You people amaze me.
12 hours later, and the day shift is at it now, littering the PS3 forum with conspiracy theories and new charges of bias. Moderators have tried valiantly to remind these people of Aaron's past and how one site's review score doesn't mean much in terms of a game's overall success, but to no avail.
Blind loyalty makes these people look like morons. Whining morons, at that.
Let's take a look at a couple of these more recent complaints, hm? This'll be fun, I promise.
First up, KoolEmpty writes, "Some reviewers appear to be given to much freedom over how a game is reviewed..." So, what... you expect reviewers to have some sort of canned review style? Of course! Why should gaming journalists-- some of which have been playing games for more years than you've been alive-- have the freedom to write what they think about a game? Screw it. Let's just give perfect 10s to everything. Big Rigs might have been frustrating and felt broken, but those bugs are pretty damned funny and that makes the game awesome! There's no such thing as "too much freedom" when reviewing a game; it's your opinion, and you have to rely on your experience and reputation to win the day for you when writing what you believe are accurate impressions of a game. Not everyone will agree, and some others will have their minds made up, but you're bring paid to write your own opinion of the game... and if they disagree, then so be it.
Here's some alleged insight by elfranger007: "The PS3 did get low balled from all directions. It got low balled when GameSpot gave it to a person who doesn't review these games. It got low balled again when the reviewer decided to bash the game because he couldn't comprehend the enjoyment of the series..." OK, OK... stop right there. Wow. If we take a look at Aaron's past reviewing experience (He did work as a professional journalist before GameSpot hired him... try using Google), you'd see that he covered a lot more than sports games. Aaron's covered action games, racing games, FPS games, music/rhythm games, and more... so this guy is dead wrong on the first point. As to the second point, he didn't dig the story. Is that a crime now? Apparently only reviewers who have played a Ratchet & Clank game in the past and "comprehend the enjoyment of the series" can cover new games in the series? So this also means that gamers who have never played a Ratchet & Clank game before should buy Tools of Destruction, right? Wrong again. The fact is that you're weeping bitter tears with no base for your allegations. "I am pissed because he didn't like a game that I liked." There. Fixed. Move on. That reminds me... I still have to put the screws to Jeff Gerstmann because I thought Irritating Stick was much better than a lowly 3.0 score. GameSpot sucks! ![]()
For these people, and the rest of you who can't seem to comprehend the notion of a difference of opinion: All you've done with this pointless crying and baseless theorizing is to pump up GameSpot's hit counter and earn the site moe money. Aaron's review is now more successful than it would have been by being the mindless and conformist piece that you all wanted it to be. He's pushed your buttons and is now sitting back and laughing at all of this hate mail, along with those of us who actually understand reason.
So, congratulations to you. Job well done. I guess.