I've had a chance to sleep now, and think better about my last post.
Shadenuat is correct - if I call upon my experience and merely glance at something, and then use that to write a
review that will be published and used as a basis for other people's opinions, then I'm doing something very wrong. I can only give my personal opinion; a review is a slightly more complicated matter that has to go through a due process of sorts - sadly not all gaming journalists tend to bother even with that.
I worked briefly as a gaming journalist here in Iceland, the briefness of that career was due to the fact that I wrote my mind, not what my editor wanted me to write. But it gives me some experience in that field, so I'm going to give gaming journalists the slack here that they deserve: Trying to write a review for a game that
is boring, unintersting, without instructions of any kind or just plain broken is a painstaking process, it will wear you down if you have to do that on a regular basis.
Spellcaster touched on this, most gamers keep the memory alive of the games they
enjoyed, rarely of the games they hated. Of the 10 or so games that I reviewed (and received free copies for) I only kept the copy of Serious Sam: FE, because that was the only game I really enjoyed reviewing. (Still only gave it a 8/10 review.)
The above words still don't change the fact that we need a better breed of gaming journalists all round. The field is badly in need of experienced gamers AND journalists that aren't so tight with the publishers that they wear the same underwear.
