10 Recent Video Games Critics Hated (But Players LOVED)
3. Balan Wonderworld
Square Enix strikes again, this time with last year's platformer Balan Wonderworld. Critics similarly got their fangs out for it, with the PC version scoring a depressing 38 on Metacritic, while the PS5 version - the platform most critics played it on - topped out at a slightly better 51.
Like Left Alive, it was pilloried by most mainstream outlets for basically being a generic, tedious platformer that was low on creativity and high on repetition. Oh, and it's like 10 hours long, so doesn't even have brevity on its side.
Despite this, the user score on Xbox Series X is an impressive 7.2 and an even better 8.1 on Xbox One, with many players citing its colourful visuals and nostalgic throwback appeal to classic platformers (such as game director Yuji Naka's own Sonic the Hedgehog).
Again, players may have benefitted from not having to race through such a needlessly long experience to meet a review embargo deadline.
Played in more bite-sized chunks, it's easy to see how players might view it a lot more favourably, and seemingly love it enough to overlook or even embrace the very things that drove critics mad.