TASK 5: Game Journalism...

Game journalists have a difficult job. Really.
It seems as though it's not all rainbows and sunshine up in those air-conditioned offices of theirs. Reviewers for magazines have a deadline to stick to and usually they have about 19 days per issue. That's not long, especially if you have say 5-10 games to probe deeply and come up with a fair score and writeup for. Of course, there's always the possibility that the score that you give a certain game will severely piss off whomever made it. Oooh good, irate game developers on your ass...

But to be fair, it'd be their own damn fault if someone gave them a bad review. It seems that some websites/magazines are "persuaded" by companies to change their score sometimes. Bah.
What's the point of a rating system if it's not accurate? If the game is bad then the respective developer should do something about it. end of.
Personally, I rely on scores fairly heavily. If I'm looking to buy a certain game I'll tend to look at it's score on gamespot, IGN etc to see how they feel first.
Occasionally if there's a game I've been looking forward to for a while I'd buy it despite a bad review. Unless all reviews were particulary bad, then I'd avoid it like ketchup on dogfood. The point is though, if I want to buy a game, I want to know exactly how good or bad it is before I shell out £30+.

After reading some of these new game journalism pieces, I can see how much more honest and personal they are. Also, they're also a hell of alot more interesting to read. I read the article about MGS2 first off and agreed with most of what the guy said. Although I've had many discussions with friends about how random the story is, I don't think I've read much of anything regarding it online...To be fair, I haven't looked that hard, but most reviews I read before buying the game didn't mention anything about the bizzare story. Not that I'm complaining, I loved the game, but an honest review with a structure different to others once in a while would be refreshing.

In regards to my own writing style, I feel that it's more subjective than objective. Usually when I feel strongly about something, or enjoy something, I'll tend to think about what I enjoyed and bypass the bad. I know it's good to think about the positive, which is what I usually do, but if I were to be a games reviewer I know that I'd need to have a much more neutral stand on things.