But here you are on an article that is not a review, making a big diatribe about how reviews should be conducted. It’s a little hard to fathom.

Hell, I’ve actually cancelled a pre-order of a game this year after reading a Kotaku review. It was The Last of Us Part II. Seeing the experience the reviewer had with it, I felt I was not in the right state of mind to play this game at the moment and it’s fine. I am not a sheep who can’t think for himself, I was just…

Apart from everybody else's very reasonable comments on why someone might mention those things in a review, the passage you're quoting wasn't about the quality of the game but about the phenomenon of invested fans forcefully defending its publisher. It's perfectly relevant to bring up CDPR's history of bad behavior…

Twisting the word “fan” into something toxic is why it’s being used to describe something toxic. People aren’t “fans” simply because they say something mean to a reviewer. There is already a word for those people: “assholes.” It is pretty disgusting to try and re-frame all fans of a game or property in the light that…

A better analogy is that a reviewer goes to a restaurant and observes the owner constantly treating all his employees like shit. The reviewer says that the steak is good but if you don’t like giving your money to an owner who treats their employees like shit, you might want to avoid the place.

Indeed, much like other products have labels like fair trade, cruelty free, environmentally friendly, etc. These things don’t tell a consumer anything about the product itself, but the way the product was made is also important to many people’s purchasing decisions.

I mostly agree, and of course this isn’t a review of anything. However, I do think an argument could be made that previous behaviour that affects customers is pertinent information?

Part of that is also that there is this illogical perception among a lot of readers that a 7 is a bad score. So basically, any basically competent game is actually judged on a 7-10 scale, and anything below that is perceived to be garbage.  With only a 4-point scale to work with, there’s no room for nuance.  

The thing is that all releases aren’t equal when it comes to bugs. There will always be bugs, yes, but when teams of ten or less can release a 20 hour game in two years with only a few bugs, I can rightly criticize a team of dozens if not hundreds for being unable to provide similar ratios with much bigger budgets,…

This was a great read. Thank you for it, and I’m sorry you are being harassed because you didn’t say Cyberpunk was the second coming of Jesus like everyone expected.

There’s plenty of happy-ending gay and lesbian romances nowadays (heck, I can even name some from the ‘90s - The Wedding Banquet? But I’m a Cheerleader? Beautiful Thing?). Even Kenya gave us a gay love story with a happy ending a couple years ago, which was especially impressive given being gay is still illegal…

Definitely a hard disagree here. I guess how ones takes the finale depends on how one feels about the Dani and Jamie relationship. It always worked for me so this was a really strong end even after the previous episode sapped momentum. 

No context given, but...

The past was indeed very violent.. in general. European history was very violent... specifically. China, India? Okay places to live, so long as you weren’t being invaded.

(also not a historian, but i am a Time-Traveling Necromancer, so)

Jon Cryer as Lex Luthor being in it should be fun. Have to give them credit for that inspired casting choice, which I thought sounded ridiculous when I first heard it, but he delivered big time. 

Billions of dollars to make a cinematic DCU and a bunch of cheap shows on the CW have managed it with the charm and fun that rivals the MCU. 

I like the shot of Barry and Kara standing next to each other, their superhero best friendship is one of the best things in the ArrowVerse.

Those who consider “social justice warrior” to be an insult are not a crowd level-headed people want to be associated with. Check yourself on that too.

Is she still trampy?

The impotent artsy rage in the comments trying to put RP1 on this list is like a warm bath.

We get it, you’re too cool for school. But if you think RP1 is even in the top 30 worst movies of the year, you need to pull your head out of your ass.