the_dengle said:
Adinnieken said:
It negatively impacts the media, and it may impact the ability for the media to offer credible reviews...
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The media has suffered from an inablilty to offer credible reviews for years. I wouldn't want them to feel like they have an excuse though.
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I guess I disagree.
The thing you have to do is learn the reviewer. Some game reviewers are good for certain types of games, and bad for others.
Ryan McCaffrey for example does great FPS reviews, but there are other game types that he obviously doesn't appreciate, and he'll offer poor reviews for. When I read OXM his reviews for FPS games were always high, but it justified the scores in the reviews and if an FPS was truly bad he offered a critical review. But when he was tasked to review a non-FPS game, the review became highly critical and the game rarely scored well.
There are other journalists that score any kind of game hyper critically, there are others that score games way too highly. You sincerely have to look at a lot of reviews, play a game yourself, and see what reviewer got it right and which ones got it wrong (in your opinion). Then see if those reviewers are consistent with all game types or whether or not their reviews vary greatly by game type, system, or publisher.
With the exception of the bloggosphere and hacks that try to pawn themselves off as journalists, I think the majority of true game journalists that exist are there to offer an honest review of a game. Most have the agenda of informing gamers. Some may have slight biases to encourage or discourage you to buy a game, but generally the reviews are honest reviews when all is considered in the end.
But as has been pointed out, a disturbing trend is that gaming journalists are increasingly having to give up credibility for access to games. So the good reviews, that are fair and honest, will likely fade away and shill journalism will take its place. Subsequently you'll see reviews from people who say great things about a game, not critical reviews that offer an honest opinion.
If anything of what is being said in some of these articles is true, than we are in for a very rough generation and it may actually hurt game studios and publishers more than it helps them.
That said, I really wish the bloggosphere hacks would go to hell and let the real journalists do their job. Opinions do not make one a writer. The ability to be objective, critical, and fair, as well as convey to the general public concepts in a way they can grasp, is what journalism is.
