The 2008 Nintendo DS game Cory in the House is set to dethrone Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 as Metacritic’s top user-rated video game in the near future, following a seemingly unengineered campaign on Reddit to boost its overall user rating.
You know it, you love it, and yet I doubt you’ve ever played it, but Cory in the House is the meme that will never die. Although the stealth adventure game based on the Disney Channel TV show of the same name may have been panned by critics when it was first released, Cory in the House has developed quite a storied history when it comes to user rankings online.
The first wave of reverse review bombing for the title originated all the way back in 2013, following a campaign by members of the 4chan board /v/, which resulted in the game reaching the #1 most-requested FAQ spot on GameFAQs. Not long after, news of Cory in the House’s rating (as well as the long-running joke of referring to it as an “anime” game) reached Reddit, and the game subsequently became the second-highest rated Nintendo DS game on the website with a total user review score of 9.5.
Since then, Cory in the House’s score has dipped ever so slightly. In August 2025, the game had fallen to a user review score of 9.3 on Metacritic, although this was still high enough to make it the 7th highest user-rated game on the site.
However, even though the meme is almost thirteen years old at this point, Cory in the House has been steadily rising up Metacritic’s overall user ratings rankings over the past year. I can’t pinpoint an exact reason for the change, but in late December 2025, Cory in the House suddenly shot up to the overall second-highest user-rated game on Metacritic.
In fact, the only potential reason I can find for the sudden renewed interest in Cory in the House is the arrival of the current highest user-rated game on Metacritic: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
Following its release on April 24 of last year, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 almost immediately became the highest user-rated game on the site, with an average score of 9.7. The backlash to its historic win at the 2025 Game Awards, during which the game won ten of the twelve categories in which it was nominated, has seemingly done little to harm its overall user score, as Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was still rated at 9.6…up until yesterday.
Something odd has happened between yesterday and today, however. On January 11, a thread titled “Why is this game currently on top 2?” (in reference to Cory in the House) popped up on the r/videogames subreddit and has since amassed 6.1 thousand upvotes. Then, late last night, a similar thread titled “Metacritic’s top 3 games by user rankings” appeared on the r/gaming subreddit. That one has earned 15,000 upvotes.
From what I can tell, this renewed interest doesn’t seem to have been engineered in any way, unlike the original campaign that originated on the /v/ 4chan board. Yet, in the past 24 hours, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has dipped to a 9.5 user rating on Metacritic, and Cory in the House has jumped up to a 9.4. There are a couple of potentially suspect 0 ratings for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 that have appeared today, but the string of perfect 10 reviews for Cory in the House (which has amassed roughly 30 perfect scores in the last 24 hours) seems more to blame for the shift.
There’s still a way to go before Cory in the House ultimately dethrones Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, but it’s well on track at this point. We’ll let you know when it’s time to break out the champagne once it reaches the top spot on the podium, as it’s starting to look more like a certainty than a possibility right now.
