The One and Only Right Review

Calculations conducted with data obtained from the user commentary sections of videogame review websites conclude that the following constitutes the optimal critique of every game ever released. Feel free to paste it where appropriate.

The One and Only Right Review

I'm the wrong writer for this review. I've given the game a score it doesn't deserve: too stingy because I'm biased against the platform it's supposed to sell; unduly generous because I hoped to hide my bias towards the competing console. I've been bribed to deny that the game sucks; bribed to say that it does indeed.

I'm an imbecile. My score doesn't match the aggregation site average which, to indulge one co-conspirator, I wanted to raise. Actually, I intended to reduce it in order to satisfy the other.

My editors are morons. Instead of assigning this review to a fan of the genre who wouldn't have naively mistaken imitative mediocrity for innovation because he hadn't already played the eleven other games exactly like it, they gave it to me: a cynic who, having played and appreciated almost every game of the genre ever released, has unreasonably high expectations.

I evaluated a sim according to arcade standards, and I expected simulation in a goofy arcade game.

Had I played more than a mere 40 hours prior to collecting my $60 check (which may or may not arrive in three months) I'd have noticed that the game takes an irreversible turn for the worse on the third replay and redeems itself on the fourth.

I neglected to dedicate individual paragraphs to the trophies and achievements, the customization, the cutscenes, the voice-overs, the Havoc physics, the pause menu, the patented and groundbreaking player abilities bullet-pointed on the press release, and if not these then everything else that the discerning readers who choose to use the comment function on this site point out while proving that they are, in fact, far more qualified to have written this review.

Now the credibility I never had is as good as gone. This website and/or magazine was demonstrably better before its former writers and editors departed to become the despised new regimes at rival websites and magazines.