I promised myself I'd try to hold off on writing blogs about video game journalism itself for a while, but it's just too good.

The link below is a review of Metroid: Other M done by Abbie Heppe from G4tv.com. You kind of have to read it in order to understand what my following rant is all about (if you want to know that is.)

http://g4tv.com/games/wii/61992/Metroid-Other-M/review/

That's an example of a very irresponsible review. I wrote a blog a while back about how professional critics have a certain amount of responsibility when it comes to reviewing games (or books, or movies, or what have you). A recent EEDAR study has proven that reviews are indeed quite important in affecting consumer behavior, and I believe that with the relative importance of their work proven, a pro reviewer has to be a lot more responsible with the reviews they write. I believe that "responsibility" is the balance of objective, and subjective thinking about the game. A review, of course, should lean toward personal opinion, but the critic can't turn their review into their soapbox.

So before I dig into why this review is pretty awful, I wan't to preface my thoughts with two things. First off, I don't care one bit about the score the game received from the reviewer, and I don't care how it relates to all the other scores the game has received thus far. I plan to pick up Other M on Tuesday, but I haven't played it yet. Hell, I might hate it as much as Abbie Heppe did, the score isn't really the point. Secondly, I'm not trying to argue the points she made either. Every single thing she said might be valid, I don't really know. Like I said, I haven't played Metroid: Other M.

So what's the problem with her review? It's that it's not really a review. It's pretty much an editorial in disguise. Just about half the review is spent discussing the problematic characterization of Samus. Again, her opinions on how Samus is depicted might be totally spot-on, but a review is not the place to go all-out in critiquing, and analyzing one portion of a given game. That's what editorials are for.

In my opinion, the 'No Russian' sequence in Modern Warfare 2 is probably one of the most poorly handled, and distasteful moments I've ever encountered in a video game. I've ranted about it quite a few times, and it certainly makes me think less of Modern Warfare 2, but it doesn't drastically change my overall opinion about the game. Team Ninja may have succeeded in creating one of the most poorly handled, distasteful depictions of one of video gaming's most iconic female characters, but, in the same way Modern Warfare 2 is much bigger than 'No Russian', video games are much bigger than their main characters, and I think years worth of silent protagonists have proven that.

Since it's not hard to tell that Abbie Heppe's main criticism of the game is how it depicts badass bounty hunter Samus Aran as being a "sniveling little girl", it's not hard to feel as if the rest of the extremely negative review is simply further enraged writing set off by how poorly Team Ninja handled the iconic character. Whether or not that's true, I could never know, but it certainly shows very poor editing. Again, all her arguments could be valid, but her "review" probably shouldn't have been a review at all; I'd have absolutely no problems with it if it were an editorial. But as it stands, it's not an editorial, it is instead yet another case of irresponsible reviewing.