The review embargo on Forspoken, one of the week’s two major AAA releases, lifted at 1 AM this morning. The game created ripples on social media late last week when it became clear that publisher Square Enix was being selective about which outlets received early code. In general, when publishers do this, it is in an attempt to ensure that the coverage on reviews day is as positive as possible.
And that approach has sort of worked out for them. On Metacritic, the PS5 version of Forspoken currently holds a critic score of 68, drawn from 62 reviews. 22 of those reviews are positive, 37 are mixed, and just three are outright negative. It’s worth noting that, at the time of writing, the PC version doesn’t have a single review score. Make of that what you will.
The vibe, overall, is that Forspoken is Extremely Fine. Aggressively Fine, you might say.
From what we can see, just two Australian outlets received early Forspoken review code — Press Start and AusGamers. Press Start awarded the game a very diplomatic 7.5 out of 10, putting it at the lower end of the Positive category. Critic James Berich bemoaned the dialogue and the game’s bland open world but praised its traversal and story.
AusGamers was responsible for one of the three negative reviews, awarding it a 4 out of 10, with editor Steve Farrelly patiently explaining why every part of Forspoken annoyed the living shit out of him.
The overseas outlets were similarly mixed, with the bell curve quickly dropping from the handful of glowing reviews into ‘It’s Extremely Fine’ territory almost immediately. See below for the dot points:
Easy Allies: 8/10
Game Informer: 7.5/10
TheGamer: 3.5/5
VG247: 3/5
Gamespot: 5/10
Dexerto: 2/5
Kotaku Australia received its Forspoken review code yesterday, and it is currently with our reviewer Alice Clarke. We hope to bring you that review next week, and we appreciate your patience while we get that filed. Since Forspoken is a big game, and I don’t want Alice battling to rush a review out, we’ll take our time and do it right. We’ll also tee up a Community Review piece for it next week so you can play it and chime in with your own thoughts.
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