That doesn’t really seem to contradict the other person’s claim that much? In fact like your said if just a few other things are running on that person’s pc and eating some resources, their claim seems super believable in the context of what you just said so I’m not sure what your point is.
A reviewer/tester is going to be benchmarking in a best case scenario environment. Real people using their real computers will be experiencing a huge variety of other environments. Different temps, hardware settings, programs running, etc. None of that context excuses the performance, and makes that person’s performance claim believable.
Yes there’s a story, and it’s decent. At release you wouldn’t have even experienced the full story, iirc. So if that interests you, you could try it out again.
I will, respectfully, still disagree with that assertion. Just because Assassin’s Creed, Call of Duty, and the like are on their umpteenth entry, does not mean that no more unique and novel games are being made.