I am looking at metacritic, and your MK9 critic score does not match what I see. Here is the PS3 version of MK9 (84), and here is the Xbox 360 version (86). Did you dig up the score for the PC version that I’m having a hard time even finding on their site? Back when we were in that weird period where console developers were way worse at making PC versions? The 360 version of just about any third party game was the main event back then.

User scores are a non-factor to me, as anyone with any petty grievance can and will just leave a laughably low score, and you’re going to see larger swings for high profile games; definitely more for games that launched in the 7th gen and later, when metacritic was a site that entered the public consciousness. The newer games just plain sold more copies than the older ones, largely on the back of reviewing better than the PS2 era. And MK vs. DCU was MK8, if you’re counting how they arrived at 9, 10, and 11 (Shaolin Monks would be a spin-off), so there wasn’t really a large gap there.