Hellgate London has an avg critic score on Metacritic of 70 which isn't that bad, I mean it's leaning a bit towards mediocre but there are plenty of games that have a 70 that I enjoy. Fallout 76 has a ~50 rating (49 on Xbox, 50 on PS4, 55 on PC) which is a completely different world really, that normally means shovelware / complete shit / disaster.
Eh, kind of a tangent though, doesn't affect your main point.
I honestly don't remember the average critic scores for Hellgate - but I certainly remember the overall reception from the playerbase.
It was much maligned, especially because of bad marketing and PR - which is why it reminded me of Fallout 76.
The launch state is another reason I was reminded of HGL, because both games had terrible problems.
Beyond that, HGL pioneered what many would consider a 100% fair business model today - but at launch it was hated by everyone, more or less.
I honestly think the critics don't understand Fallout 76 - and that's partially because Bethsoft utterly failed to market it. I mean, even Todd himself couldn't explain what it was.
I don't know why they went in circles about it - instead of just saying "Fallout 4 with coop" - but it seems to have created a bunch of incorrect assumptions and strange comparisons to games that have little or nothing to do with a Bethsoft game.
Which is what FO76 is - a typical Bethsoft game, nothing more and nothing less. It just happens to have coop (and a slight bit of PvP). It's really that simple.
Seems to me they were so afraid to openly state they were doing a proper multiplayer game - that they tried to complicate matters for no good reason.
Obviously, the NMA crowd will hate it - as they've hated all their games since they dared to do their own thing with the thing that they bought.
But I didn't expect critics to hate it so much.
Arguably, the 50/100 review scores are "objectively" reasonable for the Beta/Launch state - because that WAS pretty bad, but - for my own complaints - they more or less fixed it up in a week or so.
It's definitely rougher than I would have expected overall, but it's absolutely nothing like what a lot of the sub-50 reviews are suggesting. At least, I don't see it.
Then again, I've only played it for ~15-20 hours combined. I don't know if it suddenly turns terrible - but that makes little sense, as I know the formula inside and out - and none of their other games did a 180 like that.
So, nah, this is a case of the hivemind at work, I would like to suggest.
