Hey everybody, Max Scoville here. I work at IGN, hosting Up At Noon and Podcast Beyond. I don't review games. I'm technically a "host" which means I sometimes have to deliver sponsored messaging, and to have me giving scores, but also reading "This IGN ____ is brought to you by ____" would be a huge conflict of interests. Contrary to popular belief, there are a whole bunch of policies in place to the business side and editorial side from overlapping.
I usually enjoy this sub-Reddit, but it legitimately sucks ass to see hours of my colleagues' hard work reduced to an image that shits on the entire outlet.
Scott Lowe (who doesn't even work at IGN anymore) wrote our CoD: Ghosts review, three years ago. It was the first CoD on current-gen consoles, so I imagine there was some hype on that side. Go back and revisit the review scores for launch window titles, they frequently skew high.
On the other hand, Joab Gilroy, who reviewed DOOM, is a freelancer based out of Australia. I have never met him or even communicated with him, so I don't know what his deal is, but I know that we essentially didn't get DOOM until very last minute. Bethesda didn't get review copies out until launch, so we were scrambling to get our hands on it as soon as possible (to the point that we were trying to log into an Australian PS4 account via remote play stateside, or something, because region locking and international datelines are awful draconian concepts rabble rabble rabble.)
Of course there's a lack of consistency when you treat the review scores of video games an exact measurement system. Stop thinking of review scores as the grade on a Scantron test, where there's a correct answer, and start thinking of reviews like a teacher's notes on a paper. Some teachers are harsher with grades than others, but I've had bad teachers give good grades and good teachers give bad grades, and I've also turned in sub-par work. There are a lot of variables here.
My point is, Call of Duty: Ghosts and DOOM are different games made by different companies, released years apart. One is a cross-generational release from an annualized franchise predominantly played on consoles, the other is technically the fourth game in a series that hasn't had an installment in twelve years, but which basically established the entire genre. Oh, and the reviews were written by two different people, living on different continents. "Apples and Oranges" doesn't begin to cover it.
So, yeah. Hopefully I don't get yelled at for writing this, it just breaks my heart seeing where I work get shit on for the wrong reasons.
(For what it's worth, I think DOOM is pretty fucking awesome.)