The Metacritic page for the PlayStation 5 version of Sonic Frontiers is currently being review-bombed, seemingly in response to the newest video from popular gaming YouTuber Videogamedunkey. As you’d expect, Sonic stans are coming back just as hard, defending the virtues of the blue hedgehog’s latest 3D adventure. Sonic diehards claim Dunkey viewers are behind the bombing, but in an odd twist, the YouTuber maintains that Sonic fans are behind the bombardment.
That said, there’s no disputing that Dunkey’s latest video goes in pretty hard on Sonic Frontiers, mocking its purported “open-zone gameplay” by showing instances of the sport restricting his movement, amongst other criticisms. The video ends with a series of side-by-side comparisons, meant to seem absurd, that show the sport’s high Metacritic user rating relative to those of several other beloved games.
On the time he recorded, Sonic Frontiers had an 8.8 Metacritic user rating in comparison with Breath of the Wild’s 8.7, Elden Ring’s 7.8, and Hades’ 8.8. Shortly after the video debuted, Dunkey shared a screenshot on Twitter showing three 0-scored user reviews from Metacritic users with “Dunkey” of their display names, alleging that “Sonic fans are review bombing their very own favorite game to make [his] fans look bad.”
Certainly one of the screencapped review bombs reads “I assumed I liked this game at first, but then I saw Dunkey’s video about it, after which I noticed that this game is definitely really BAD.” One other says that the creator, “had no opinion on the sport but after seeing Dunkey’s review [they] got here to the conclusion that this game just shouldn’t be good” before suggesting readers take a look at more of Dunkey’s videos.
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While all three of those reviews are currently not on Metacritic, Kotaku has found loads of others that remain up, adding to Sonic Frontiers PS5’s sudden string of 0-scored user reviews.
Later, Dunkey added one other tweet to his thread: “Ultimately, far more positive reviews are being left than negative (and it’s 90% Sonic fans leaving each), and my intention was never to send review bombers.”
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Various Sonic Frontiers user reviews mention Dunkey, including an ideal rating from “Dunkeywaswrong” that hails it as “one of the best 3D Sonic since Sonic Adventure 2.” One other user writes “Dunkey fans review bombing only increased rating ;).” User Shaydows writes that they “would have given this an 8, but due to Dunkey’s fans I had to alter it to a ten.” Long story short, one more example of video game fans using Metacritic as an ideological battleground.
Kotaku reached out to Videogamedunkey for comment.
On the time of writing, Sonic Frontiers has an 8.5 user metascore on PS5, an 8.5 on PC, and an 8.3 on Xbox Series X.
