PlayStation

I call it review awareness with real people who aren't scared of being blacklisted highlighting and informing normal people of aspects of the game paid reviewers ignore and don't bother to go back and update their score out of fear.

Could it just be that review bombing as a term has come to mean people mobilising to negatively review a game and not necessarily being linked to it being a scummy practice? I'm not very familiar with too many instances of it happening, but can accept that in reading this review that the author does seem to agree with people doling out the negative reviews for the bait and switch on microtransactions.

Yeah. Between putting basic game feature additional charges (you can still get them, but with money you get it faster) behind a paywall and the shit-tastic performance issues, I definitely expected it to get terrible reviews.

So you think the ratings people are giving it reflect a balanced consideration of all the game's aspects including story, gameplay, graphics, art direction, sound design, and the existence of microtransactions for things trivially earnable in normal gameplay?

I'm all for people sending a giant middle finger to publishers putting in unnecessary cash grabs into games by hitting them where it hurts in reviews (which do impact lifetime sales numbers).

But let's not try to call this anything but what it is. Giving zero score reviews for something you don't like existing in the game (whether gender options to microtransactions) irrespective of the quality of the game outside of those things existing is literally "review bombing."

It's ok to be that, and it serves an important protest function in the industry, but let's call a spade a spade here.