When Gamespot sacked Gerstmann for accurately reviewing Kane and Lynch 2, I very much stopped trusting/visiting those sites.
I remember that. It was the first game -
Kane and Lynch: Dead Men (2007). The publishers were convinced it was going to be a major franchise. They kept talking about a Hollywood film with Will Smith or Jamie Foxx, even though the game was already a direct copy of
Collateral and
Heat, e.g. Lynch is obviously modelled on Waingro from
Heat and Kane is a mixture of Val Kilmer's character and Tom Cruise's Vincent.
The odd thing is that Gerstmann's review was entirely reasonable. He enjoyed the multiplayer aspect, loved the soundtrack, correctly pointed out that it was short and derivative, and gave it 3/5, which is mediocre but not awful. If the review was two thousand words of gonzo journalism I can understand the editor getting rid of him but if anything it's flat, bland, and inoffensive. The review is still up:
https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/kane-and-lynch-dead-men-review/1900-6182836/The game was on offer recently as part of a giant Eidos sale along with the sequel. I tried it out; it has its moments, I can see what they were going for, but it's very short and two-thirds of the way through it turns into a generic cover-based military shooter. Visually it hasn't aged well.
The sequel,
Dog Days, has a really good trailer and the music is great, but it's only four hours long and had almost universally negative reviews (Gamespot again gave it 3/5).
Games review websites have the same problem as the mainstream media in general. A long time ago games journalists were drawn from a pool of games fans who could write, because professional writers wouldn't be seen dead writing about computer games. Some parts of the specialist press still hire enthusiasts - and there are people like Steve1989, the MRE guy on Youtube, who obviously loves his subject.
The problem is that there are far more English graduates than there were in the early 1980s, because everybody now goes to university, but there are far fewer paid writing jobs, so English graduates are now prepared to lower their sights and write about computer games even though they only play them casually and know very little about the history. The end result is professional, bland, uninteresting writing that has no spark, because the writers don't know anything about computer games. They're "blagging it", but they just don't care, and it stands out.
Furthermore they tend to revert back to the essays they had to write at university, so the end result is endless essays about fashionable political issues masquerading as games journalism. The sad thing is that Youtube is dominated by WOW THAT WAS AWESOME! NO WAY! streamers who aren't interested in games either.
