Skull and Bones has the lowest Metacritic user score of 2024 so far

[midian182]

Facepalm: Skull and Bones, the pirate sim that Ubisoft thinks is so good it's worth a $70 console price tag and a "AAAA" designation, currently has the lowest user score on Metacritic for a game released in 2024 thus far. Even the near-universally disliked Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has a higher user score than the title that took a decade to develop.

At the time of writing, 306 people have given their opinion on Skull and Bones via Metacritic. Unfortunately for Ubisoft, 222 of them, or 73%, have been negative, while 27 (9%) are mixed.

Skull and Bones' user score of 2.9 makes it the worst-reviewed game by user score released in 2024 to date, lower even than Suicide Squad's score of 3.7. Its critic reviews are only slightly better: Skull and Bones currently sits at an unimpressive 64, putting it in 30th place out of the 36 games launched in 2024 to date.

Many of the user comments reflect the 'Dull and Bones' name that some players have started calling Ubisoft's title. One person said it's painfully slow and boring with none of the fun that made Assassin's Creed: Black Flag so enjoyable. There are also plenty of mocking references to the game's high price and the now infamous "AAAA" statement.

"So, this trash is what constitutes a 'quadruple AAAA' game these days is it? What a complete waste of a decide [sic] of development time. I managed to endure just under 90 minutes of this dog toilet **** before uninstalling it and loading up Black Flag," wrote one angry Metacritic user. "It is so boring! For a game about pirates, you sure can't do much pirating stuff."

As a reminder, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot at the start of the month defended Skull and Bones' $70 price tag (for the console versions) by insisting it was a "quadruple-A" game. The hubris came during a conference call Q&A session that took place after Ubisoft's Q3 fiscal year 2024 results where he was asked if making Skull and Bones free-to-play would have been a better option, given its live service approach.

Skull and Bones' launch was delayed six times following the original reveal at E3 in 2017 – initial work on the game began back in 2013. It's also reported to have gone over budget and cost around $200 million, not to mention the number of management changes, shifts in game direction, etc. Ubisoft will no doubt be hoping it can build a player base and improve the experience à la Fallout 76 or No Man's Sky, but it has a lot of work to do and a plenty of people to convince before getting to that point.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/101931-skull-bones-currently-has-lowest-metacritic-user-score.html

 

[FaTaL]

It only took me 30 minutes of playing open beta to realize what a piece of absolute sht game this is and should be erased from existence. Period.

 

[SirDigby]

Haahahahaha I love this, its just going to show how increasingly disconnected Ubi leadership has become from the actual gaming community.

 

[Burty117]

HAHAHA!

...

Hahahahahahaha

Too funny

 

[gamerk2]

Someone, please, just make Pirates! Online. That's all.

 

[ExReey]

Just when you thought it couldn't get much worse after Suicide Squad..

 

[erickmendes]

The good side is that Ubisoft can't be overthrown by any other game maker... It's already ruinning itself apart.

 

[Eldrach]

Unfortunately - Ubisoft is sticking to its formula in every single game. A frenzy of icons on a map with tasks that provide little to no flavor. This formula has been old since Farcry 3, yet Ubisoft insists on sticking to it.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

All they had to do was copy Black Flag. They has the answer sheet for the homework.....and couldnt even do that correctly.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

And then you have Helldivers 2 that is priced at $39.99 and the devs can't move fast enough to secure enough servers that 500K+ (I'm sure it's much more considering at the moment they've capped their servers at 450k and wait times to get into the game to play are long) are trying to get into to play.

Make a game that is fun, engaging and not horribly overpriced and you'll have a winner.

Ubisoft hasn't had a winner for a while. I'd say that The Division was probably the last game they made that I actually enjoyed. It was a bit different and fun. The Division 2 was okay, was kind of just more of the first one, but still entertaining. Far Cry games have been rehashed to crap and same with AC games....just junk.

Then they took the one thing that a lot of people (not me, but from reading up on posts it sounds like a lot of people) really liked, the navel aspect of AC3/Black Flags and turned it into dogcrap with Skull & Bones and expect people to drop $70 for the game. Yeah, no thanks.

Ubisoft, you may have been better off trying to convince people that NFTs tied to games are the wave of the future over this overpriced game you dropped and tried tell everyone it's a "AAAA" game.

 

[m4a4]

Usually delays are good for a game. But man, did Ubisoft want to prove that wrong...

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Usually delays are good for a game. But man, did Ubisoft want to prove that wrong...

-Maybe the delays were good for Dull N' Bones... Just not good enough

 

[toooooot]

All they had to do was copy Black Flag. They has the answer sheet for the homework.....and couldnt even do that correctly.

One thing that could have prevented it was that AC4 was made by their good team.
This one was based in Singapore where they made a deal with the government.
I assume their clause had hiring Singaporeans for that project. They got money, hired people, trained them, then started the project.
They got a lot of money for that, more than enough to make a very good game if it was their proven people.
These people could not make a new AC4 without assassins. Maybe at the end they got pretty good ideas and good understanding where they should go with the game. But by then they spent
a lot of money. And they would not want to spend anything beside that Singapore's money.

 

[Skjorn]

$70 "AAAA"

Who yf they think they're fooling?
Cant even swim in the game.

 

[cfenton]

I'm sure Skull and Bones isn't a great game, but Metacritic user reviews are completely worthless. They have no way to verify that a user has actually played the game. Anything popular just gets flooded with useless noise.

 

[Alfonso Maruccia]

AAAAAAAAAAAh indeed :-D

I'll keep playing Elden Ring and waiting for the DLC, then. No rush.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

One thing that could have prevented it was that AC4 was made by their good team.
This one was based in Singapore where they made a deal with the government.
I assume their clause had hiring Singaporeans for that project. They got money, hired people, trained them, then started the project.
They got a lot of money for that, more than enough to make a very good game if it was their proven people.
These people could not make a new AC4 without assassins. Maybe at the end they got pretty good ideas and good understanding where they should go with the game. But by then they spent
a lot of money. And they would not want to spend anything beside that Singapore's money.

Inexperienced developers at a new studio, with management more focused on twitter then making good stuff. A recipe for absolute disaster.

I'm sure Skull and Bones isn't a great game, but Metacritic user reviews are completely worthless. They have no way to verify that a user has actually played the game. Anything popular just gets flooded with useless noise.

Of course there's no way that developers would ever flood reviews with a bunch of fake 100s that DO own the game, right?

 

[amghwk]

Waiting for Epic to give it away for free.

 

[KedsDead]

It only took me 30 minutes of playing open beta to realize what a piece of absolute sht game this is and should be erased from existence. Period.

I just watched a few videos of people beta testing it. There are free to play games with more to do in them than this game.

 

[Mr Majestyk]

How pathetic that the 2013 Black Flag has better graphics, better physics, and is a massively better game in every way. I mean the fcuking pirate can't even swim in S&B.

Why not just remaster Black Flag and add some more content on the water.

 

[trieste1s]

One thing that could have prevented it was that AC4 was made by their good team.
This one was based in Singapore where they made a deal with the government.
I assume their clause had hiring Singaporeans for that project. They got money, hired people, trained them, then started the project.
They got a lot of money for that, more than enough to make a very good game if it was their proven people.
These people could not make a new AC4 without assassins. Maybe at the end they got pretty good ideas and good understanding where they should go with the game. But by then they spent
a lot of money. And they would not want to spend anything beside that Singapore's money.

Singapore has become one of those cities where you're not getting the labour quality you think you are getting, for several classes of jobs. Especially in IT. The addiction to cheap, plentiful migrant labour of non-guaranteed quality is nigh unquenchable.

How would I know? Born and raised.

 

[Achaios]

Was in Singapore 2 days ago.

The ppl who whine abt expensive GPUs would just absolutely love Singapore. You need a ton of money to do even the most basic stuff and I believe it's the single most expensive city in the world, not even uptown LA with Hollywood and all compares to Singapore, pure insanity.

I absolutely loved the placcards who promised lowly marijuana smugglers the death penalty and death by hanging. Singapore has taken war against drugs to a whole new level.

On the subject at hand, it does not matter what you think about "Skull and Bones" and it does not matter if you won't buy it. Millions of Whales out there have already bought it and the "quadruple A" CEO is laughing all the way to the bank.

What a title btw to be known in the industry. The "Quadruple A guy" b/c they WILL call him that you know.

 

[toooooot]

Was in Singapore 2 days ago.

The ppl who whine abt expensive GPUs would just absolutely love Singapore. You need a ton of money to do even the most basic stuff and I believe it's the single most expensive city in the world, not even uptown LA with Hollywood and all compares to Singapore, pure insanity.

I absolutely loved the placcards who promised lowly marijuana smugglers the death penalty and death by hanging. Singapore has taken war against drugs to a whole new level.

On the subject at hand, it does not matter what you think about "Skull and Bones" and it does not matter if you won't buy it. Millions of Whales out there have already bought it and the "quadruple A" CEO is laughing all the way to the bank.

What a title btw to be known in the industry. The "Quadruple A guy" b/c they WILL call him that you know.

I believe 2 million people bought it. But can it get a more solid number? 5 millions, maybe even 8 which I think would be a big success for a game like this,
I the game had at least 20k views on Twitch. It is a solid number which means that plenty of people are indeed interested in this game.
But skepticism is here though. It has been too long in development, it is live service which is another warning sign for a lot of people. Last but not least, it got released in time with other live service games which gained a lot of attention.
S&B has a lot of reasons to fail. We know it will not loose money because they got it free.
They will rather not earn a lot on it.

 

[amghwk]

Was in Singapore 2 days ago.

The ppl who whine abt expensive GPUs would just absolutely love Singapore. You need a ton of money to do even the most basic stuff and I believe it's the single most expensive city in the world, not even uptown LA with Hollywood and all compares to Singapore, pure insanity.

I absolutely loved the placcards who promised lowly marijuana smugglers the death penalty and death by hanging. Singapore has taken war against drugs to a whole new level.

On the subject at hand, it does not matter what you think about "Skull and Bones" and it does not matter if you won't buy it. Millions of Whales out there have already bought it and the "quadruple A" CEO is laughing all the way to the bank.

What a title btw to be known in the industry. The "Quadruple A guy" b/c they WILL call him that you know.

Trust me. The people living there are working like machines. Only money in their mind. A small island but they are doing everything to attract visitors and businesses. Everywhere you go whatever you see are all man-made. They Singaporeans are also becoming more arrogant. And nowadays, we see a huge influx of poor foreign workers (Banglaldesh, India and Nepal) being pulled in with deplorable state of living for them, because Singapore wants to earn big but only willing to spend as little as possible by paying pittance to these poor laborers. The even steal the food menu from neighboring countries and call them their own.

 

[Beerfloat]

Singapore has managed to create an enviable quality of life for its people. Barely 60 years on from living in jungle huts the place is now a beacon of stability and prosperity in the region with some of the highest GDP per capita in the world.

Sadly, like in many other countries, complaining is a national pastime, and few appreciate how good things really are. Well, except for Skull and Bones.