as everyone can now attest, sonic and the black knight for the wii is a piece of crap. its a poorly made game which like most sonic games as of late, just tries to capitalize on both the character and the general stupidity of people.

Though the one person who isnt aware of this games awfulness is of course dave halverson, the owner of play magazine. In previous a post ive written how i realized that mr. halverson seems to have an obvious slant towards sega and especially sonic and Plays most recent issue helps prove my point exponentially.

Not only does halverson himself review sonic games at this point, but they always go one about the greatness of sonic games that any gaming novice would describe as a low point in the characters catalog.

Ive yet to deduce the reason why. Is mr. halverson is being paid by sega? or maybe a guy in a sonic costume saved him at the community pool as a kid? i dont know, all i know for a fact at this point is that mr halverson is for sonic, what fox news is for political conservatives. a blind, die hard, ask no questions soldier that ignores the truth in favor of, well, outright lies basically.

One thing i am becoming more certain about concerns plays "rating" system. Which is to say, their non rating system. Play magazine decided some months ago to forgo actual scores for their reviews. The general buzz was that they were doing it just to be different, but at this point ive come to a different conclusion. I believe mr halverson did away with traditional reviews so he himself, and his magazine couldnt be directly accused of hyping sonic or sega games as easily being that the reviews were so obviously slanted.

Well to mr halverson i say, easy or no, its still quite obvious.

or maybe the editor was a sega nerd in his youth, or maybe sega secretly funds the magazine, or the editor is boning sega's ceo's daughter. I dont know, but SOMETHING is going on.

I first read play magazine a year or so ago because I liked that it covered both games and anime, because as a fan of both it saved me money on another magazine. Over time though i noticed how many times sonic appeared on the cover. I just ignored the thought until play's review of sonic the hedgehog came out. the supposed "relaunch" of the sonic franchise, was of course, garbage. many reviewers gave it horrible reviews...EXCEPT play magazine, who gave it a 9.5 out of 10. When i read the review i was confused. It was as if two different games were reviewed. Later play magazine tried to back away from their review as they received press for its sheer oddity.

Since that review i noticed how golden axe beast rider was on the cover. That didnt bother me as i was quite excited, but then just this year sonic was on the cover again! Then it really began to bug me, but i still liked the magazine so i tried to ignore it as best i could..until.. they reviewed beast rider...

Golden Axe was one of my fav games EVER but beast rider was ridiculously bad. So while beast rider is being lambasted by everyone, play magazine not only praises the game, but then ATTACKS other reviewers who give it a bad review!

i thought the people in charge at play magazine had lost it. At this point i was convinced of a sega biase at play magazine. It was BANKABLE. So I decided to get to the bottom of it, so I went to the play magazine site and sure enough their feature story is about sonic unleashed... -_-

some more checkng showed that the man in question seems to be dave halverson. Upon checking him out i noticed that he reviewed the games in question, and he has had some issues in the past with his reviews and owns play magazine itself.

so is dave halverson just a small version of rupert murdoch? a serious sega fanboy that doesnt know the meaning of the word journalist? I will be sure to keep an eye out to make sure, but one thing is certain, play magazine has a serious crush on sega.

i dont mean to say that video game reviewers or vg journalism editors and writers are ALL snobs when it comes to fighting games but consistently ive read multiple articles from multiple gaming sites that have an aversion to fighting games. When thinking about this i realized that very large and expansive games always get the most praise. i.e. farcry, GOW 2, oblivion, fable 2, fallout 3, gta 4 etc. Now these are great games, but it seems people whos job it is to objectively tell us about a game, seem to have been spoiled by games that give them just sooo much to do and because of this, they seem to forget that a fighting game is quite different and though might not give them the same 80 plus hours of gameplay, it could still rack up with the best.

Its like fighting games are treated as a stupid cousin, not worthy of sharing the stage when votes are cast for best game of the year. I cant remember the last time a fighting game was in contention for ANY list of game of the year. Is it because the genre is stale or is it because as technology progresses, people who "judge" the industry seem to expect more in places they shouldnt.

When i first saw the almost arms length coverage of MK vs DC, after the initial excitement, and when kotaku posted a vide of all the characters fatalitys, as if to say, dont bother even playing it. Then how SSBB was practically mockedby many as something only for nintendo nerds. and of course. constant jokes about final fight.

street fighter 4 seems to be receiving a fair amount of excitement because of its new design but i will be incredibly skeptical of anything written about it after it comes out as it seems that ppl in video game journalism cant be trusted to not hold their nose up at fighting games.