| Khuutra said: Reasonable: I would agree with you, but literary and cinematic criticism isn't that simple, either. There are schools which consider intent, and other such immeasurable things - it is why Ebert greatly enjoyed Michael Bay's Transformers. There is no single standard for criticism. |
Oh I know, I could write an article on it but that would take up too much space. But there is no doubt that, out of Music, Film, Literature and Games it is game reviews that are by far and away the most inconsistent and open to interpretation, even allowing for new titles/approaches which can challenge accepted norms making them hard to review in the first place (just look at the first reviews for 2001, and compare its structure to the then (and even today) accepted norm for a film - in a sense for many reviewers it was in a sense impossible for them to review because they were trying to use a set of metrics and expectations that just didn't fit.
But my question wasn't about a single standard, but the fact of certain standards and the value of a review vs its just an opinion.
In the end reviews exist, or at least one of their primary reasons for existing, is to allow you to leverage the supposed knowledge of someone else to help you make choices where there are too many potentially available - i.e the reviewer isn't just another opinion, but someone with a great deal of knowledge and understanding of the medium, be that Art, Film, whatever.
With games that's clearly one of the main goals - but I feel that often game reviews are so biased to the reviewers own thoughts vs any form of standard (would you even credit a game reviewer as having better knowledge than you of videogames) that they are in danger of becoming useless.
Put it another way, while I don't always agree with them there are many film, music and literature reviews I value, whereas I really couldn't say the same for any videogame source.
Try to be reasonable... its easier than you think...
