the7k wrote:The real problem with gaming journalism is that we rarely celebrate the good journalists. Honestly, Dan "Shoe" Hsu is the only one I can think of immediately.
All people really want is some arbitrary number attached to a game and a bunch of screenshots - and it's a lot more profitable to have writers who are easily swayed by wine and women who will hand top scores out for peanuts than have people around who ask the tough questions.
you nailed the problem there.
Game reviewers are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too generous with their review scores. FFS the 0-10 scale is actualy 6-10.
I remember me and my ex-girlfriend would check metacritic for review scores for movies and games, and she'd often ask me why games get so high marks, compared to movies, where only the classics got 90+, and plenty of good movies could score 60-70 and still be considered fun.
Also they refuse to see a game for its merits if they aren't used to it. See how they complain that Scott Pilgrim doesn't have online play, even though these games are made to be played in the same couch. See how most of them still consider Wii Sports a bad game, even though it's excellent and really fun in most people's opinion (then again they might be doing the Wii bashing to suck up to the hardcore gamers which are 99% of their reader base). See how console gamer reviewers don't know the first freaking thing about PC gaming, and other than hyped like shit games (Starcraft 2 ect.) they can't spot what will make a good game.
My favourite (aka infuriated me) about their amateurism when it comes to PC gaming, were 2 posts by kotaku. One was about the TF2 update, and the writer said "if you still care for a 2.5 years old FPS game"
WHAT? are you freaking kidding me? Have you been brainwashed by Activision so much, that you don't believe people will want to play the games they like for more than a year??? FFS people STILL PLAY Quake 3, Unreal Tournament 2004 and the original Counter Strike. Oh but there is a newer UT I should give up on the best entry in the series.
Also in another post they made fun of tycoon games as being dorky boring and lame...... um dude.... non-gamers LOVE tycoon games. They really think it's fun to be making your own train network, to run a corporation of your own, to make your own theme park. And in general this genre is loved by the PC crowed, and every single successful game has tons of mods for it.
This is like PC gamers saying JRPGs suck because you can't make your own characters.
Holly shit that is a huge post about complaining
. Anyway I don't like most professional reviewers so I just read gamers' blogs.
