Metacritic's relevancy in the gaming industry continues to rise year on year. The review aggregator is the leading source for many gamers when they are contemplating buying a game and want to see the critical and fan perception.
Consequently, most game developers and publishers are becoming increasingly conscious about how their games perform on the site. High scores can secure developers high profile work in the future and will often boost sales for publishers. On the flip side, low scores can have damaging effects, costing publishers money, and potentially putting development teams out of work. For this reason, it's unfortunate to see games receive scores that seem to underrate the product. The teams behind the ten games on this list can justifiably feel hard done by not have received a score of at least 80.
10 Bugsnax
Young Horses, who are best known for Octodad: Dadliest Catch, were thrust into the limelight in November 2020 when their colorful adventure game Bugsnax launched with the PlayStation 5.
Despite not reaching the 80 mark on Metacritic, Bugsnax received plaudits for its loveable character designs, surprisingly intricate character development, and clever puzzles. The game scored 71 on PC, 79 on PS4, and 74 on PS5.
9 Hotshot Racing
Hotshot Racing aimed to take players back to the fun times of arcade racers and it does exactly that. The game has a fantastic sense of speed with tight drifting mechanics and offers boost functionalities for even greater speed. The single-player campaign can become stale fast, but the multiplayer is one of the most enjoyable split-screen and online experiences from this year.
Hotshot Racing's scores ranged from 71 on PC to 79 on Xbox One.
8 Call of Duty: Warzone
It was only a matter of time before the Call of Duty franchise hopped on the battle royale train, and their initial attempt in Black Ops 4 was followed up in March 2020 with the free-to-play Warzone.
Call of Duty: Warzone narrowly missed out on the 80+ mark, with scores of 78 on Xbox One and 79 on PS4 and PC.
7 SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle For Bikini Bottom: Rehydrated
THQ delighted fans in 2019 when they announced that they were teaming up with Purple Lamp Studios to remake the cult classic SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle For Bikini Bottom.
Reviews of the game weren't kind, and it's the lowest-rated game on this list with scores ranging from 71 to as low as 66 on the Nintendo Switch. However, fans adored the game and in stark contrast to the critic score, it has a huge user score of 8.9 on PS4 which puts it above GTA 5, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and Skyrim. It's hard to argue that the platformer is anywhere near the quality of those three games, although its critic score does seem unfairly low.
6 PGA Tour 2K21
There was once a time where golf led the sports genre of gaming. The Tiger Woods PGA Tour series, in particular, had numerous excellent releases, including Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2003 and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005 which have Metascores of 93 and 91 respectively.
The issue is, these games were near perfect, making it difficult for subsequent releases to find ways to make improvements. PGA Tour 2k21 doesn't buck this trend, although its issues are few and far between making its scores that ranged from 72 to 78 seem harsh.
5 Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit
Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit was released in October 2020 and let players build race tracks around their house through the use of radio-controlled cars and mixed reality.
Granted, as a game, there isn't much depth to it. But it lets players live out a childhood dream that should earn it a score of at least 80 alone.
4 Star Wars: Squadrons
EA's latest Star Wars game took players to the skies and tried to recapture the magic of Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance and Star Wars: TIE Fighter.
Star Wars: Squadrons certainly didn't do a bad job of this. The game has a fantastic collection of maps, intricate flying mechanics, and excellent online play that makes players feel like they're in a real dogfight.
3 Resident Evil 3
Following the enormous success of the Resident Evil 2 remake which earned a whopping Metacritic score of 93 on Xbox One and won Game of the Year at the Golden Joystick Awards, it was only a matter of time before Resident Evil 3 got the same remake treatment.
It's hard to argue that the Resident Evil 3 remake holds a candle to Resident Evil 2, but the game's Metascores which were as low as 77 seemed harsh and were likely a result of the high standards that RE2 set.
2 Moving Out
On the other end of the gaming spectrum to the nightmare-inducing Resident Evil 3, is the physics-based game Moving Out that simply requires players to move house.
The words "physics" and "simply" may not be ideal ways to describe the game though, as the game has extremely exaggerated physics, tricky puzzles to solve, and tons of Frogger-like obstacles to traverse making the act of moving house even more stressful than usual.
1 Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is already being described by some as not just the best Zelda game ever, but the best game ever made, period. The game's success led Nintendo to make the unconventional move of announcing a direct sequel, something that is rare in the Legend of Zelda series.
Nintendo didn't just capitalize on the success of Breath of the Wild with a direct sequel, but with a spin-off game too. As the title suggests, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity takes players back to the age of calamity, and lets players battle it out in a fantastic successor to the Wii U's Hyrule Warriors.