GamesRadar gave Redfall 4/5 and called it refreshing. The servers needed a wellness check.

The math aint mathing.

GamesRadar looked at Redfall, a game that arrived looking like four different design meetings had been trapped in an elevator, and produced a 4/5. That is 80%. That is the kind of score you give a restaurant where the food is good but the waiter says something weird about crypto. Redfall was not that. Redfall was a co-op vampire shooter where the vampires often behaved like they had forgotten their own lore and were waiting for HR to approve movement.

But the real specimen here is the review, not the game. The headline calls it 'refreshing,' which is an incredible adjective for a product whose public reception immediately resembled a wet cardboard box collapsing in real time. Refreshing? Sparkling water is refreshing. A cold towel is refreshing. Redfall at launch was what happens when a studio's strengths are politely escorted out of the building and replaced with map icons.

The review keeps trying to grade on potential, vibe, and the imagined version of the game that might exist after six patches and a motivational TED Talk. This is the classic preview-brain infection: the critic reviews the roadmap in their heart instead of the thing on the screen. Every caveat gets wrapped in optimism like a broken chair listed on Facebook Marketplace as 'rustic.' It doesn't play to Arkane's strengths, but 4/5. The AI is questionable, but 4/5. The structure is thin, but 4/5. At some point the score stops being criticism and becomes emotional support.

Let's convert this numerically. A 4/5 suggests strong recommendation. Redfall launched to a 56 on Metacritic for Xbox, got dragged by players, and later became such a cautionary tale that Microsoft executives had to publicly discuss disappointment like parents at a school meeting. If your review score is 24 points above the critical average and 80 points above the game's cultural temperature, we are no longer reviewing. We are horoscoping.

Josh West did not review Redfall so much as file a missing person report for the better game he hoped was underneath it. Respectfully, that is not a review. That is squinting at a burning building and complimenting the natural lighting.

We give this review a 2/10. One point for optimism, one point for sentence structure, zero points for mathematical contact with reality.