Why are gaming reviewers so stupid?

[General Zod]

It's a little more than that. I've found that a lot of the games I like have scored 6 or 7 out of ten as much as they do 8 or 9, and plenty of 9/10 games I simply have no interest in playing.

I've learned to pretty much ignore any scores in a review. More often than not reviewers giving out high scores like candy will also liberally throw about buzzwords as much as possible without any useful content. (The amount of times they attach "dynamic" as an adjective to any given word is a big warning sign).

[Oskuro]

Why do I want to read the opinion of an average joe? I want to see the game stress-tested, not lovingly enjoyed.

I feel guilty enough buying gaming magazines for the games they bundle with them, even though they ran out of good games to bundle lately. Well, except Penumbra.

I really don't think there's much analysis to be made. I had a friend who worked at a gaming magazine, and although most of his work was translation, due to the original magazine being from the UK, he did comment on how the few original reviews they had to pen were settled with the developers in advance. Hence my opinion that it's more akin to publicity and promotion than actual reviewing. Or in other words, it's like watching a trailer, not like watching a critic.

[Zixinus]

Well, I think the idea was not specifically to ape Metroid, but to play up Batman's detective skills by allowing you to look around for clues. Dark and Shadowy may be good ambience, but it sucks for actually seeing things. I haven't played it, so I can't tell how well it pulls that off.

The problem with it is simple: there is no penalty for using. With it, you can see trough walls to see enemies, literally. You can see hotspots. It's just too useful.

And it ruins the art effect of the game. Not as if that's a great sacrifice, but really, if I were a developer that spent months developing the graphics, you might as well try to make the player appreciate it.

What's sad, that a fix wouldn't have been that difficult to add. Allow the detective vision only when batman's standing still. Have a charge for it (and call it "Batman's attention"/"Focus").

The flaw is rather minute and not that significant in my opinion, but its a rather odd flaw that no one noticed.