God of War Ragnarök reviewer sent death threats for giving game a lower score

At long last, God of War Ragnarök is almost here. Tomorrow (9 November) Kratos and his lad will be landing on PlayStation consoles, and there’s a reason why people are so excited.

Upon the reviews going live, it very quickly became apparently that the majority of critics adored Ragnarök - it’s currently one of the highest-rated games of all time on OpenCritic, with an average score of 94. If that wasn’t enough, it also has a talking squirrel voiced by SungWon Cho (AKA ProZD), which fans are thrilled about.

Take a look at the trailer for God of War Ragnarök below.

As with anything, not everyone is going to share the same opinion, but that’s not a bad thing - showcasing different opinions and points of view is exactly what reviews are for. However, as reported by DualShockers, one reviewer for IGN Korea has now been sent a death threat over his Ragnarök review after he scored the game a 6/10.

Bae Sang Hyun took to Twitter to clarify that the original paragraph of his review which had been posted on OpenCritic had been translated in “a more provocative direction”, and added that it’s now been revised. In the updated version (translated from Korean by the author), the reviewer concluded that “the game’s core design lacked innovation compared to the prequel and the story also suffered from lack of creativity”, and that “everything in this Ragnarök seemed to be a series of soulless modules aligned”. He wrote: “If the developers’ aim were [sic] to safely deliver experience of the prior success, there would have been other ways to deliver in a better, fresh manner. Sadly, the game was insufficient to be felt as a new representation; rather it felt like a DLC of the previous title instead.”

He added to the thread with a screenshot of a message he received from someone who threatened to kill him, and said that they’d “beat [his] ass and humble [him] so good that [he] wouldn’t even dare write this s**t”.

Bae Sang Hyun wrote: “Please don't do this. It's so heartbreaking. I can't do anything else. I ask you politely, please, just enjoy your game.”