No, Reviews require an opinion BUT it is neccessary to provide evidence of that opinion in order to avoid getting sued, or look non professional.

Well thats here at least. The US is fortunate in that you can say anything u want under the free speech amendment.

I don't and won't mention shock jock radio or tv opinion makers. They are a pretty bad example.

Maybe they're comparing Wii games to Ps3/360 games instead of judging them by Wii standards...

I think Metroid only got a 7 there. Those pricks >_>

neutrality and objectivity are only concepts which exist in our heads , in reality we're unable to be either it's just more obvious in some people.

Or.. you can BEAT it into people. =p

It really is amazing how violence truly IS the answer!

A review is an opinion. Objective journalism is description. If it just description you wouldn't be as interested.

So its quite simple. Does the reviewer provide enough evidence to justify the rating they give the game?

Seeing as GI is just a giant advertisement for Gamestop this doesn't surprise me.

What are you talking about? They should not review wii games unless they give them good scores..? Clearly, if you don't like a wii game it has to be because "it isn't in HD". There can't be any other reason to dislike wii games. Never.

btw:

SMG 98, zelda 100, brawl 95, RE4 95, MP3 95, Okami 93... all above metacritic scores. Wtf was this thread about again? :)

Bias is rife in the magazine industry!

I think the sample was random since I took the first ten games listed in alphabetical order and I don't believe a game is affected by alphabetical position.

!0 may or may not be significant given the relatibly small number of reviews available from any one magazine on any one platform. I was almost half way through the aplphabet in some cases but I doubt seriously that a larger sample is going to change things when 90% of the reviews are high. I do a lot of scientific research and while we of course use larger samples, patterns that show up this distinctly at ten random samples seldom cahnge that dramatically.

It was enough of a sample to put IGN within .4 points of perfect average, significantly raising my faith in the reviewers at IGN.

I also was impressed with how fair, even tough the fanboy publications were in comparison to Game Informer. That was a major surprise. My kudo's to their professionalism and balamce.

If I can find the time I will do a more in detail analysis but I'm willing to bet Grandma's virginity that Game Informer won't improve significantly. I do judge Game Informer differently because they are owned and supplied by a huge retailer that uses them as an inducement to get customer loyalty. I think they carry therefore a greater burden to be fair than a completely independant source and certainly a Fanboy magazine; and yet they seem to under perform both.

And what's the beef with the signature exactly? I spent several hours doing it. It was all meant in good fun but if it offends, I will certainly remove it. I've had it for several weeks and no one has complained before.

If you moved the games reviewed to 100 I would call this a good cross section. But 10 is too small, it can allowed for lets say you getting Halo 3, Bioshock and Call of Duty 4 all in the 360 selection and 5 crappy 3rd party "party" games for the Wii and 4 Lair type games for the PS3 and skew the living hell out of your numbers.

Each plat form has over a 100 games on it, so each publicist should have over a 100 reviews for each platform.

Personally, I like Game Informer, though it does appear as a whole they dont like the Wii at times.