The 2008 Nintendo DS recreation Cory within the Home is ready to dethrone Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 as Metacritic’s high user-rated online game within the close to future, following a seemingly unengineered marketing campaign on Reddit to spice up its general person score.
You recognize it, you like it, and but I doubt you’ve ever performed it, however Cory within the Home is the meme that can by no means die. Though the stealth journey recreation primarily based on the Disney Channel TV present of the identical title might have been panned by critics when it was first launched, Cory within the Home has developed fairly a storied historical past relating to person rankings on-line.
The primary wave of reverse assessment bombing for the title originated all the way in which again in 2013, following a marketing campaign by members of the 4chan board /v/, which resulted within the recreation reaching the #1 most-requested FAQ spot on GameFAQs. Not lengthy after, information of Cory within the Home’s score (in addition to the long-running joke of referring to it as an “anime” game) reached Reddit, and the sport subsequently turned the second-highest rated Nintendo DS recreation on the web site with a complete person assessment rating of 9.5.
Since then, Cory within the Home’s rating has dipped ever so barely. In August 2025, the sport had fallen to a person assessment rating of 9.3 on Metacritic, though this was nonetheless excessive sufficient to make it the 7th highest user-rated recreation on the location.
Nonetheless, though the meme is nearly 13 years previous at this level, Cory within the Home has been steadily rising up Metacritic’s general person rankings rankings over the previous yr. I can’t pinpoint a precise cause for the change, however in late December 2025, Cory within the Home all of the sudden shot as much as the general second-highest user-rated recreation on Metacritic.
In actual fact, the one potential cause I can discover for the sudden renewed curiosity in Cory within the Home is the arrival of the present highest user-rated recreation on Metacritic: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
Following its launch on April 24 of final yr, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 nearly instantly turned the very best user-rated recreation on the location, with a mean rating of 9.7. The backlash to its historic win on the 2025 Sport Awards, throughout which the sport gained ten of the twelve classes wherein it was nominated, has seemingly accomplished little to hurt its general person rating, as Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was nonetheless rated at 9.6…up till yesterday.
One thing odd has occurred between yesterday and right this moment, nevertheless. On January 11, a thread titled “Why is this game currently on top 2?” (in reference to Cory within the Home) popped up on the r/videogames subreddit and has since amassed 6.1 thousand upvotes. Then, late final night time, a similar thread titled “Metacritic’s top 3 games by user rankings” appeared on the r/gaming subreddit. That one has earned 15,000 upvotes.
From what I can inform, this renewed curiosity doesn’t appear to have been engineered in any approach, not like the unique marketing campaign that originated on the /v/ 4chan board. But, previously 24 hours, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has dipped to a 9.5 person score on Metacritic, and Cory within the Home has jumped up to a 9.4. There are a few doubtlessly suspect 0 rankings for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 which have appeared right this moment, however the string of excellent 10 opinions for Cory within the Home (which has amassed roughly 30 excellent scores within the final 24 hours) appears extra responsible for the shift.
There’s nonetheless a technique to go earlier than Cory within the Home finally dethrones Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, however it’s properly on observe at this level. We’ll let you understand when it’s time to interrupt out the champagne as soon as it reaches the highest spot on the rostrum, because it’s beginning to look extra like a certainty than a risk proper now.
