God of War: Ragnarok is already one of the greatest critical successes of the year despite not even releasing to the public until this coming Wednesday, November 9. Yet one reviewer who seems to disagree with the mass of other professional critics has offered a much more mediocre score to Santa Monica Studio's next big hit, and he's paying the price for having an unpopular opinion in the form of online harassment and at least one death threat.

Bae Sang Hyun wrote the review for IGN Korea as what he described as a "guest critic," in addition to being an indie game developer and film director. He gave the game a 6 out of 10 in his review, which by the site's standards is listed as "okay," via Google Translate. His review calls Ragnarok "A game that will lean on its predecessor and stops right in front of the door of misery." His review particularly criticized the "boring" nature of the parent-child relationships driving the story and compares the overall feel of Ragnarok to a DLC to 2018's God of War rather than a standalone game.

As a result, the writer has taken to his Twitter account to defend both himself and his opinion. In one Tweet, which we will not show here due to the content, Bae Sang Hyun shared an image of one message he received, in which someone had insulted him for his writing skill, his physical appearance, and his nationality before issuing threats that he would "beat your a** and humble you so good that you wouldnt [sic] even dare write this s***," and ending with "imma kill you."

In response, Bae Sang Hyun posted in the comment section of a YouTube video from the channel OhNoItsAlexx, in which the host criticized "PlayStation fanboys" for their attacks on the journalist. His response reads, in part, "I believe that various opinions can develop this industry. I may continue to write reviews from a different perspective. And I want to tell this to everyone. Just because I write a review with a different perspective doesn't change your gaming experience."

Like most reviewers across the Web, our own Jeffrey David Brooks scored Ragnarok a perfect 10 out of 10. This game is a clear-cut contender for Game of the Year, posting cumulative review scores just slightly under its toughest competitor, Elden Ring. Of the 124 reviews currently calculated by Metacritic, at which Ragnarok is holding consistently at a 94/100, only 11 have scored the game at less than a 90/100, with the current lowest score registered by the database being an 80/100. Meanwhile, 45 recognized reviewers gave the game a perfect score, including IGN's main site and its affiliates in Japan, Brazil, Portugal, and the former Yugoslavia region.

Despite the extreme outlier that is Bae Sang Hyun's score, every reviewer is entitled to their own opinion, and harassment and death threats against someone with a different opinion than your own is an infantile response that has no place in the gaming community.