Rev-you...Why Game Reviews Drive One Developer Nuts

The relationship between game developers and professional reviewers has been a slightly...cantankerous one. A lot of us are financially hit hard by poor reviews. Even if the sales to review ratio has very little correlation in a strong number of cases, poor reviews can hurt, especially when the reasons for the poor score feel very out of touch.

 Review What is There
Case: Award-winning BioShock actually lost points from some reviewers due to a lack of multiplayer.
Multiplayer is something that has to be designed and developed for from the start. There are plenty of games that shoehorn in multiplayer to appease the "what, no multiplayer?!" score ding, but then, the poor quality of the multiplayer gets slammed. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Gotta love it!

I'm not seeing people get on Team Fortress' case for a lack of a single player story-based campaign.

 Limit the Comparisons
Standing on the shoulders of giants is hardly a new thing. Humanity has been building off the achievements of others since the dawn of time; game development is certainly no different. There are those who just blatantly rip off other games pretty much lock stock and barrel, but then there are those who see that others have paved the way for their own endeavors. The much lauded Resident Evil 4 has won all sorts of praise for it's over the shoulder camera during combat, fast paced and well executed gun play.

 A number of games have taken that over shoulder camera during combat and added their own twist. The size of said twist will determine if the world judges these games as RE4 knockoffs or something that just uses the popular mechanic to make a new experience fun and exciting. Since developers are thinking this way, I'm not blasting reviewers for saying "Game X uses a play mechanic popularized by Smash Hit Game Y."

The irritation starts when the comparisons get out of hand. My case for this point is Dark Sector. Yes, this game borrows a lot of tried and true mechanics from other games, but it does a lot of things differently. Or at least, it executes most of what it borrows better than those it borrowed from. Also, it did borrow from a mix of games, not just a single title.

So, after all the talk of comparisons, ultimately, is the game fun?

 Franchise Correlation(Limit Comparisons, part 2)
This is a no-brainer as to why the comparisons are made, but when reviews replace describing how something works with comparing to how it was in a previous game? You're certainly shutting out anyone who might use the most current release in the franchise as a gateway.

Case in point, Mana Khemia. I haven't played a Gust RPG since PS1/Saturn. I remember the basics of the game and most of what it's about. When a review talks about how the main system has changed or not changed over all the previous games in the series that I managed to miss...Well, thankfully a friend of mine picked this up and I was able to play it and form my own darn opinion.

 So What Am I After?
In closing, I should list an example of a review I found helpful...
Rock Paper Shotgun absolutely dissected a Russian made PC First Person RPG called "Pathologic."
The reviewers' opinions about what works, what doesn't, what happens in the game and lets me ultimately decide whether or not that I want to try, buy or skip this game.

I've read a few reviews and it's funny how when the number scores and the words tell different stories. At least, the sections where reviewers are actually stopping to describe what goes on rather than their opinion of it. I am well aware of the fact that a review is an evaluation, which means the content will contain an opinion and not purely descriptive.
I guess it all boils down to a dissonance between what is described and what is being felt about the games.