If you listen to The Hotspot, watch G4's web content, listen to the Giant Bombcast and/or listen to IGN's Nintendo Voice Chat podcast, you might already have an inkling as to what this might be about.

For the rest of you, here be the skinny: On top of all the controversy Denis Dyack has caused for his game, Too Human, now game reviewers are getting into the midst of things. G4's Kevin Pereira has called out Kevin Van Ord's Too Human review. Then, as I was listening to the latest episode of IGN's Nintendo Voice Chat podcast, I heard Matt Casamassina saying that any critic out there who had given the game a middling score -- C's, 5/10's, et cetera -- had "no business reviewing games" and were "obviously reviewing the company, not the game."

Before I go on with my thoughts on this, let me disclaim now that, in the past, I once had this feature on Trigames.NET called "The Callout" in which I'd literally call out someone whose review I thought stunk -- and explain why. This was childish and stupid, and I stopped it after the second edition. (However, I've kept it up on the site as a reminder of the mistakes I've made in the past. If you want to see me at my very worst, feel free to search for it. I'm embarrassed, to say the least, and I'd definitely put this way below my Halo review on Trigames, my Final Fantasy VIII reader review on RPGamer, and my scathing forum defense of my Breath of Fire II Gamespot review on the "how low can you go" scale.)

With regards to Pereira's callout, I think Van Ord himself sums my thoughts up pretty nicely in saying that a little professional courtesy would have been nice. Why not start a dialog, instead of just throwing up your hands and saying, "That's bull. I gotta respond"? Kevin Van Ord is not a fanboy on a forum, using the veil of anonymity as a confidence booster to say whatever he wants about a game through text. Kevin Van Ord -- whether you agree with his views or not, whether you enjoy his writing or not -- is a professional game critic who holds himself completely accountable for what he writes. As such, I think Kevin Pereira -- a fellow critic -- should have treated him as such, reached out to him, and said, "Hey, I disagree with you, but I'd definitely like to discuss this further. And hey -- it'd make for a pretty interesting video feature, don't you think?"

It goes beyond that, though. If you're going to lambast a fellow critic on his own opinion / views, I'd think it would behoove you to give it some clear, articulate thought. Now, I know this is on KP's personal blog, I know he disclaimed that it was a rambly mess, and I can understand and appreciate that; he, too, should be allowed to voice his opinion in a manner he pleases. It's just that as a professional critic / game journalist, it doesn't look very good for your own official critiques -- in terms of perserving your integrity with your audience -- to spout out something jumbled and then go on to say that you feel the need to defend the game in question even more. One's review of a game should be based on his/her own views -- not the views of others. Of course, I'm not saying that he's going to go back and write his review to say, "And to the haters, screw y'all -- Too Human is fantastic! It's better than I say it is because someone else hates it!" But this type of message sticks in the minds of your audience.

(By the way -- I hope this isn't viewed as a callout of a callout. I'm not trying to demonize KP, nor do I think he has "no right" to do what he did. I recognize there's a thin line between giving your thoughts on what someone else says and actively calling their butt out and telling them they're wrong, and I hope I'm not crossing it. If so, I apologize for the ironic hypocrisy.)

Now, I have a different issue with the Casamassina thing. He basically makes a blanket-statement towards anyone who lowballed -- read: disagreed with his opinion of -- the game. Specifically, I remember him saying a C or C- was a lowball. You know who gave Too Human a C-? 1up.com's Giancarlo Varanini. You know GCV. He's been around. He's been around for nearly a decade, if not more. He used to write for ol' Gamespot waaaaaaay back when. He then moved to the Official Playstation Magazine before Sony ended its publication partnership with Ziff, following that up with a stint as a staff writer at GameTap (before it went under) prior to rejoining the Ziff army.

Then there's Jeff Gerstmann over at Giant Bomb. He gave Too Human a 3 out of 5. That's a middling score, and definitely below the "low eights" Casamassina said he'd have given Too Human had he reviewed it. Whether or not you agree with Jeff, whether or not you like his work, this man has also been around the industry for around ten years. Then there's Reiner from Game Informer -- 6.75 -- and again, Reiner has been around the industry for about a decade.

My question is, why does Casamassina insinuate that these people have "no business" reviewing games? Is it just because he can't stand that they disagree with him, which puts him at a similar level to frothing forumites? Or does he have some truly legit reasoning, none of which I heard on his podcast? I don't think that just anyone can come in and review a game, true, but I will say that anyone who can clearly write out their arguments in a balanced manner, understands games, and plays enough games to have perspective on what they're writing has at least some business voicing their opinions in a publication.

Oh, and lest I forget, it'd be anyone who also doesn't bow to personal pressures. Note: Casamassina clearly states on the podcast that the IGN Nintendo team is "very good friends with Denis" Dyack. I'm not necessarily saying that this alone colors his opinion of the game itself, but rather it colors his statement that others are "clearly reviewing the company, not the game" -- which is to say that it sounds like Casamassina takes every negative review as a personal insult to his friend. If that's the case, and that's what he thinks, so be it -- but that doesn't invalidate those reviews. Here, too, I would like to have seen some real reasons for why he thought Too Human was a "low eights" game and why exactly these other reviewers have no business in their trade.

I do appreciate that perhaps that wasn't the platform to discuss his opinions of the game, but it certainly doesn't help the issue when he's not backing up what he's saying. Casamassina himself has been around for an incredibly long time. He's an industry dinosaur with a robust track record, and as such, I expected a little more out of him.

Should I be opening a dialog between Pereira and Casamassina? Probably. But I'm just a peon, a lowly bug skittering around the bottom of the totem pole. I'm still more of a fan first and foremost. And as a fan, I'd wait for them to open a dialog with Van Ord, Varanini, Gerstmann, and everyone else who they felt "lowballed" Too Human (and felt compelled to comment on) first before seeing them waste their time on me.

As far as review scores and people griping about them, I used to be one of those -- and sometimes I still am. That's changed slightly since Alex brought me on to be a freelance peon. I can't say that my catalog of Virtual Console and "lesser-in-demand" portable games makes me a power in the game critic industry (hah! as if; I'm still a peon), but it does bring a new perspective when you're organizing a critique for a widely-read publication where you have to be extra careful about firstly backing up your points, and secondly making sure that the review hits your audience the right way.

By that I don't mean you cater to the audience to "make them happy" but rather the exact opposite. You can't just slap on a score of 8 or above on a game with flaws that could hinder the experience just because "well golly I had so much fun". We have to take into account whether or not the flaws are something that are acceptable in this day and age; we have to take into account whether our level of fun is tainted by nostalgia or certain odd predilections for certain game mechanics. Should I have given Shiren: The Wanderer an 8.5 just because I loved that it was a game made for masochists? No -- absolutely not. Could I justifiably give, say, Castlevania II: Simon's Quest a 9.0 just because I know how to progress through the game on account of previous personal (childhood) experience, even though the complete lack of in-game info will leave many people today gnashing their teeth at where to go next? No, of course not!

Every time I see a review that I personally disagree with, I now try my best -- though I still fail on occasion -- to look at it with this perspective in mind. Because hey, it hurts when someone insinuates to you that you don't know jack about games just because they don't like the score you gave something, even if you did your due diligence and backed up what you were saying. I'll still gripe among friends, yeah (whoever said I wasn't childish, anyway?), but I stopped doing the stupid Callouts even before I started reviewing for GS, and I'm glad I did. Nothing good could come out of them -- at least, nothing that couldn't have been better served by well-reasoned discourse and dialog.

(Note: The "recommend" versus "discussion" distinction bears mentioning here, in terms of: Does the review serve to recommend the game to the prospective buyer [Gamespot, Giant Bomb], or does it serve as a discussion point for those who want to dissect it and engage in discourse [1up]?)

So, I'll end this by going back to Too Human for a mite. What does it "really" deserve (hah! yeah right)? I don't know -- I've only played the demo. I see flaws, and I also see merit. Based off the demo alone, I would "predict" that I would give the game a 3 out of 5 on Trigames -- which, for us, still means that you should play the game while being prepared for annoyances (read: IT'S NOT A BAD SCORE! *jeez*) -- and that comes with a big fat "I could very well change my mind once I finish the retail copy" disclaimer. I still want to play the game, whether it be via rental or ownership, because even with all of the negative things said about it, there are still positives there -- even in the middling-score reviews -- that intrigue me. At the end of the day, and I said this on a recent podcast episode (I forget which), those that just look at the score and dismiss the rest might be missing out on something they'd truly enjoy, because, "*scoff* I never play a game that gets lower than a 9" is just not the way to go about things. Fair enough if you don't have the time or money to risk it, but there's no reason to be faux-elitist about it. Besides -- you never know if you'll end up thinking that the 9 was too generous