Here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lG2dXobAXLI

I appreciate the link, but I can't watch YouTube videos where I am right now.

I don't completely agree with him, but he has some good points. Also, it was mostly meant as a humouristic video, so they shouldn't be too salty about this.

Dunk definitely hit a nerve there. The nature of major game media outlets (needing lots of staff, pleasing advertisers with artificial high scores, insane deadlines leading half-assed reviews) ultimately defeats their purpose outside of news and interviews.

Once again - in the modern age we can ignore the arbitrary scores and their often contradictory text justification in favor of watching some independant footage.

This is really helpful. I'm always trying to improve as a critic, and I'll take this advice to heart.

I wanted to follow up on the point of the review reading like a manual. I've heard complaints from readers that reviews can be too focused on the reviewer's personal experience at the expense of cold, objective data about the game. But in Dunkey's review and in your post, I hear a call for less summary and more analysis.

I try to find a middle ground between objective information and subjective analysis in my reviews, with varying degrees of success. What would be a good balance for you?

Must be a sore spot he hit :p

I agreed with most of what he said in the video.... Apart from his own opinions about turn based combat! glad hes not reviewing any of those :)

Just watched the video. He said nothing offensive and he made some good points. Game critics seem to be awful at actually taking criticism. I think most consumers know at this point that game criticism has some huge flaws. Ignoring them will just get them left behind by new media.

Metacritic does the exact opposite of ironing out these problems. Metacritic makes it even more impersonal and eliminates nuance in opinion. You get literally no context with the review score and no real connection to who the score is from so you may have a game which some people love and some people hate and metacritic will spit out a score of 6. That is useless to a consumer. We need to be told "this is a game that you will love if its in your ballpark, but it will be tough to get into if it isn't", not "it ok".

Then, you have publications like Edge who actually uses the full review scale (usually) stacked up next to critics like IGN who tends to inflate scores (usually) or those trash publications that give ever hyped game a 1.5/10 making the numerical score arbitrary.

Not only does the score provided by Metacritic have no context, but it has no meaning. 

I recently saw a few videos from The Geek Critique about the 2D Metroid series. It was an excelent analysis/review of the games. He didn't just focus on what makes the games good. He didn't just explain the mechanics and atmosphere of the game. He shared what he felt, as a player, during the game. What was hard, unfair, tense and why he felt that way.

The most important part here to me is, what the developers intended the player to feel during gameplay, and if they delivered said reactions, or not, and why. A lot of reviews just ignore this aspect of games. They focus on presentation and gameplay, which is what's most easy to see and understand. I don't need to be told a game looks good or bad, I can easily tell that. When it comes to gameplay, I think reviews focus more on player actions or let's say movesets than they need to. Instead, I want them to focus on how the world/level compliments said actions correctly, or incorrectly. 

I'm not a reviewer though; I don't know exactly what goes into making these things

Every time I write this long paragraphs I wonder if the things I say make sense.

They must care if they're responding to a youtube video

No, that totally makes sense!

I'm looking through my reviews and not finding a lot of examples of what you describe, to be honest. I cover a lot of what a game has and what it allows, but not a lot about how it feels.

I pulled a paragraph from my Infinite Warfare review. Would something like this be a good compromise? It describes what the game allows and also how it felt to play it. Check it out:

With an intriguing sci-fi storyline, huge mission variety, and light simulation/management mechanics, the campaign in Infinite Warfare is something special. Players can easily spend as many as twelve hours exploring the Milky Way and taking down SDF bases and ships. Part Mass Effect, part Battlestar Galactica, it feels truly like an ongoing war of attrition, with small skirmishes being won and lost across the stars.