The review process - how should it be done?

[Tinman]

Deconstruction of the Critic

What it actually means to be a critic, and how all opinions are not equal

[Necuno]

thanks for the read, i find that if i really don't know whether or now to get the game i normally weight up a few opinions on it and try the demo as well. this is why i do like metacritic for example.

however it's my personal taste not to read 70% wit and 30% review/article. i prefer (i guess too much 'white papers' is to blame) articles or reviews just to be without them or containing very few repetitions thereof. Maybe this preference only extends to what i read over the podcasts i watch for reviews and previous as i think of them, well they do contain some wit as well. thought there's quite a difference between wit and just blatant QQ from start till stop.

maybe it would be great if we could maybe include a poll with each reviewed game where we can add our opinions/ratings to it as we play the game. since i guess we aren't all going to get copies of it to "review" last played game X quite cool in this regard i would say.

[wheunis]

Every now and then, I read a review.
Sometimes, inbetween multiple reviews, I buy some games.

Never, in my existence, have I played a game and agreed with more than a handful of words out of any of it's 500 (or more) reviews.

Problem is, reviewers in the gaming industry are never put on the spot, to account for their crimes.
I'm not talking about Johnny-with-his-own-blog-who-somehow-feels-entitled-to-bash-everything-that-isn't-Halo.
When I refer to reviewers, I refer to people who actually get paid to do it as a job/career.

Opinion is fine, and expected to a certain degree, within a review. But when a reviewer is so consistently wrong - it can only mean that he is injecting FAR too much opinion, and not enough clay.