Factually wrong "game journalism"

[Sumez]

Because the distributor is sending out review copies.

One of my personal pet peeve with reviewers are those that focus entirely on "how much you get for your money".
One thing is the fact that they may not even understand how much time you can potentially put into a "short" game provided the gameplay either challenging or deep enough to keep getting something out of it (like you wouldn't call Tetris a bad game because there's only one stage).
But aside from that, it's just a bafflingly unprofessional approach to reviewing, and not something I've ever seen in reviews of any other media (except maybe concerts). You're there to review the product, identify an outline of what it does well and what it does poorly, helping people make their own decision on whether or not to buy the game. The price of a game a 100% objective element that has no place in such a review.

[Obiwanshinobi]

One of my personal pet peeve with reviewers are those that focus entirely on "how much you get for your money".

Well, they must take the readers' expectations into consideration - if you are not self-publishing, keeping some profile of your average reader in mind is typically required. Ever since the Dreamcast nosedived, I don't think there has been a single console port of an arcade game expected to push any system and the message was clear - the masses take such games fully priced, without massive enhancements, no matter how "arcade-perfect", for a joke.
One's real job as a professional journo (what they get paid for) is NOT making their readers feel they read a wrong magazine.

Everybody has their ideas what "professionalism" is, but the only idea that matters here is that of the one who pays for the work.

[orange808]

One of my personal pet peeve with reviewers are those that focus entirely on "how much you get for your money".

Well, they must take the readers' expectations into consideration - if you are not self-publishing, keeping some profile of your average reader in mind is typically required. Ever since the Dreamcast nosedived, I don't think there has been a single console port of an arcade game expected to push any system and the message was clear - the masses take such games fully priced, without massive enhancements, no matter how "arcade-perfect", for a joke.
One's real job as a professional journo (what they get paid for) is NOT making their readers feel they read a wrong magazine.

Everybody has their ideas what "professionalism" is, but the only idea that matters here is that of the one who pays for the work.

True, but I think readers deserve factually correct information and a chance to hear more than one point of view. That's not too much to ask.

EGM's golden age featured reviews with four blurbs from four gamers. It wasn't perfect, but it did provide some different insights.

[Obiwanshinobi]

I doubt any reviews publisher covering multiplatform* games has ever enough workforce to thoroughly cover everything that comes out anymore. Therefore, there are decisions to be made who takes what and how much time they are given for the job (all of this with limited resources all the time).

*) Single-platform games journalism-wise, for a rampant example of it, I need to look no further than the back of my GameCube Burnout copy (developed by Criterion, published by their then-owner Acclaim).

Spoiler

Apparently

The best Nintendo Racer for ages

no less.

[WelshMegalodon]

Just remembered this article a while back and thought it'd be relevant:

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/FelipePe ... istory.php

And he's right, too:
http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.ph ... st-3757400

Spoiler

Most of the claims of older games being too hard to get into, cumbersome, nostalgia goggles, I find to be exaggerated and without merit. I didn't own my own computer until after 2000, ok. This was after years of arcades, consoles, and maybe a few C64 games. The first PC games I bought were Max Payne, Ghost Recon, and Return to Wolfenstein. I didn't really start attacking the classics until a few years after that. I didn't play X-Com until about 4 or 5 years ago. Same with Daggerfall, Jagged Alliance 2, Temple of Elemental Evil, Civilization 4; System Shock 1 I just played last year. Only SS1 presented any legitimate barriers. I had no problem controlling X-Com; how can you? It's all point and click. You can learn the icons in minutes. Daggerfall was hardly any rougher. The less than fluid animation, which still plagues ES to this day, and the crappy dungeon mapping were the biggest barriers to ease of use. Everything else is simple. What is the problem here? Ego. These aren't games they are able to face roll right away. You can get owned in the first DF dungeon, lose half your squad in the first X-Com battle, lose your best merc in JA2, etc. But one must defend the times they live in, I suppose.

By all means, I'd like someone to argue nostalgia goggles when I played System Shock 2 for the first time the year before Bioshock came out and found the latter wanting and a waste of time in comparison. Or how about playing Civ 5 for 100 hours, then Civ 4 and finding the latter more satisfying in the space of 5 hours. One year is enough for nostalgia goggles, yet people are still talking about how legitimately great Skryim and Bioshock are. It's newfags being defensive, is all I see.

...

[T]he people calling games outdated are mostly naming 90s games, late 90s even, and blaming interface instead of admitting or realizing that maybe it's the play challenges that are hard for them. They'd still get hosed in Wizardry 7 no matter how friendly the UI was, no matter how many quest markers and auto maps. They'd still get caught out a million times in Thief. I suck at RTS, no matter what year they were made. Because I haven't put in the time outside of Company of Heroes and a few rounds of AoE2. It's user error. I'd rather do something else than work on my APM or memorize hotkeys. The first skirmish I ever had was very rough, frustrating even. My fault though, my skills weren't developed.

The RPG Codex is like some magical place where gamers actually know their shit or something.

From another member:

Please help me guys, I searched all over that HG101 site but I couldn't find any real in depth pieces about the mechanics of old CRPGs on it. :negative:
The reviews certainly don't suffice. I read some articles there covering the oldies I played and they certainly are nice and informative but more as reviews. No in depth analysis that would help players, professional reviewers or aspiring game designers to learn about mechanics and nothing even remotely qualifying to replace the experience of playing them yourself.