He starts with a statement that is as true or false as you want it to be: “Nobody is seriously accusing any website or writer of accepting money from publishers in direct exchange for positive reviews.”
Mega 64 regularly does some great work but this video is absolutely a game of the year candidate. Skewering the review system and the crap dissenting voices often receive, I give this parody movie trailer a solid 10 out of 10.
Danc at Lost Garden has another take on the utility (or lack thereof) of game reviews in today’s gaming landscape, this one looking at the ‘expertise bias.’ He points out the disparity between reviewers and players when it comes to looking at new games — especially ones that have a gentle difficulty curve. His basic operating premise is that because game reviewers have plowed through so many titles and mechanics, they’re looking at ‘difficulty’ in an entirely different light than vast portions of the audience. What will the future look like? He posits observation of other players is going to become increasingly important to developers, and if reviews can’t keep up with that, they will really fall by the wayside: