Hi everyone, and happy April Fool’s Day. This is not a review. Sometimes people get confused about that, so on this day of foolishness, I’m going to break it down for you all. You can tell if something is a review on TheGamer because the image at the top will say ‘REVIEW’ in big capital letters, it’s posted to the review section of the site, and has a scorecard at the bottom. But then, peop𓆉le normally don’t seem to have an issue identifying what is a review, but rather in identifying what is not.
Some sites don’t use scores, instead giving their own version of them (for example, telling you to wait for a sale), or avoiding them altogether. This can make it trickier to spot, but they’ll still a) drop before the game comes out, b) talk about the game in its entirety, and c) have ‘Review’ in the title. That last one is the kic🌳ker, really. Around these parts though, there are no such worries. We give reviews a score. Anything else and it’s probably not a review. Let’s break those things down, shall we?
Opinion Pieces
These sorts of articles are by far the most often confused with reviews, and to a certain extent, I get it. Reviews and opinion pieces both focus on talking about a game subjectively, bringing the writers’ own opinions into the mix. Recently, I wrote about 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Storyteller and my disappointment with the game’s length and failure to expand on what seemed like a great idea. I wasn’t our reviewer, but if I was, I would have touched🎉 on the same points. I would have had a wider focus and discussed things d🌜ifferently, but it’s an understandable mistake to make.
Less understandable would be last year when Metal: Hellsinger came out, and I wrote a slightly tongue in cheek article about how a lifetime listening to sad white girl music like Tay꧟lor Swift and Phoebe Bridgers left me usele🐠ss at the game. I was told it was unfair for me to give the game a bad review just because I didn’t like the music. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Our actual reviewer gave it 4.5/5, I just wanted to wr🎐ite about Taylor Swift, fr෴iendo.
A couple of years ago, someone at the site wrote about how it’s fun to use mods to 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:play Skyrim as a mudcrab - someone emailed me to thank us for our ‘impressive review’. Of Skyrim. In 2021. Another time, I complained that Kingdom Hearts games don’t use Disney characters🎀 as well as they should, and was inundated with emails complaining about my biased review. Even the article in which we explicitly said ‘168澳洲幸运5开奖网:we will not review Hogwarts Legacy’ was criticised for being a biased review. I don’t know how you ꦗget further away from a review than a sentence that says ‘no review’, but I hope one day I discover it.
In fact, months before 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Hogwarts Legacy came out, I received a very long and very entertaining email about how our review (which🌠 we did not write) was biased, while reviews at other sites (which, months from launch, did not exist) were much fairer. I often wonder 𒉰what on Earth that person had read.
News Posts
This is the second most common cause of confusion, and I have a much harder time getting this one. When we say ‘peopl🥃e are complaining about the rain i꧒n Resident Evil 4’ or ‘168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Atomic Heart has a racist cartoon’, we’re no༺t reviewing either of those games. We are telling you a fact. If you do not like♛ the fact it is not my problem. And it is also not a review.
Lists About The Game
I know it feels like listicles rule the world these days, but lists are not reviews. They are lists. Usually they’re things like ‘best guns in the game’ or ranking every character or location. There’♔s opinion, but they’re not reviews of the game as a whole. Even when they&▨rsquo;re about changes the game could make, they’re addressing specific moments. Please stop emailing me lists where you think entries five and six should be flipped, and telling me it’s a biased review.
Lists Not About The Game
Now this one is a noodle scratcher. Say we did a list like ‘168澳洲幸运5开奖网:best games set in New York’. That’s not a list about any game in particular. It’s several games bound by a si🍌ngle similarity, ranked f🅘or funsies. You don’t need to get upset if your favourite game comes third.
It’s just light entertainment. You don’t need to take it so seriously. You certainly don’t need to email me asking that I hire objective reviewers who will always definitely absolutely truly put things🧜 in the right order. ‘Right’ meaning ‘whatever you think’, of course.
A Bag of Onions
This is not a review, but in fact a bag of onions. I’m afraid you&rﷺsquo;ve gone quite far☂ off track with this one.
Guides
It feels like people view games media as two things: reviews (which tell you about the game) and guides (which tell you how to play the game). But even that divide is not sacred. If a guide wanders into opinion territory - which it must when it’s telling you which option out of two choices is best to make - then it too can be subject to complaints about biased reviews. We’re deep into touch grass t🏅erritory when you think a guide on which guns to buy first is somehow biased against everything you love.
Tweets
Writers at TheGamer tweet things somet🎉imes, up to and including ‘this game is not very good’. It’s not a review. We post our reviews on our reviews page, not on Twitter.
This Article Right Now
This is also not a review. Please don’t email me saying you di♛sagree with this review.