Jim Sterling Pro Reviewer and Youtube Personality DDOS'd Over 'Low' Score Zelda BotW Review

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.)

Screenshot+2017-03-13+01.32.07.png

Jim Sterlings Review notes said:
“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.

Jim Sterling on the reviews for Zelda said:
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?
 

DarkenedMatter

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We'll just ignore the fact he purposely gave it a 7/10 to spitefully lower the score knowingly. Nothing better than becoming "relevant" again.
 

Skelletonike

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Eh, don't like the guy and he says a lot of crap.
People should not be doing that to him however, people are free to like and dislike whatever they want.

Something that SJW's often forget. x'D
 

Benja81

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People are mad because they feel he had ulterior motives for scoring so low. Its pretty obvious he did, whether its a grudge w/ Nintendo, going against the grain for attention, personal reasons, whatever.. People are pissed because they think he's an ***hole, and ***holes get hacked.
 
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lonewolf08

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I think the Zelda game is good but I also feel like they missed a huge opportunity here. I like that it's harder but I feel like if they had made it co op ala monster hunter where you can team up with other links to fight bigger or harder guardians or dragons or whatever really that is harder it would have made the game so much better. It already has the grind and farming why not go all the way. Coupled with the frame rate drops and without a way to repair weapons and slight repetitive gameplay I would rate it about the same 7-7.5/10. That's just my opinion though and it's not a bad score really.
 

Mystic Shadow

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Botw 5/10 it's to boring come at me bruh lmao I'd give it an 8/10 for Wii u bc one lag two shrines started getting boring and the story was meh. I finished the game and I was like that's it ok guess I gotta wait for dlc.
 

invaderyoyo

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I didn't say the game deserves a 10 per see. But he didn't address performance issues for example. His only complaints were stamina wheel and durability. Going by what he says he should have given it a 8.5 at least. But he gave the right amount needed to get the metacritic score down to 97. He also gave Horizon a 9.5/10. Really makes you think....
Each time there's a complaint it doesn't subtract a set amount from 10, say 0.5 for each complaint. It isn't math.

It's more like a scale of how much you enjoyed the game. 10 being that you absolutely loved it. 7 means he liked it. People are pissed that he didn't absolutely love the game.

You'd think the guy insulted their mother instead of saying that he liked a game.
 
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Armadillo

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Sonic Boom Fire&Ice got a 7.5 from IGN.

Different site though.

Sterling uses the whole scale (as it should be)

http://www.thejimquisition.com/review-score-guide/

IGN uses the scale most places use of

8-10 Good, great etc.
7 average
7> all shit.

7 is good. An 8 would be great. I don't see an issue with giving it a score of "good".

Not alligning with other sites because they use a 7-10 scale and 7 is average for those is a whole other arguement.
 
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DiscostewSM

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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.
Not saying he shouldn't have an opinion, but I believe he's done this before with a completely different game from some other company. Not only that, but he has a rather negative view of Nintendo. You know, going as far to say it's ok to pirate their games and whatnot. That's not including how he's responding on twitter regarding the situation, which is only driving the tension here.
 

heartgold

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It's a clickbait review, guy wanted a reaction outta Nintendo fanboys/girls and it's worked. Lol

He can't be taken seriously, he rated a shitty game like fallout 4, 9/10.

Fallout 4 >>> Zelda botw...
 
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Axido

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If you intend to fight the establishment, expect the establishment to fight back.

The saddest part is not that there was a reaction to his score, but that probably lots of people (including me) never knew and never intended to know anything about this particular person before this stupid news post on GBAtemp. Thanks for nothing, OP.

Stop clickbaiting!
 
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Zense

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It's sad how we gamers are wasting so much of our time discussing a random review of a game instead of actually gaming. I really wish this article didn't get front page publicity, because it just shows me what we've come to. I remember before the internet and aggregate scores were as much a thing as now, but we still enjoyed our games. Maybe we even played more instead of losing time on these trivial matters.

I honestly didn't know about this dude before this so I guess he got pubblicity out of this at least.

On a completely different note though, BoTW has actually sparked a big discussion about game reviews, which I think is good. I have to admit that reviews aren't a waste of time. Almost all the time I check Steam for people's comments on the games, and I give these more credibility than metacritic user scores or even big sites' reviews like ign or gamespot. I've read a couple of articles on how valve is updating their user review system and I hope it's continuing to change in the consumers favor. Steam is great in that it gives you a quick and easy way to see peoples comments and what issues the game has so that you spend the least time possible reading up on reviews before you make a decision to buy.

On the other hand you have Nintendo's eshop reviews which I find highly untrustworthy. I've yet to see a game have less than 4/5 stars there. And you don't even need to have owned the game to review it.

Now that you can register retail cartridges I think they should implement the same system as Steam. Maybe these user comments would be improved if there's like a set time you have to play a game before reviewing it? I know it's difficult to make cuz you have games like pikmin 3 that are done in a sitting and then mmos that never end...

Anyways, this is the type of discussion that should be going on, not whether someone's entitled to their own opinion and to express it, that was already decided on 70 years ago.
 
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gamesquest1

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come'on gbatemp you need to cry ddos too, get all those free clicks

It genuinely does sound like bullshitty attention seeking, gbatemp gave it a "low" score and i only seen a handful of gripey posts at best, I wonder how much it costs to hire a botnet to ddos yourself
 
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Originality

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I'm nearly done with the game (beat main bosses, completed majority of shrines, finally saved up enough rupees to fully upgrade most of my armour, ticking down the last of my quest list) but the one thing that keeps prodding at my enjoyment is the same thing Jim mentioned in his Jimquisition video. I have a lot of powerful weapons filling up my inventory that I don't want to use against the normal trash mobs, because I'd rather save them for "real" fights like mini-bosses and Hyrule Castle. Because even though I've come across something like 5 Great Flameblades, two I ended up throwing away (because I found better) and only one broke from actual combat. The other two I left where I found them.

I hate the durability system. Sure, there's a trainer that I could use for infinite durability, but I don't feel right cheating in a game as "easy" as this one.

I'll wait until I beat Ganon before deciding on what score I'd give, but so far... there's no way it's getting a perfect score IMHO.
 
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Arecaidian Fox

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I'm bummed that it dropped down a point on Metacritic due to his review. Like, way more bummed than I thought I'd be reading that... But I also know a 97 is still fucking amazing and better than most games in the last several years by a long shot. And as much as I consider Breath of the Wild to be the Ocarina of Time killer, even for a Zelda and Nintendo fan like myself, neither game is perfect. BotW is something like a 9.8/10 for me, and that last bit that's missing is my personal irk over the low drop rate for arrows and somewhat grindy late-game resource gathering more than anything else (the frame dips in certain areas don't really bother me or, more importantly, seem to impact the gameplay). BotW, like any other game, is not without flaws, minor as they may be. It's still easily a heavyweight contender for both best game in the series and one of the best games of all time. People need to relax.
 
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chavosaur

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come'on gbatemp you need to cry ddos too, get all those free clicks

It genuinely does sound like bullshitty attention seeking, gbatemp gave it a "low" score and i only seen a handful of gripey posts at best, I wonder how much it costs to hire a botnet to ddos yourself
If you intend to fight the establishment, expect the establishment to fight back.

The saddest part is not that there was a reaction to his score, but that probably lots of people (including me) never knew and never intended to know anything about this particular person before this stupid news post on GBAtemp. Thanks for nothing, OP.

Stop clickbaiting!

MAN FINDS TIN FOIL HAT WEARING ALIENS IN HIS THREAD, CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT HOW HE SINGLEHANDEDLY FOUGHT FOR HIS LIFE AND HIS INTEGRITY AND HOW TO INCREASE YOUR E-PEEN BY 17%
 

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pporly structured response ahoy. not sorry for it.

First of all, why do people even use Metacritic? Sites like that only make sense if review scores are standardised. The current state of entertainment reviews is that each reviewer, Jim included, has different ways of scoring reviews. That's not standardised. Metacritic is basically getting people's review scores, each made differently with different rules, and making some score from that on the reputation & influence of the reviewers? Sheesh, just find a reviewer or hell, even a personality that you feel fits your views on gaming and see what games they do and don't like. You'll have a lot more fun then.

This is admittedly unprofessional of me, but maybe it's my distaste for Nintendo fans as of recent that's got me siding with Jim here. Seriously, they're more religious about Nintendo than Apple fans, who can at least see the faults of Apple in a post-Jobs world.
Now I don't agree with Jim on everything (especially about virtual reality), but damn right I'm gonna defend his ability to use his free speech to criticise a piece of entertainment.
When people have different views on something, that should add discussion and debate - not a fucking denial of service attack and death threats because a guy didn't rate a game 10/10. Bloody hell, we've had enough of that this year already!

*ahem* Seriously, though. I do like how BOTW looks, and I want Kass to plow me so hard I won't sit down for days, but flaws of the game should and must be recognised. You can easily polish a turd.
I'll wait for a friend to get it on Wii U/Switch to see if it's any good.
 
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