If you only read what critics wrote about the new Wolverine videogame, you might think it was one of the biggest flops of the year. They largely describe the combat as repetitive or “one-note.” Its story “frequently falls apart”. One critic even recalls putting his fist through someone’s “eyes, face, heart” and “feeling absolutely nothing.”

Would you believe that Wolverine has a 79/100 average review score on OpenCritic?

Now, when it comes down to the score itself, this is easy to explain. There are over 70 reviews in the aggregation, many of which rate the game positively. There are even a few perfect scores.

What’s strange to me is how often the positive scores belong to reviews that sound pretty negative. I’ve been reading so much about boredom and confusion and disappointment, but then also landing on a number that seems to describe a pretty good videogame. I don’t particularly care to litigate the numbered score of any or all reviews, but I am interested in what this exposes about what values are being privileged among the critical consensus.

Occasionally, the reviews themselves demonstrate what I am talking about. After spending paragraphs describing Wolverine’s combat as lacking weight, challenge, and eventually leaving him so disengaged that he lowered enemy health just to end fights faster, GameSpot’s Tamoor Hussain does clarify: “It may be hard to believe but all of that doesn’t mean the combat is bad. It is perfectly functional.”

Perfectly functional. As opposed to bad!

So often I find that functionality has the power to rescue something from being bad even after the critic has described the experience as bad.