The difficulty of reviewing/critiquing video game remakes/remasters

This might be something you guys have thought about in the past and recently with the Crash N.Sanity Trilogy now out it's come to my attention again. One trend I tend to see with some of the major review sites when it comes to games like the Crash Trilogy is if it's a particularly old game then a reviewer usually judges that games attributes based on modern perceptions. Of course that doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing, If the said game has some notorious game-breaking problems then fixing those for a remake would be mostly welcomed by people. However in this specific case of Crash and many other classic games getting similar re-releases, some of these reviewers complaints are about smaller "issues" which many would argue that they are an integral part of the feel of the game. One example I saw for Crash was "Abrupt spikes in difficulty that could have been ironed out" which I think some would say that's just part of the game's challenge.

I understand it's a tricky situation for a reviewer that has to essentially inform two audiences about the game, firstly they have to tell newcomers about what this classic franchise is about and secondly they have to tell returning fans about the more subtle changes and what's been retained. Also it can be pretty redundant to inform people about a quality of a game that has essentially already been released decades ago, I mean I'm pretty sure a significant number of us are already pretty familiar with our favorite franchises from yesteryear and we'd be more interested in hearing about potential changes and the quality of the actual remake rather than being told what we already know about the actual game's good and bad points.

One idea I had was as well has having a traditional 1-10 score system, you could also have a "Swing-o-Meter" where if the needle is swung to the right it would mean that the remake has improvements/touch-ups from the original source such as updated graphics and some extra features but a swing to the left would mean that the remake takes away from the original game such as worse controls and new bugs and if the needle is in the middle then it's pretty much just a re-release with little to no changes. It's not perfect but I think for those of us that just want a quick overview of something like the Crash Trilogy would find something like this pretty helpful.

I think they're doing it the right way. If you've never played the Crash games before, you'll probably think they're trash. If you have fond memories of Crash games, why do you need a review? What more do you need than it's the same game and it looks better.

Games should always be reviewed with the idea that the reader hasn't played the game before.

For content, refer readers to reviews from the time of original release. Otherwise, just explain whether the port was handled well on a technical level.

Seems simple enough.

As long as you're not one of those morons that call it "The Dark Souls" of remakes

Review it like any other game. Just make it clear where you're coming from and report your experience. My problem with remastered reviews have been that, generally, they don't seem to actually play through the entire game. I've played a good number of them, ones deemed to be execellent, and while they'll all been pretty good, I've always come across flaws, usually in the middle or back half of the game and they're seldom pointed out.