Silksong’s 9.0 Metacritic Miracle: The Five 2025 Titles That Outscored the Hype Beast

The clown makeup has been scrubbed off, the circus tents folded away. After years of desperate E3 no-shows, faked leaks, and a meme culture that practically invented a new genre of copium, Hollow Knight: Silksong finally materialized in 2025. No more ritualistic clown emojis in every Nintendo Direct thread—just a serene, gothic butterfly-winged heroine ready to conquer Pharloom. But once the sugar-rush of release day faded, a sobering question fluttered into the minds of gamers: in a year absolutely bursting with bangers, did Silksong truly dominate, or was it merely a beloved ghost finally laid to rest? The answer, as seen through the unfiltered lens of Metacritic user scores, is a deliciously humbling six-place finish—and it’s far more interesting than any critic’s perfect 10.

User scores are the internet’s fever dream: raw, irrational, occasionally weaponized by review-bombing crusaders. But for the vast majority of games released in 2025, they offer a genuine temperature check of fandom—no PR manager can fine-tune thousands of individual emotional reactions typed at 3 a.m. with a half-eaten pizza nearby. Silksong’s critics’ chorus was undeniably rapturous, but the players? They gave it a 9.0 out of 10 on Metacritic, which is like being handed a gold ingot and then learning five other people received slightly heavier gold ingots. Who dared to outshine Team Cherry’s magnum opus? A motley crew of a French surrealist RPG, a Digimon game that nobody would’ve bet a dollar on, a Sonic racer, a Falcom remake, and a barrel-bashing ape.

Here’s the scoreboard that made Hornet pause mid-leap:

Game
User Score

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
9.6

Digimon Story: Time Stranger
9.2

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds
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