What is the Horizon Forbidden West Metacritic score?

Horizon Forbidden West is one of the highlights of a stacked month of February filled with incredibly anticipated titles such as Elden Ring, Lost Ark, and Destiny 2 The Witch Queen. 

As it's always the case with high profile exclusive games, fans on social media are eagerly awaiting to see critic reviews populate the famous Metacritic website, a site that hands out a score based on aggregate opinions of select sources. 

There's also a user-reviewed section, however, Metacritic now enforces a four day waiting period to avoid review bombing by players who are looking to skew the score one way or the other. 

Regardless of its problematic system, Metacritic is still the most reliable website to compile reviews and opinions regarding video games. So with all that being said, let's take a look at Horizon Forbidden West's Metacritic score. 

Horizon Forbidden West - Metacritic score

As of 18th February, Horizon Forbidden West's launch day, the game sits at an outstanding 89 score on Metacritic taken from 100+ reviews.

It's important to remind people that the big gaming outlets usually get review copies days, and sometimes weeks in advance to properly try out everything a game has to offer -- from story to experiencing the progression system, combat, visuals, music, and much more. 

As for the user reviews, as we've mentioned, they are currently locked until a few days following the release date to avoid the more and more prominent cases of review bombing. 

Funnily enough, it was another PlayStation exclusive that sparked the decision to switch up how Metacritic handled user reviews -- Ghost of Tsushima.

The Sucker Punch title wasn't targetted by console wars rabid fanboys itself, but it had the honour of being the first to have its user-review section delayed post-release following The Last of Us Part II's controversies leading up to launch. 

Metacritic has not only become indicative of a game's quality but also a measuring stick utilised by executives to incentivise developers to create a quality product, even at the cost of massive workload and the proliferation of crunch culture. 

A recent example of the aforementioned is Cyberpunk 2077, with developers of the seemingly cursed title claiming that their goal was to hit a 90+ Metacritic score, which, as everyone's is acutely aware, they failed to do so in spectacular fashion. Out of the three versions currently available, only the PC sits with a favourable Metacritic score of 86 (console versions are in the low 60s and high 50s).

• Read more: Horizon Forbidden West - Best tips and tricks
  

Featured image courtesy of Guerrilla Games.