There's a prevailing attitude among many gamers that video game critics are simply too generous. Contributing towards a culture where many games have their worth blown wildly out of proportion, resulting in them becoming "overrated". In the gaming world, a 7/10 is rather peculiarly seen as an "average" score - compared to a 5/10 in film criticism - and so a 70 on MetaCritic is pretty much the minimum score that most developers would want to rack up. Even that's pretty disappointing to most publishers, though, and with incentive bonuses being paid to developers whose titles achieve certain scores, it's safe to say that there's a lot invested in the word of these critics (not to imply any untoward conduct on their part). Now, 2015 saw plenty of games release with suitable scores: Star Wars Battlefront was an enjoyable if piecemeal shooter and hence scored in the early-to-mid 70s, Splatoon was a fun new IP and racked up 81, and Undertale, one of the most imaginative games of the last few years, rightly scored an impressive 92. These 14 games, however, had their true value misrepresented by overzealous critics, who for one reason or another, decided to take it easy on them despite the presence of huge flaws. Here are the 14 most overrated video games of 2015...
14. Halo 5: Guardians
MetaCritic Score: 84 What It Deserved: 69 Everyone wanted the first Halo game on the Xbox One to be a home run, but in honesty it ended up feeling like the weakest, laziest and least "necessary" of the Halo games to date. To start, the campaign is for the most part a tedious affair, with the much-hyped Locke vs. Chief showdown ultimately amounting to very little, while you're forced to fight the same boss enemy countless times, it clocks in at just five-ish hours in length, and you probably won't remember much about it a few weeks after playing. Yes, the foundational gameplay is as excellent as ever, but it's wrapped around repetitive objectives (so...many...elevators) and a dull plot. The multiplayer fares much better, thankfully: though many objected to the eye-gougingly ugly use of primary colours in too many of the maps, this is really where the game got to shine, and accounts for the vast majority of the effusively positive reviews. The requisition points system, however, is a wildly unnecessary way of forcing microtransactions into the game, and most depressingly of all, they've apparently been a huge hit for Microsoft. Halo 5 is a sequel that falls far short of all that hype, and though it's still fun to play, the addictive quality just wasn't there, due to some of the series' most underwhelming maps and the general player feeling that this isn't a package worth the full retail price.