Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree beats all the bosses to become both highest rated game of 2024 so far, and the highest rated DLC ever

Hi. There's an expansion coming out this week. It's called Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree and you probably haven't heard much about it. Anyway, within a day of the reviews of it coming out ahead of its arrival on June 21, it's casually become the highest rated game of 2024 and the highest rated DLC ever among critics on Metacritic.

Yup, Miyazaki and co have basically succeded in making us hold their beer as they casually make an expansion that's a good bet to get plenty of Game of the Year votes from folks who're determined to argue that getting more of a thing pretty much everyone already gave one GOTY award to warrants us all dispensing another one. Seriously though, given the very high expectations folks had for it, From's done a pretty amazing thing here.

If you head over to Metacritic, the place you go when you've run out of ways to say a game's good during an argument with your mates, you'll see that Shadow of the Erdtree's currently sitting at a critic rating of 95, with our own review being a part of the sample of 56 which've led to that number being a thing.

That number, by the way, is higher than the critic reception numbers of every other game released so far in 2024, putting Shadow of the Erdtree at number one ahead of a bunch of other very good stuff, such as Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, which holds the second spot at a 92, as well as indie darlings Animal Well and Balatro, which sit at 91 and 90 metascores respectively.

It's not just this year's games that Fromsoft's bested though, having also claimed the title of highest rated DLC among critics on the site, well, ever. While it's done well to beat out this year's top expansion, Destiny 2: The Final Shape - which sits at a 92 metascore - the bigger scalp is arguably the DLC that'd held the title for a good little bit coming into 2024, The Witcher 3's excellent Blood and Wine expansion, which also sits ar a 92 and is famous for basically being a whole extra game in and of itself.

News of this toppling has already made it back to CD Projekt, with Marcin Momot, the studio's global community director, having tweeted: "It was a good run. Nevertheless, SUPER HYPED for this Friday. 2 days to go!!!!" So yeah, he's clearly as excited about Shadow of the Erdtree as most of the rest of us are.

If you've left your Elden Ring DLC prep to the last minute and are looking for guides to getting anything in the Lands Between done, make sure to check out our huge array of recently updated ones for everything from reaching Mohgwyn Palace to getting Adula’s Moonblade.