I'm starting this thread in hopes of collecting some ideas that will help me write useful reviews. Please bare with me while I provide you with a brief bit of background info on myself.

I am 21 years old and have been playing video games of all genres with little bias since I was 6 when I got my NES. I have owned most of the gaming consoles that have been released since then, and have devoted the majority of my free time playing games.

Now that I've got that out of the way what I'd like to do is put together a list of review criteria that should be considered universally for all genres, and criteria that should be considered within specific genres. The reason I want to do this is because I believe that while in the end all that matters is whether or not an individual sits down and enjoys the game or hates it, I do believe that there is a science to reviewing games much like there is to critiquing movies.

Examples of universal criteria would be gameplay, visuals, sound, controls, etc.

Examples of genre-specific would be, say for RPGs: character development, length of battles, character customization, etc.

Help me put a list together of general criteria and genre specific criteria to help me write acceptable and useful reviews. Recently I've been finding that for many games I really do not agree with the reviews, and it is annoying to try and determine whether gamespot, ign, or gamerankings is more accurate and less biased. I usually refer to user reviews which seem to be the most helpful, and I would like to make the best contributions that I can.

Thank you for your time in reading this, and please post your thoughts.