@Kraznor: It was on his Vanquish review, and criticized the following:
He says the game is a run-of-the-mill cover shooter with gimmicks that have no applicable use. One of his examples is that the boost is only useful for escaping, because there's "no point getting up close and killed because you have no power left". However, the trick is obviously to make sure you never boost until you're completely out of juice. It's also useful for moving between cover, which brings me to the next point: he says that "sticking to cover is pointless due to the amount of attacks that completely ignore the cover system and instakill Sam through solid walls", when there are in fact extremely few enemies with such attacks (especially of the instantly killing variety) -- extensive use of cover is in fact a must on the harder difficulties. Then we have this part: "Of course, if an enemy throws one of its death missiles at you while you're recharging, you're boned. Sam's dodge maneuver is pathetic and won't get him clear of the giant energy beams and explosions that endlessly come his way." This is an example of the misinformation I was talking about. There is not an attack in the game that can't be avoided with the dodge roll. Then, we have this, which ties into his claim that the boost is useless: "There are a few extra weapons, but they're all discovered within the first 10% of the game and you'll soon learn that the assault rifle's the only useful gun anyway." As most anyone who has actually tried the other weapons for more than ten seconds will attest, many of them are extremely effective, especially in combination with offensive boosting. The disc launcher, for example, allows for melee attacks that don't consume energy (melee attacks consuming energy, by the way, is another thing he complains about -- without, of course, mentioning this exception -- misinformation again!), boosting in with a shotgun allows for far faster kills that slowly chipping away at enemy health with the puny assault rifle, the LFE gun does very high damage to a large area and penetrates enemies, the sniper rifle obviously lets you one-hit-kill many enemies from afar, and so it goes on.
In short: he knows less about the game he's reviewing than I did after playing the demo half a dozen times, and many of his complaints are essentially just him whining about stuff that can be fixed in ways as easy as properly trying out every weapon in the game for a minute or two. A reviewer is supposed to possess great expertise -- this guy doesn't even see how "ultra-fast travelling + shotgun" makes a good combination, or that maybe that the key to effective use of an energy system that essentially works as a regenerating health system is exactly the same as the key to effective use of a regenerating health system: it should be pushed to its limit, but not beyond. (Imagine how people would have reacted if a critic wrote, in a review of say Gears of War, stuff like: "There's no point in using anything but blindfire, because using the more accurate aiming almost always means taking damage -- in fact, all the most effective moves are risky and weaken the player, which is why Gears of War sucks." Or why not take that reasoning to the next level: "Playing games means risking losing, so all games suck -- you're better off watching TV, because you can't lose at that!")
My problem is not that he gave it a 5/10. I don't give a fuck about the score -- if his analysis and criticism was good, he could've hated it and given it a 1/10 for all I care. It's that he can write a review that, quality of writing aside, belongs on GameFAQs, and get paid for it. (Though really, the saddest part is that nobody even seems to understand why it's a bad review.)
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