Patrick, I'm wondering what your opinion is on the points raised in the Evan Tongotti piece. Personally, I found both arguments to be too generalized to really be of use to anyone, as the two seemed intent on invoking grand concepts about reviews that seemed too lofty to really be of use to a person writing a real review.
For instance, the user repeated the term 'credibility' over and over, but failed to really make a case for how this credibility is earned. He seemed to imply that a reviewer is credible if the review is based in fact over opinion, but in his own review injected several subjective points that somewhat diminished the veracity of his argument.
On the other hand, I feel that Tongotti is decently effective in getting his point across, but his argument seemed to be all over the place. First he issues a satirical 'objective' review of Beyond--something that strikes me as a big 'no-no' for game critics, as this re-do implies, to me, a lack of faith in the reviewer's original piece--then offers to hear out the user's argument in a long-form interview, asking questions that seemed to imply a change of mindset when it comes to review methodology. Yet he turns around after that review and states the user is full of shit, and doesn't seem to take anything away from the experience. Maybe something's changed vis a vis the reviewer's writing process now, but from this limited selection of sources I feel as though the reviewer really didn't do much to help his case. Maybe you saw something here I didn't, but I'm curious to hear your opinion, given that you not only review games for the site but post opinion pieces frequently.
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