Seriously. I'm not talking about spelling or grammar; that's nothing. But before I get in to it perhaps I shouldn't paint in such broad strokes since not all games are hard to review, but some are. How do "professional" reviewers pick out the strengths and weaknesses in such a short amount of time and know that once their opinion has been printed/published/uploaded that that's the final word they can say on the subject? No "do-overs" or second chances to go back and say, "You know, maybe this part of the game wasn't all it was cracked up to be?" That's where true talent comes in.

And that's precisely the issue I have trouble with when I sit down to write my own humble reviews which explains why I have written so few. When you break it down reviewers are under a lot of pressure not only among their peers but also among the Internet armchair aficianado that haunts game sites and zealously awaits the next big game review as he/she constantly hits "F5" and waits, only to finally read that review and declare it as "crap" because it didn't get a high enough score. Or you have the converse to that when a game apparently scores too highand people find fault and the need to complain over too good of a score.

I've gone back and read some of my own reviews years later and I find myself finding fault with certain parts. Not the entire thing, mind you, but certain parts that, after playing the game for an extended period of time I came to discover my perspective changed. If it was really skewed I would go in and edit whatever I didn't like. I try to refrain from doing this because, as I often think, if I was a "professional" I wouldn't be afforded that luxury at all, and what I wrote would have to stand till the end of time. That sounds a bit dramatic but it's pretty much the truth. Of course I also have the affliction of never totally being satisfied with my own work; kind of like when a movie director watches his own movie and sees little nuances that he would have liked to have changed or omitted completely. But what's done is done.

So where is the happy medium? How do the reviewers do it? Obviously they don't offer degrees in video game reviews so that just leaves experience, and hopefully some sliver of talent that can be molded and shaped towards the craft. A lot of people give reviewers crap for one thing or another; rarely do you ever see these same people putting their money where their mouth is and actually showing they are better talented at composing a review themselves. No, they are content to verbally lambaste some complete stranger hundreds or thousands of miles away while a feeling of smug superiority overcomes them and they go back to arguing over which console will rule them all.

I guess the whole point of this impromptu blog is to say cut these guys some slack. And let's not forget that in the end reviews are merely opinions and not cold, hard, etched in stone, forevermore FACTS. A general consensus can be reached for certain games either good or bad, but those are still opinions as even some of the highest scoring games get snubbed by some gamers as being too hyped up, while other games are lucky to eke out a meager existence on store shelves and gamers are confounded as to why they were not rated higher.