating those reviews (and suspending those accounts – most off of which had one single review in their history). The people doing it appear to be changing it up with the chunk of text they keep replicating, but our moderators are working overtime to combat it.”
Metacritic’s user reviews are not as pivotal to the video game industry as the site’s Metascores, determined by reviews from professional and hobbyst game outlets, which are used across developers and publishers to gauge the quality of video games, hand out bonuses, and help companies decide what games to pursue next. But “user score” and reviews are still prominent on every video game’s Metacritic page.
Some other reviews that repeat multiple times across Assassin’s Creed Origins’ Metacritic page include:
OMG, this game is so amazing and has most beautiful graphic.. gameplay/combat is great.. Bayek is awesome character.. i didn’t notice anything weird yet.. story is very interesting.. Keep up Great job Ashraf Ismail !!!!!! i am enjoying every minutes of it
And:
great game and amazing ac game, great comeback for assassins creed series, best ac game since assassins creed black flag in 2013. modern day is great too
And:
Was worth waiting for this game. I’ve played all Assassin’s Creed games since the first one. And for me Origins took the crown of Assassin’s Creed 2, as the best AC game. Not a perfect game but Ubi is in the correct way. It has a nice combat system, great graphics, good story and great mechanics/rpg elements.
Some of them are sillier than others:
As always, remember that everything on the internet is fake nonsense.
[referenced url=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/2017/10/assassins-creed-origins-the-kotaku-review/” thumb=”https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/t_ku-large/xmd2rmexhd5lsmjboe9v.png” title=”Assassin’s Creed Origins: The Kotaku Review” excerpt=”For all its extraordinary visual splendor, Assassin’s Creed Origins is ultimately an ordinary video game. That’s not such a bad thing, particularly if you like looking at pretty vistas and watching numbers go up.”]
Comments
16 responses to “Assassin’s Creed Origins Metacritic Flooded With Fake Positive User Reviews”
None of the ones quoted in this article are gibberish, they’re just not the best English.
You’re like clockwork.
PC Police Engage!!
What does PC have to do with anything? You feeling alright, buddy?
Odd. I’m loving it, the feedback I’ve heard from others has been almost universally positive, welp, ubi gonna ubi?
Maybe it’s not Ubisoft doing it? Just someone with a botnet trying to stir up controversy, hence why the fake reviews are mostly copy-pasted and pretty obviously fake. I would think Ubisoft would be able to craft better fake reviews than this.
Indeed, I would think it would be a once or twice removed situation where a PR firm contracted by ubi as part as a online presence strategy that has gone awry.
What are the best fake reviews in the business these days? Last I looked Bioware were putting in work for Dragon Age 2 but that was a long time ago 😉
unless Ubi contracted it out cheap to some chinese group that doesn’t have a firm enough grasp of English to make it believable.
Oh well. No different than all the reviews giving 0s because “I don’t think the game is that bad, but it doesn’t deserve to be as highly rated as it is, so I’m just balancing out the scores”.
The need to switch to a thumbs up / down system like youtube did. Too many “this is really an 7 but I’m rating it 10 to balance out the 0’s” review as well.
Besides the copy/paste posts, those that you quoted just seem to be bad English, which you see everywhere whilst browsing the web.
I have definitely been enjoying the game. The openness of the world is fantastic, though there is the occasional moment where I feel I’m being funnelled by surrounding higher level zones.
The thing about assassins creed and watchdogs and far cry etc, is that they are competently made games with big production values, but that is all.
They feel like they are created by a room full of corporate executives. They are bland to the extreme, cynically safe and devoid of any actual ideas which may provide a thrill to anyone who is discerning about their creative media.
They get decent reviews because they are not broken piles of dung (mostly) – but that really isn’t good enough – that’s ADEQUATE.
Why settle?
Exactly. The issue is if they were given a 6/10 the internet would be up in arms because it’s in dire need of review score reeducation. The scale doesn’t start at 7, it starts at 1.
A 6/10 game shouldn’t be seen as a bad thing, it’s above average. But these days 8 – 8.5 is seen as the bare minimum a game can receive and still be considered “good”.
Just checked up Metacritic, for games anything below 75 is given yellow before hitting red at 49, both on the same negative colour spectrum. It says a lot, in my opinion.
Average is just a single point away from being a red score, death’s door if yellow isn’t already a noose hanging from the hands of publishers.
So I haven’t played AC since Black Flag or Far Cry since 3, but back (not that far actually) then, this wasn’t the case at all. Hell ACII still wasn’t that old and it was one of the most original and rich games of its time with the greatest OST to grace our undeserving ears. Could Ubisoft really have screwed up that much in just a few short years, and maybe two titles to each property, to warrant your ‘observations’?
I’ll be seeing myself next year when I have time, but it’s hard to believe.
It’s more that the games have gotten repetitive. I don’t agree with Watch Dogs, the second title in that series was a vast improvement over the first and great fun to play. Far Cry and Assassin’s Creed both got into a rut of repetition though, which turned me off the latter and occasionally regret buying into the former.
That said, AC Origins is different. It feels different, in my opinion a considerable improvement over the formula. It’s a good game and I’m happy with my purchase, which is more than I can say about Far Cry Primal.
I swear I know who this guy is I just can’t remember the name
This guy started spamming the Ubisoft forums after Unity came out in the same broken English, asking Ubisoft to remake Unity but actually make it good, but they blocked him, but he kept making new accounts and posting the exact same thing over and over again, he’s on Twitter too
I bet he’s the same guy
I have red some of these previews.
I disagree with all the positive feedbacks.
Gui lacks alot.
GP to.
History is very repetitive same goes for the side and main quests.
I am so disappointed to have wasted so much money on a game which haven’t any thing new.
The eagle = FC Primal.
Voice in game is so annoyingly same sentences everywhere you go.
The scenes with bayek and Ayla. Come on…
Game are so humorless/limitless.
Swim and boats….feels like for ever…
Some of the side quest dosnt match the real level represented.
Freezers in mission’s.
Pixel scale drop in some of the quest are so annoying…
Those who recommend such garbage. Get paid or get the game for free…
Never ever have I been so disappointed to the AC.
The way you have to switch between the pouch…
Or when you go hunting…
If you have the poison sword and upgrade this.
Or even got the poison blade u can beat this game easy peasy….
I don’t recommend others to get such a lack of improvement in the AC genre…
And when that said …
I lost interest in 3 hours…Tops…
Save your money for some of the old but gold if you haven’t bought them yet… or have them in your collections.
The puzzles are so easy peasy…
And u can’t even die if you drop’n hop from a very high building just before you hit ground. Hit x to make a roll…
The fighting is the arenas are so humorless and once you have discovered the right technic…
1st place in them all….
Yes I playd on easy…
Because I had an idea this game would demand me to…
Of all the incidents I had in some of the story’s…
GUI freeezes…
Start over when nearly finish…
The horse militaries is so mechanical and predictabel.
Ohhh man I could go on and on…
The character Ayla…. and stories are so boring….
I frankly felt like the slavery wasn’t giving up yet….
Do this…save this and that…
Save time if you own the game for take on the mission for later when you have more skills to be able to get them what they want….
No there aren’t any level skills tree in the side quest….
Ups….
Upgrade time…
Well to damn expensive to u0grade weapons….takes for ever….
Save time do a scan for u and your bird…
Lots of experience point’s….
I sincerely don’t hope the gold version is like the normal version….
Even though u get this and that….
See this how a real reviews should be like….
Tell us the the truth…