Well to put it simply, yes they do you flipping twit, how on Earth is that even a question?! But let's go into it a bit more shall we?
The first question that you have to ask yourself is, what even is the purpose of a game review? What game reviews are SUPPOSED to do is help you make an informed decision as a consumer on whether or not you think a game will be worth buying. Obviously these can't be written without a little bit of the writers own opinion on the title being peppered in but, as a customer, you would hope that the person writing the review would know what they are talking about.
Well that's where the problem lies with game reviews on these major sites such as IGN and Kotaku. The writers for these sites aren't just clueless about most of the games they play, they seem to be clueless about the entire medium in general. The biggest example of that that sits at the forefront of peoples memories was the review of Cuphead. The person who put that review together struggled SIGNIFICANTLY with the tutorial stage of the game. Specifically on one of the first jump where the player is expected to perform a jump followed by a dash to reach a high up platform. Cuphead is considered to be a fairly challenging game but this is something that a 4 year old perform in seconds and yet it ellued this guy for quite a while. Another example would be The Independant slamming Astral Chain on Switch for "not giving grades after combat encounters". The only problem is that the game DOES do that, but foregoes the feature if you're playing the game on the casual setting. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with playing the game on casual but avid fans of that kind of game will want to know how the higher difficulty levels stack up and they will not be able to get that information from a review.
These writers are not fit for purpose. I'm not saying that every games writer needs to be a top 5 speedrunner of a game in order to write a review on it but to be able to get a good idea of how the game is really like you need to AT LEAST be able to clear it on Normal. Playing a game on easy may give the writer an idea of basic stuff like the control scheme or maybe they can put down some thoughts on the story, but because they often miss the real meat and potatoes of a games content it is IM-POSSIBLE for them to write a review that will successfully help a person make an informed purchase.
Let's imagine if we weren't talking about game reviews and instead we were talking about cars. Let's imagine you aren't much of a gear-head and you have zero idea what kind of car you want to fit your needs. To maybe educate yourself on the topic a little bit before heading to the dealership maybe you'll go online and check out some reviews of car models that you might think fits your needs. You find a car review and it says stuff like "the car handles terribly and all the extra features make it confusing to operate". Only here's the kicker, the guy writing the review can't drive, like at all, and doesn't know a steering wheel from a gear stick. In fact, the guy writing the review for this car sucks SO BAD at driving, that when he took it for a test spin in order to write his piece, he crashed into a food bank for starving children and everyone in the village went hungry that day. The confusing features he talked about? He was referring to thinks like the indicator and gear box. If you found that out about the guy who wrote the piece, you'd be pissed off. You NEED a good quality of information to make an informed decision on a purchase that big but instead you got a guy who can't drive and a 800 word article about how the back seats are sexist and the colour of the tyres are racist.
Well that's the kind of enthusiast press we have have with gaming. Not passionate users who care about making sure you spend your hard earned money on the best games for you but shitters who don't know a face button from a d-pad telling you the bare minimum in the shortest possible time frame in order to farm you for traffic clicks to their shitty websites.
So here's my proposition for how a review SHOULD be conducted
1) Make sure the person doing the review is at least somewhat versed in the genre of the game they are reviewing. If you have a guy that loves JRPGs but hates fighting games, then for the love of God don't have him review Guilty Gear Strive, his opinion on that particular topic isn't worth shit
2) At least TWO playthroughs of the game in question, preferably the second being on an elevated difficulty or a New Game +. If you really want to inform people about the easy mode have another writer whos less well versed in whatever genre give it a go for a little bit and just include it as some quick extra thoughts at the end
3) No rushing. Stop trying to get reviews out either for or just before release day. Some people "wait for the reviews" before buying, so how about making sure their wait is actually worth it? If they really care about the game they'll buy it anyway and if they are on the fence an extra few days to make sure they get the information they need wont bloody kill them.
4) Keep your opinion as far away as possible. Not 100% possible I know but if you think giant anime titties in whatever RPG you're reviewing are "sexist" then save that for a different article. In the main review you can just include it as something like "a stylised look that might not sit right with everyone", for example. That's really what I mean by this
and I think that's all I'm really asking for. Modertely skilled players giving me a basic rundown of what a game is like so that I can get a vague idea of if I want to drop 6-8000 yen on it. It REALLY isn't that hard, if YouTube boi with 500 subs and a mic from 10 years ago can do it then a salaried "professional" games writer can do it too
Car analogy is so funny😂. I once knew a classical music journalist who joked that he wrote the same review for every concert but just changed the adjectives……
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