To read video game criticism discourse right now, you would think YouTuber VideoGameDunkey is the most powerful voice in all of gaming.

Two months after angering the Xenoblade Chronicles fandom with a video portraying Xenoblade Chronicles 3 in a negative light, Dunkey has seemingly picked a fight with a more formidable army — the Sonic fandom.

On Sunday, Dunkey posted a video about Sonic Frontiers,, Sega's ambitious attempt to make an open-world Sonic game. In typical Dunkey fashion, he juxtaposes quotes from trailers hyping up the game's "open-zone gameplay" and improved combat mechanics with clips of the game restricting his movement and janky combat mechanics. He ends with a joke showing Sonic Frontiers' 8.8 user score on Metacritic beating out the scores of some beloved games like Elden Ring and Super Mario Odyssey.

This was the apparent equivalent of a declaration of war for many Sonic fans, who accused Dunkey of manipulating footage to make the game look bad, intentionally breaking it and indirectly asking his fans to review bomb Sonic Frontiers.

Dunkey literally made a hit piece on Sonic Frontiers, proving once and for all that he's just as bad as the game journalists he criticized in the past.

Out of context pop shots, endgame spoilers with no spoiler warning, just an altogether meanspirited unfunny mess of a video.

— BerserkChip (@BerserkChip) November 13, 2022

Sonic Team poured their heart and soul into making #SonicFrontiers the best Sonic game ever, and Dunkey smeared the game in his video review to maintain the 16-year status quo of Sonic games being terrible. The user score declining from 8.8 to 8.4 proves that irresponsibility. pic.twitter.com/mv0osrinm1

— Cristina Alexander🦔👑🇺🇦 (@SonicPrincess15) November 14, 2022

him showing a bunch of user score review comparisons to other triple A games was effectively an invitation for his fans to review bomb to game, which is a very valid thing to get mad at it bc it's irresponsible

get his dick out of your mouth for two seconds and think https://t.co/DYR3KZr5bb pic.twitter.com/SbO3UUttgO

— gambito. (@GambitoSonic) November 14, 2022

It seems the biggest issue for Sonic defenders was the Metacritic score segment Dunkey tacked on to the end of his video. Some fans jumped to the conclusion that the segment amounted to Dunkey asking his fans to review bomb the game, and indeed, there were many new 0/10 user scores added to Metacritic in the following days, causing the score to drop .4 entire points from 8.8 to 8.4.

Some of these "0s" came from people claiming to be Dunkey fans with account names like DunkeyLover2005, writing "reviews" claiming they thought they liked the game until Dunkey pulled the blindfold from their eyes and showed them the light (to paraphrase). Some Sonic fans saw this at face value and directed their anger at Dunkey, while Dunkey thought it was Sonic fans trolling Dunkey's fans.

Sonic fans are review bombing their own favorite game to make my fans look bad. They really thought they were slick calling their account DunkeyLover2005 🤣(Twitter thought this was real btw) pic.twitter.com/Rqdl4gfGTG

— dunkey (@vgdunkey) November 14, 2022

Turns out, at least "DunkeyLover2005" was neither a Dunkey nor Sonic fan but a 4chan troll who simply wanted to add chaos to the mix.

well now it turns out that "DunkeyLover2005" wasn't a dunkey fan or even a sonic fan, they just wanted to start shit. still, dunkey should absolutely not be playing with fire like this, especially if he wants to be a respectable game publisher https://t.co/1BGoLLFgLu pic.twitter.com/udEikPkUN5

— IndiGhost 🐀 (@IndiGhost77) November 15, 2022

Metacritic has since removed reviews mentioning Dunkey, but the user score still sits at 8.4. Dunkey stated he had no intention of sending people to review bomb the game, but felt shocked to see the Sonic Frontiers user score so high when he didn't enjoy the game.

I just wanted to make an entertaining video on a game I didn't really like, and I was shocked by the user scores so I included it. I can't be alone in feeling crazy when seeing them.

— dunkey (@vgdunkey) November 14, 2022