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Breath of The Wild has enraptured fans and critics alike in the week since its launch. Touted as one of the greatest open world games in a decade, the most awesome Zelda since Ocarina of Time, and the most excellent video game to come out in recent memory.

Flawless and perfection are the adjectives that echo in everyone's words that talk about this newest iteration of Zelda. But not everyone has been echoing the same sentiment, and one man, in particular, is paying pretty dearly for his opinion.

Jim Sterling, known for his no-nonsense and polarizing views on the gaming industry, has taken fire for seemingly being responsible for Breath of The Wilds drop from 98 to 97 on Metacritic after publishing his review giving the game a 7/10. (Boy that sure looks familiar.)

“At its absolute best, Breath of the Wild offers some of the most absorbing experiences a Zelda game ever has.

“Unfortunately, it makes you work harder for it than you should, buried as it is under a pile of small but constant irritations that collaborate to form a thick crust of frustration around a delectable center.

“Breath of the Wild is a delightful adventure, one that tries its utmost to be as big a pain in the arse as possible.”

In the hours since publishing his review, Sterlings website has gone down and is currently inaccessible at the time of this writing. He has also received numerous public death threats and even has shared straw polls demanding he be hanged for his opinion.

Truly, I wish I could say I understood what all the critics were raving about in their onslaught of 10/10 reviews, but I don’t. I see too many things getting in the way of the brilliance, too much repetitive busywork and full-on dick moves for me to say this is even close to my favorite Zelda game, much less in the top five.

Close, but no Triforce.

Silencing criticism with DDoS's and hate speech is an unfortunate and unnecessary consequence of modern internet media. No one should be silenced for their opinion as everyone has a right to their views.

What does our community make of this recent news? How do you all feel about what happened to Sterling?

 

[HaloEliteLegend]

I read his review and disagreed with much of it, but he is entitled to his own opinion and should not be attacked for it. Respectful disagreement, debate, and civil dissent is alright but DDoSing and other attacks don't do anything. You're not going to magically erase Jim fucking Sterling's review or silence him or get his score kicked off of Metacritic. Even Jim Sterling agrees that Breath of the Wild is a mostly fantastic game. Breath of the Wild IS a fantastic game! Scores are subjective! Get a grip! No need to stoop so low. You don't need one person on the interweb to validate your opinion, especially when 79 other major reviewers gave it 9s and 10s.

 

[Kioku]

This is pathetic... "Your opinion is different than mine, I'm going to ruin your way of life."

Get a life, kiddos.

 

[skawo]

(PS: Where are the last 3 heart containers at?? :/ If they aren't at Hebra peak, then I'm confused...)

If you upgraded the Stamina to full, then you can't get the last 3 containers (unless you swap them at Hateno Village). The game caps you at either 2 and 2/5ths stamina or 27 containers. Perhaps because DLC.


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On topic: Pathetic. I agree with Sterling on most things, and would also give it a 7 or 8.

 

[ItsKipz]

Jesus please tell me this is a prank. People are ddosing this guy over that review? Sure, i dont agree with everything per se, but really?

 

[RaMon90]

97/100 is seriously great, I'd be happy.

 

[RemixDeluxe]

Holy shit, asking for someone to get hung for having an opinion about a video game. This is embarrassing and LoZ is my favorite video game series. It's not like whatever he says Will make me enjoy my game less. People need to see that too.

@TobiasAmaranth I 100% agree with you especially the part where life you have to resource manage often. I had the exact same thoughts as I was playing through the game, it felt similar to what I went through when I lived on my own.

 

[StarTrekVoyager]

Lol, now people will have a reason to say we are childish fanboys -.- Well, as long as this review isn't as poorly argumented as the crap on GBATemp, I'm fine with it. Again, I'm all with consistency. 7 for BOTW is fine as long as you didn't give 6.5 to Sonic Boom 06

 

[XDel]

This is news?

 

[VinsCool]

Jesus please tell me this is a prank. People are ddosing this guy over that review? Sure, i dont agree with everything per se, but really?

Yes. It's real. The site was (and probably still is?) Down last night.

 

[TobiasAmaranth]

If you upgraded the Stamina to full, then you can't get the last 3 containers (unless you swap them at Hateno Village). The game caps you at either 2 and 2/5ths stamina or 27 containers. Perhaps because DLC.

Hah, it's Skawo. Hey. And dang, but I guess that gives a point to the Hearty foods, and helps lengthen the Master Sword's beam effect. It's just less pretty.

My complaints on the game are that Wolf Link becomes useless/impossible to use late game due to the Silver versions of enemies, and that the game forcibly starts boosting your power level from extended play. I would have preferred if the game stayed difficult for longer than it did.

And the Cooking system is mostly pointless / nullified by spam cooking single Hearty foods. The 'recipe' foods don't offer any real advantage for the difficulty caused through the lack of cataloging. Extra hearts at best but oh, hey, I just bake a hearty and full-restore.

 

[StarTrekVoyager]

EDIT: I'm still a bit pissed off by the fact that people complain about difficulty, while they all were "Nintendo is for kids, too easy games"

 

[Sizednochi]

Jim is an asshole. He gave the amount needed to tank the score from 98 to 97. His negative points are durability and stamina wheel. That's it. He praises the game, says it's fantastic but "some flaws hinder it" and that's the two things he /talked about. No way in hell the game should deserve a 7/10 for that. But he did it anyway to fuck with the metacritic score.

DDOSing is pathetic but he's just as bad as the people doing it.

 

[Monado_III]

Don't see why people are asking what makes him credible. What makes the reviwers at ign etc credible? They put a score out you agree with, so they are credible? We already know ign and the big sites are influenced by ads (not even speculation, someone literally got fired from Gamespot for giving a bad review to a game that was being heavily advertised).

Most journalists at professional game sites either have some expierence in the games industry or have some sort of schooling in journalism or even both. This dude has a right to his opinion but when your opinion is controversial and poorly backed up, this stuff will unfourtunatly happen by the more immature in the fanbase.
(like his review reads like it could've been written by a middle schooler who's failing english who had help from a minimum wage EA)

 

[VinsCool]

Lol, now people will have a reason to say we are childish fanboys -.- Well, as long as this review isn't as poorly argumented as the crap on GBATemp, I'm fine with it. Again, I'm all with consistency. 7 for BOTW is fine as long as you didn't give 6.5 to Sonic Boom 06

"Poorly argumented"

Get the fuck over it, jesus christ.

Jim Sterling arrived at the same score of 7/10.

 

[StarTrekVoyager]

Jim is an asshole. He gave the amount needed to tank the score from 98 to 97. His negative points are durability and stamina wheel. That's it. He praises the game, says it's fantastic but "some flaws hinder it" and that's the two things he /talked about. No way in hell the game should deserve a 7/10 for that. But he did it anyway to fuck with the metacritic score.

DDOSing is pathetic but he's just as bad as the people doing it.

If he really is an asshole, then this is different. Stamina Wheel and breakable shields were in Skyward Sword, I'd be curious to see what score did this game get.

 

[Saiyan Lusitano]

You never knew "mountain climbing simulator" was fun until now.

Indeed. It's incredibly fun to climb mountains in this game.

 

[Veho]

It's not a DDoS, his server just can't handle the amount of clicks he baited with that low review score ;O;

#stopclickbait

;O;

 

[Armadillo]

Most journalists at professional game sites either have some expierence in the games industry or have some sort of schooling in journalism or even both. This dude has a right to his opinion but when your opinion is controversial and poorly backed up, this stuff will unfourtunatly happen by the more immature in the fanbase.
(like his review reads like it could've been written by a middle schooler who's failing english who had help from a minimum wage EA)

And that makes them more credible even though we know for a fact that reviews are swayed by advertising revenue and in the past exclusive access for garanteed high scores? Not speculation, but fact, it's happened in the past or who can forgot the 2/10 for football manager by ign, by one of the "credible" journalists who went on a rant because it didn't play like Fifa and ign eventually had to pull it.

Just because they went to school for it, doesn't make them more credible in a corrupt industry.

 

[DarkenedMatter]

Don't see why people are asking what makes him credible. What makes the reviwers at ign etc credible? They put a score out you agree with, so they are credible? We already know ign and the big sites are influenced by ads (not even speculation, someone literally got fired from Gamespot for giving a bad review to a game that was being heavily advertised).

What? Can't reply to me directly?

 

[linuxares]

And that makes them more credible even though we know for a fact that reviews are swayed by advertising revenue and in the past exclusive access for garanteed high scores? Not speculation, but fact, it's happened in the past or who can forgot the 2/10 for football manager by ign, by one of the "credible" journalists who went on a rant because it didn't play like Fifa and ign eventually had to pull it.

And Jim Sterling has a terrible track record with Nintendo so even that can be consider bias. Everyone is bias, everyone. One way or another.
What you need to do either A) Play the game yourself and make up your mind about it. B) Find reviewers you trust and have the same taste as you. C) Listen to the general reviews and try to figure out if the game is for you or not.