If you’ve been in gaming spaces online in recent years, you’ll have heard this one already. Reviewers are out of touch with gamers, you can’t trust them, and they are nitpicking and biased, and all of the rest. But what if it turned out that was true, and some of the worst reviewed games were also some of the most popular in the world?

Well, as it turns out some of the worst reviewed games of 2021 were also some of the best selling titles. Online gaming platform Yahtzee Craze has analyzed the data for the best selling games in North America, and then set them against review scores from IMDb and Metacritic to find out just how badly some of the best sellers fared at the hands of the reviewing writers.

CoD leads the way

To start off with, according to the stats provided by Statista, the biggest selling games in the US last year were both Call of Duty titles. Both Vanguard and Black Ops: Cold War did phenomenally in stores, but BO:CW managed an average score of 3.5 on Metacritic, with Vanguard a smidge better off at 3.6. 

What makes the Call of Duty situation even more remarkable is the fact that Vanguard was one of the worst performing in the series, and had 36% lower sales than 2020’s Black Ops: Cold War. When you consider that Activision had both of the top sellers in the US for 2021 despite what they called disappointing sales, it becomes more apparent just how massive that franchise is.

The fun doesn’t stop there with games it is cool to hate on though, with the number three bestseller from the states, Madden NFL 22 receiving an astonishing 0.6 rating on Metacritic. Even on IMDb, where reviewers tend to be more generous with their scores, it couldn’t break the 5 barrier, coming in at 4.7, but sold more copies than anything not called Call of Duty nonetheless.

FIFA confounds the critics

For the ‘soccer’ people there is another edifying entry on the list, with FIFA 22 following EA tradition and outselling almost everything while being critically panned. What ended up being the 12th best seller in the US, and the biggest in the EU, managed just a 2 rating on Metacritic, with reviewers taking umbrage at the amount of recycled content on show.

The same went for NBA 2k22, which was the 15th biggest title in the US, but has a measly 3.8 on Metacritic. With all of the sports games the main criticism from critics is a lack of new content, and recycling game engines and the like, but fans buy the titles anyway, largely to play with updated rosters and players.

At the bottom of the list of badly reviewed bestsellers we find Far Cry 6, another title with much recycling in the production, alongside Pokemon: Brilliant Diamond and Animal Crossing: New Horizons. It shouldn’t be a huge surprise that they did well, given the loyalty fans have to the two brands and the limited number of triple A releases on Nintendo Switch, but it may surprise some fans to see how badly they fared with the critics, with a 4.8, 5.3 and 5.6 respectively from Metacritic.

So, does this tell us critics are out of touch, or that fans want different things from their games? Eventually you’ll have to decide taht for yourself, but one thing is for sure, the reviews on a game aren’t always a good indication of how successfully that game will sell, especially if the title has a number by its name and a massive sports brand on the front cover.