I would like to see a required post by the Game Reviewer **BEFORE** they start playing the game. The post gets it's own section in the final review post. The post should answer this question, "What are my expectations of this game?" Then the review should hit on all the points mentioned in the expectations.
What you expect out of a game may be very different from what the reviewer was expecting. It is important to set the stage, identify where the bar is set, before going off on how some game is not up to your high expectations.
For example, Eye of Judgement. It may get the same score as a game like R&C, but that doesn't mean they are equally as fun/quality. If you ask any reviewer of EoJ about their expectations, they will say they figured it would be a simple card game with good depth and pretty on screen animations for the actions you take. Some reviewers maybe expected more out of the online experience than others, which mostly explains the ups and downs of the scores between the main review sites. But a game like R&C tends to have a wider array of expectations. Some reviewers are expecting the game to be simply the best game in the series but did not to differ from the formula set in the previous volumns. But then you have the other end of the spectrum where the reviewer is not terribly entertained in general by platformers and expected the PS3 debut of the series to be an experiment in change and vastly different than the tone and gameplay of the PS2 erra of the series.
I honestly believe forcing the reviewers to post a little paragraph about what they are expecting from the game they are about to review before they play will help to justify and explain the review. To say a review is just opinion makes it useless as information to be used for purchase decisions. Yet to say a review is not based on opinion is simply a lie. But with a little more information about the reviewer's and what he/she expects will help make the review more usefull. In the old system, you at least had the Tilt to help you identify the harsh reviewers from the "Everything's a 10" reviewer.
Not to mention, a few little points about expectations of a game will help make the writing of the actual review go faster. Kinda like an outline helps you write an essay.
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