The reason so many reviewers has so much difficulty reviewing games is similar to the reason why so many developers have such difficulty producing games for anyone except for "Core" gamers ... The industry does a pretty piss-poor job of attracting people with a moderate interest in videogames to get involved with the development or reviewing of videogames so there is little or no understanding of what anyone except for "Core" gamers want in games.
I could be wrong but I suspect that the percentage of gamers who fall into the category of "Core" gamers peaked with the SNES/Genesis generation and since then there has been far more growth from unconventional gamer demographics (although the definition of "Core" would be a lot different in the early 1990s than it is today). Since then unconventional gamers have been the primary sorce of growth in the industry and the definition of what a "Core" gamer is has changed in order to retain their dominance in the industry.
The side effect of the Nintendo DS and Wii's popularity is that "Core" gaming would have to be drastically redefined in order to retain dominance because the "Kiddie/Casual/Unconventional" gamers now (drastically) outnumber "Core" gamers; one of the main reasons for this is there are a lot of "Core" gamers (like me) who also are "Kiddie/Casual/Unconventional" gamers, whereas there are a lot of people who would be classified as "Kiddie/Casual/Unconventional" gamers who do not play "Core" games. A lot of reviewers seem to be trying to justify their own preferences and games that would have received scores of 85% to 90% on the PS2/XBox/Gamecube are receiving 95%+ for the HD consoles, while games that would have received 75% to 80% on the PS2/XBox/Gamecube are receiving below 65% for the Wii.
