"somewhere between a game reviewer and..." (Score 1)

Perhaps you would be interested in my game reviews then? I try to approach them as somewhere between a game reviewer and a game player.

What? What does that even begin to mean? Game critics have a tendency to inflate game quality but the reasons why are subject to speculation, conjecture and conspiracy theories. I do know know what kind of extra perspective a game critic might add that a game player hasn't.

Film critics tend to look at movies very differently from the average moviegoer because they've seen a lot more movies. It's a lot harder to impress a person who's seen thousands of films than someone who has seen a few hundred without trying to discern for quality. Imagine a teen girl whose maybe two hundred movies, mostly of the teen-girl shit variety and the best thing she's seen is probably "The Breakfast Club." Now imagine someone who loves films, seeks out the best movies to watch, gets a job as a film critic and watches every new release from that moment on. Is it any surprise that one of them loves "13 Going on 30" and the other thinks it's shit?

What's bizarre is that the experience of being game critics for years doesn't make them harder to impress. Rather, we see nearly the opposite where critics kiss the ass of every triple-A release to come along. Actual gamers who spend their money on expensive new games and spend hours getting involved in them seem to be much better at analyzing the quality of these games but there's one more tangentially related phenomenon I think is interesting enough to throw in this rant that started with me asking what the hell you meant when you said something weird.

The older gamers with lots of experience tend to love a handful of older games and feel like nothing can compare to them. The people who love off-putting games like Deus Ex and X-Com are unlikely to see anything come out that pleases them the way their old favorite did. What are others to make of these opinions? Do these older gamers have experience enough so that we should expect to trust their opinions? I dunno. Maybe it just means Deus Ex is the best game of all time and everything since is simply worse.