I was having this discussion with some friends while enjoying some coffee at 0:32 am, because that's probably the thing you'd end up doing after watching The Revenant. Note: not hating on the movie. DiCaprio and Hardy were excellent. The bear sequence was enjoyable to watch, in a sadistic kind of way.

But enough with getting sidetracked.

The thing went as follows: we were discussing about cinema critics. My friends ended up saying that critics should be objective. I argued back: objective is something you can't achieve (yet you can come close to it), but a criticism falls under the category of subjectivism in itself. There's no such a thing as an "objective criticism", aside from making obvious statements (like, if a movie has audio issues, saying the movie has audio issues is objective). But how can we categorize whether the movie (or game, as I'm trying to bring this discussion to this theme) is "fun"? "Enjoyement value" should be a metric? Or a critic should just relegate himself to tell whether the movie works or not? But how can you analize whether a movie works or not? Should we employ an universal metric?

Was Django Unchained OST score good? Did it match with the movie? How could we discuss this thing in an objective way? In the same vein, wouldn't you prefer if a critic, while adressing objective statements regarding the status quo of the game he's reviewing, came and said "this game is simply boring" because that's how he felt playing it? That someone said "this is too hard for me and that's a negative, I'm sorry for those who enjoy hard games?". Just some examples of blunt, honest subjectivism that in my opinion would constitute better reviews, rather than "let's appease to the majority" which is what it seems with most things nowadays.

Maybe I didn't make my point across properly. Sorry if it is the case, I don't see how I could explain the question better.

Show him this.

Then a review would mean stating plain fact and only facts but that is not the case for the vast majority of the time ...

No, I don't think so.. reviews are made by people and people have bias. I also don't think it's possible to be 100% objective.. :/

A healthy mix of both is best. I like to read from reviewers with a similar mindset as me and disregard others that are not.. it works out pretty good :p

No. In fact, I've never seen a movie or game review that doesn't have some sort of bias in favour or against it. Its just human. Reviews are simply just people's opinion's. What one might thing is the worst movie ever, another person would think the exact opposite, you can't simply have an "objective" review. Otherwise, it can't really be a review in the first place...

Critics should due everything they can to give an objective criticism of whatever they're reviewing or criticizing. For a gaming example, criticizing a puzzle game for not having an open world isn't a valid criticism. That's the critic's bias stating what they wanted rather than an proper evaluation of the product.

While truly objective is impossible as we're humans, I'd like the journalist to have some semblance of professionalism and separate their bias or personal desires apart from the game itself. Jim Sterling's response to criticism of his horrible FF13 review is exactly the worst kind of response.

Example of bad subjectivism in reviews - 7.8/10 for too much water for ORAS

I think it needs a mixture of both, with the subjective statements being valid and not exaggerated.

I think it's healthier and easier to expect what you called honest subjectivism from a critic than objectivism.

You can always try to be objective, but there's only a relatively small amount of fully objective things that are actually interesting. I'd almost go as far as to say that being fully objective means stating simple facts. No, opinions aren't facts.

Anyway, I don't think a critic should be objective. A critic should give out objective information when it's considered helpful, but other than that, they should state their own opinion.

Mix of both. But keeping a high level of objectivity is essential. Things that don't appeal to the reviewer are not necessarily bad. You can't make it 100% objective though. That would be limited and boring.