Video game reviews from 1996-1997 were pretty awful

[lazyfatbum]

What's sad to me is that in order to review a game you have to be educated and well-rounded, have an understanding of everything that goes in to how a game is made and every aspect of it, not just "the music is good", you have to know music dialect, song creation, arrangement, theory and education on the history of music. A video game uses a reversed version of a classical piece of music originally used for funerals at a scene where a character is tranformed, it has depth and meaning but the reviewer will only cite whether it sounds good or bad. In the Zelda series, often times the themes are transposed, reversed, or just conducted differently to become new pieces that carry their original meaning to bolster the scene at hand as part of the "legend", but it completely goes over these people's heads. Then you have color, contrast, the art of art, understanding vectors and design. That's before you even get to gameplay theory and design which is a hell of lot more than "it's like such and such game with some of such and such game" as there are principals of work load Vs. reward among other dynamics. Then you have writing - is the story of the game based on classic literature? is it a retelling of the bible or eastern religious writings? Is it catcher in the rye told in a futuristic setting? are the sub-plots interactive and dependint on the game player, is the game player the antagonist? etc

I hate reviews, I haven't found a single educated reviewer who can actually pass judgement on anything, be it film or video game. I've met food critics with excellent knowledge who can really get in to the entire history and methodology of an item, but trying to find that from a video game review? it doesn't exist. I only use reviews to generalize whether or not a game will be popular among the masses. But that means anything thats not IN YOUR FACE will be ignored or misunderstood.