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First of all, reviews are always a matter of taste, of course. If a reviewer does not like "Bard's Tale"-Style CRPGs (like W&W) he will naturally tend to rate it worse than if he loves to play them.
But being a journalist should include a professionalism that leads to a more or less taste-independent point of view. Even if I do not like a particular game for one reason or the other I can still try to give it a neutral rating using criteria like "How are the graphics/sound/music?", "Is there a story? How good is it?", "How detailed is the game?", "Do I want to play the game a second time?", and so on, and so on... The problem with that is, however, that you also have to be quite independent from others' opinions to do that.
In Germany, where I live, we have about 20 magazines dealing with computer- and videogames. In my opinion we had only one game magazine that went beyond being blinded by tremendous graphics. (and I often went by its recommendations, which also brought me to W&W, btw.) The staff went for criteria like gameplay, story, or fun for a rating. They also used a very sophisticated language and a writing style that was fun to read. Unfortunately the majority of the customers seems to ask for only the most simple gameplay like first-person-shooters or wrestling games - the console-type games (I know there are some complex console games, but they are only few). And they seem to ask only for simple-style reviews without depth. The result was, to put it short: not enough ads, not enough sales for the magazine - closure of the magazine.
So now we have to put up with reviews from "experts" who don't care about story or depth in a game, just make it shine bright and boom loud and they are satisfied.
There ARE some very competent reviewers around here, but their high-standard work simply does not sell well enough. We have to stick to our own judgement again.
Sad but true.
Thanks for letting me rant.
[This message has been edited by Elcid (edited 05-25-2001).]
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