Ben Veress is a Contributing Features Writer at DualShockers based in Melbourne, Australia. He has been covering games professionally since 2021, with experience writing features, lists, reviews, and news across gaming, tech, culture, and entertainment.
Before joining DualShockers, Ben wrote for Kotaku AU, Gizmodo AU, Vice AU, Pedestrian.TV, Quest Daily, Blunt Magazine, Impulse Gamer, and Inkl. At Pedestrian.TV, he served as the publication’s sole tech and gaming writer, leading coverage of major gaming releases and events for one of Australia’s major youth publications. He holds a Bachelor of Communications in Media from RMIT University and was nominated for Best Branded Content Journalist at the Australian Samsung IT Awards in 2025.
Everyone loves a good action game. Since the era of arcade machines, action games have been a staple of the genre, inspiring countless developers and studios to put out new iterations on the genre. Some games are bloody hack-and-slash types, others take a more narrative approach.
It's a genre with a fairly wide tent to define what an action game is, and as a result, fans and critics often find themselves butting heads on how to appreciate different types of games.
While some critical reviews will often highlight clunky combat systems, or a shallow world surrounding a games world, fans, who may have more time and passion to dive deep into these combat systems, might rally around a game despite its flaws.
That's why, today, we'll look at 10 action games where the user score is higher than the critic score. Because who doesn't like exploring how two groups can appreciate something differently? That's sociology baby.
Crimson Desert may just be one of the most bizarre phenomena to happen in gaming discourse this year. The game was originally intended as an MMORPG, but it shifted course during development into a single-player action-RPG. As a result, the skeleton of the MMO is still there: weak plot, massive open world with endless zones to explore, shallow main character, janky combat. These were all aspects that brought it down in the eyes of reviewers, but players had a different take.
Given the game's frustrating approach to its user experience, it made sense. There weren't many fast-travel points, the game's controls worked against player intuition, and again, the story is told so poorly. Throw in the game's controversial review period matched with the scale of content, and it's fair that reviewers didn't click with it the same way players did.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.dualshockers.com/action-games-where-the-user-score-is-higher-than-the-critic-score/
