Part of it is preference, but the whole model also doesn't lend itself to transparency or reliability. This is not always about them being shills or whatever. I don't think that's it. I think it is fundamentally not possible for an outlet who's main purpose is to review games to actually nail it most of the time. They're never gonna catch the nuances. And sometimes those matter a lot. It's hard to pin this stuff down to numbers. I've always ignored number/star ratings and just looked at what is being described and in what way.
My problem with game reviews is how low-effort they often are. The person forming the opinions often has no time to live with them, so all you're getting is the same level of impression you could've gotten yourself just playing the game for an afternoon. You would then know what they know, and even more about what it means for you. Sometimes the person might not even have a background suitable... the type of person it takes to run one of these outlets is probably inherently lacking the ability to fully ascertain what makes someone able to review a game well. Their job is to run an operation. They just kinda look at how things go over and try to steer things towards a positive response, which doesn't necessarily require a lot of quality. Just consistency. Consistently mediocre reviews are easier to pull off. If you play it safe, even crummy, very surface-level reviews will generally be tolerated and even accepted. Bonus points, they're quicker to write, so you can have less people produce more content in less time which = less money spent! Little incentive not to.
IGN is the worst. Ever watch their gameplay footage? Like, man... a good half of the time they can barely play. But sometimes it's worse. It's not just being unfamiliar with the game in particular, but the genre. They make noob mistakes that make you think "Do they even actually play games?" It's like they toss a controller to whoever is nearby and say "Just look at the screen and press buttons."
And that points to another issue. When you're writing game reviews for a major outlet, how much time or drive do you really have to do your own gaming and really dive deep into understanding/informing the opinions you have to put out day after day? Your average gamer will live with games they like (and even games they don't like,) which is naturally going to lend itself to them being able to make deeper cuts. Maybe more subjective, but also better formed. Whereas the guy who does it for a job is relegated to skimming as many games as possible and trying to extract and present what they think matters in the shortest amount of time.
At least an individual gamers' subjectivity is sincere. You know they mean what they say and that it comes from somewhere not totally new to them (unless we're talking certain people on steam, who sometimes bash aspects of games that are generally thought to be good for personal or ideological reasons, without ever saying that's actually why they're saying the graphics or whatever suck - those damned review bombers
) And generally you can kind of sense what their background is in the things they seem to highlight and miss about the type of game they're talking about. You can tell if they know what you know, or even if they know things you don't know (because they start talking over your head on different aspects.)
I'm not even talking about honesty here. In order to convey anything in a review, you will need to make some assumptions about your audience, just as they will have to make assumptions about you. A person simply putting up an opinion just to do it has no obligation towards doing that. There's a salt-glacier of unpredictable interactions taking place there. And it can't be avoided. Because when you dive too deep and just expect everyone to understand, nobody but people who are already in that deep will understand and everyone else will learn nothing. You'll be accurate, but nobody will know/care what you're on about. At least if you try to feel-out where they're at you can maybe convey something. Not everyone has the knowledge or history to grasp the nuance of why a game is good or flawed. It just so happens that this has the pitfall of taking the essence of what the experience will be for many people OUT of the review. Because again, they're trying to anticipate what readers will care about. Point out things they think
the readers will and will not like, rather than giving their straight take.
There's that saying "Everyone is entitled to their opinion." My answer to that is "Some opinions are of better quality than others." A quicker, lower-quality, low-hanging take on something has little value compared to one that's been alive in someone's head for awhile and is based on other opinions that have been forged over long stretches of time. How often does a pro reviewer
just replay games? I mean, really now? It's a vital part of understanding games, but the job doesn't always allow for that.
How often have you been on that 3rd 60-hour playthrough and gained really big insights about what the game was out to do and what it actually accomplished? And did that perhaps teach you some things about games a whole that you couldn't appreciate otherwise? You know? How many times have you played more or less all the way through, had a negative take, picked it up next year, maybe after playing other games and realized that the very game you thought wasn't good is actually one the best games you've ever played? Subjectivity is a bitch. Information doesn't always enter you in sequence, and sometimes it can move very slowly. You can harbor what are not just bad opinions, but actual fundamental misconceptions for a long time and not know it if you're not engaging with games freely... as in, not TRYING to understand them all of the time and just experiencing them. It's a luxury that we all have as regular gamers, that some reviewers definitely don't. Makes it so they fundamentally can't understand what your average gamer actually experiences at times. Instead what they have to do is perform a fast-aggregate of the state of other people's opinions on things and then intently plug-in what little information they pull from the game itself in what little time is alloted. Which is always going to corrupt the message to some degree. Even self-awareness can't fix that. Knowing that's how it is doesn't give a reviewer what they need to get around it. Because what they need is time they'll never have...
It's not really their fault... it's just not the best format for getting any kind of decisive or practical answers from, just due to how humans parse and internalize information. The ones I like are the retrospectives. Those usually have more quality info in them than barely post-launch-period reviews. Those are always going to be a crapshoot. There's a competitive element, too. Because if you don't have the review out when other people do, that decreases engagement for you. And over time that can leave you dead in the water.
