A critic can't be objective. The only way that would work would be if every review just listed off technical facts about what they were reviewing. Which would help nobody.

The closest thing to being objective is to judge something by its purpose or design philosophy. In which case the answer is yes, which hardly any reviewer (IF any) does. It's still not purely objective cause it can't be for reasons people already wrote about, but it's the way it should be, and what I would mean if I asked for "objectivity".

No.

The review should be based on how that person felt about the game, imo. That's why you always read many different reviews on a game before you buy it. One person may love the game, the other person may hate it. It just depends what style of games you are into, if you're looking for a good single player or multiplayer experience, and such.

I would consider evaluating the complexity, variety, and pacing as things that are objective. Does it introduce new things as you play (ala The Witness as the game builds on itself to not throw complex things at you at once)? Do they offer a variety of puzzles to solve? A reviewers lack of skill with the game would hopefully disqualify them from being the sole reviewer, but otherwise their poor ability really wouldn't have an affect on the review outside of stating they were hard for a novice player of the genre. I don't think you can call a lack of skill a bias. (If the person hated puzzle games or found them boring, then that would be a bias that is obvious hard to overcome)

Reasonably objective, yes. Otherwise, it just ends up being "this game is dumb and I think it sucks". A good reviewer should be aware of their own bias and should attempt to mitigate that somewhat. Of course, at the same time, it's impossible to be completely objective and no one should strive to throw away all of their feelings about what constitutes an enjoyable experience.

The best reviews will offer a bit of each side.

As an example of completely subjective, look at comments on forums like VGC. This being a Nintendo heavy forum, if I asked for people to give their opinions on the latest FPS game on XO/PS4, you can bet a lot of responses would be some variation of, "lol fps game are boring I don't like this game lol." Does anyone want professional reviewers to be like that?

The best reviews I've read have a reasonable amount of objectivity.

Repetitiveness, variety, fluidity, complexity and so on. However, it is subjective if you don't mind a game being repetitive for example. But more variety is objectively better than limited gameplay assuming that it doesn't hurt other things in the game. It is not always a clear cut but some objectivity is essential for a good review.

"Nothing is objective" is something I read a lot, and that would be because you can't be perfectly objective. But could you be "perfectly subjective" ? I mean, without any consideration for the objective qualities of acting, FX, scenario, dialogues, music, without a standard based on other movies, without considering the genre and target audience, out of thin air, just based on a pure subjective feeling about it ? And would that be any interesting to read "I had fun, period." without any objective reasons ?

So, it should be both, subjective and objective, with a good balance, what I'd call an educated subjectivity. Because the point is not to know if the writer liked it or not, it's about the reader knowing if he will like it or not.

For example, you can like an actor, that doesn't make him a good actor, and you can have a good actor, and that doesn't mean you have to like him. The writer should be able to tell if and be clear about if he likes the actors based on a feeling, or if he believes (right or wrong) that there is a good acting in the movie. Also depending on the movie, if the acting/actor matters that much or not. I mean I like to see Chuck Norris in a movie, just because that's freakin' Chuck Norris, but I would be disappointed if Brad Pitt had a weak acting and dialogues because I believe he's an excellent actor, and I could also like a movie with actors I can't even remember if the scenario is intriguing and the suspense built up. So it's important the critic expose his standards, expectations, and objective reasons for someone to like the movie or not.

Everything you mentioned on your last paragraph is subjective. Good acting is subjecitve. Calling someone a good actor is subjective. Intriguing scenario is subjective, suspense building up is subjective. What are you saying is that reviews should have enough of a summary or digest of the work in question for the average viewer, member of the same culture, social context and speaker of the same language, more or less builds up a mental image which can be considered (or not) an approximation of the critic's subjective experiences with that movie.

The very basis of western science since Descartes has been that, while my sensory perceptions attest to the existence of a world outside myself, the foundations of genuine knowledge lie outside the senses, for perception is unreliable. And you cannot apply his solution, that is reason and later the scientific method, to criticize a work of art. Even the scientific method is not devoid of subjectivity, because there are countless oportunities for it to manifest itself, often even without someone noticing it; from the moment you choose a subject of study all the way to statistical analysis and the procedure of attributing meaning and studying the results.

Unless you want to mathematically describe a movie, but even then you fall into subjectivity when choosing which data to present and on which way. So it's fairly unavoidable, really.

Anyways... the merits of the Django OST or whatever aside, since this is on Gaming Discussion, allow me to say I think gamers whine a bit too much when it comes to criticics. Jesus man. In Metacritic we already have games setting the "highest" standard for anything lower than a >90 average means the game is not critically acclaimed or something, because God forbid those mean critics rating those masterpieces lower than what my hype dictates... sad man.

Came to here to post this. It seems my job is done.

If the person is being completely objective then it ceases to be a review.