The Metacritic page for the PlayStation 5 version of Sonic Frontiers is currently being review-bombed, seemingly in response to the latest 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 new video goes in pretty hard on Sonic Frontiers, mocking its purported “open-zone gameplay” by showing instances of the game restricting his movement, among other criticisms. The video ends with a series of side-by-side comparisons, meant to appear absurd, that show the game’s high Metacritic user score relative to those of several other beloved games.
At the time he recorded, Sonic Frontiers had an 8.8 Metacritic score compared to 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” in their display names, alleging that “Sonic fans are review bombing their own favorite game to make [his] fans look bad.”
One of the screencapped review bombs reads “I thought I liked this game at first, but then I saw Dunkey’s video about it, and then I realized that this game is actually really BAD.” Another says that the author, “had no opinion on the game but after seeing Dunkey’s review [they] came to the conclusion that this game just is not good” before suggesting readers check out more of Dunkey’s videos.
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While all three of those reviews are currently no longer on Metacritic, Kotaku has found plenty of others that remain up, adding to Sonic Frontiers PS5’s sudden string of 0-scored user reviews.
Later, Dunkey added another tweet to his thread: “In the end, way more positive reviews are being left than negative (and it is 90% Sonic fans leaving both), and my intention was never to send review bombers.”
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Various Sonic Frontiers user reviews mention Dunkey, including a perfect score from “Dunkeywaswrong” that hails it as “the best 3D Sonic since Sonic Adventure 2.” Another user writes “Dunkey fans review bombing only increased score ;).” User Shaydows writes that they “would have given this an 8, but thanks to Dunkey’s fans I had to change it to a 10.” Long story short, yet another example of video game fans using Metacritic as an ideological battleground.
Kotaku reached out to Videogamedunkey for comment.
At 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.
