Game Informer (America) review of Metroid Other M

[MaxwellGT2000]

makingmusic476 said:

I think maxwell's questioning of GameInformer stems from the time he spent employed at GameStop.  Anybody that reads GameInformer consistently knows their reviews can be quite suspect.  Working at GameStop only compounds this when you see how their reviews and magazine ads correlate with their in-store marketing for new games.

Honestly, the entire notion of a retailer rating the product they sell is suspect, as they will obviously have a vested interest in promoting certain product over others.  It is also in their interest to nurture the relationship they have with larger publishers, which often leads to their favoring of blockbuster releases over more niche titles in both their own (non-publisher funded) marketing and previews/reviews.

That being said, this is a Nintendo title, so its final score is unexpected given GI's normal MO.  Their scores for Sin & Punishment and New Super Mario Bros. were both above the Metacritic average, for example, and I would've expected the same to be the case here.  The fact that this review is not only below the average, but is thus far the lowest review out after G4's, I can only assume the guy just really didn't like it.  Which is odd, considering most reviewers seem to think it's pretty cool.

But yeah, GI's reviews have always been questionable.  I think maxwell just tossed in a joke about this to explain away the low score.

This part of the review made me lol though:

Even worse, Samus often comes off as an idiot. After one supporting character has clearly established that the space station has been doing biological weapons tests, Samus asks, "Do you think they were doing biological weapons tests?" Later, in her internal monologue, she again reiterates this confirmed fact we learned just 20 minutes ago.

Has the guy never played a Japanese game before?  I'd hate to see his reaction after playing MGS4.

Pretty much nailing it, I don't really trust GI's scores on any console but it's highly suspect when you can go on meta and find a lot of the lowest reviews for Wii games being from GI and when you read the full review it has poor writing/reasoning, this review is better written than say the Silent Hill review, but it's still got some iffy reasoning, since GI as a whole seems to bitch whenever they need to point the Wii remote at a screen and no other reviewer has this problem.

Also I listed an obvious inconsistency between two similar reviews but it was a subject that should be cut and dry, being music.