people care too much about critic scores (critic opinions generally, but scores particularly). some dude with a degree isn't going to know what suits your specific tastes and more than likely won't have the same viewpoint as the average consumer. rotten tomatoes and goodreads have their own problems but i appreciate the wide scope of opinions
the idea that critics are "too far removed from the average viewer" is much the point of professional critics and it's not a new phenomenon. how many times have we seen this massive gulf between critic and audience reception in film. that's not to say either camp is meaningless or irrelevant but that both have their purposes and neither should be taken as gospel
Also kind of unrelated to the mixtape drama, but like the idea of a critic scoring everything from a 1 to 10 with no clear scoring criteria and that their reviews essentially boil down to like 5 words is extremely fucking weird.
Yes, even movie critics do that and I still think it’s extremely fucking weird.
You don’t see art critics scoring idk the fucking Mona Lisa “9/10 it’s a gift that keeps on giving.” No nobody does that, cause that’s fucking stupid. You cannot capture the essence of a work of art such as videogames or movies with an arbitrary score.
And I’m not saying that everything needs complex essays like “the sociocultural and theological implications of Tomadachi Life” (although that would objectively fucking incredible) but like at least get like a few metrics on what that final scored was based on like story, game design, art direction and polish.
We need critics to you know actually critic stuff; I want reviews to have such wonderful words such as “careless” “self-serving” and “underdeveloped.” But like of course that’s kind of against how the industry functions and I doubt poignant reviews will receive that much traction or publicity as simple 9/10s or 2/10s.
