It's not the weekend, but I thought I would take a stab at a blog entry after Indrema's strong example this past weekend inspired me!

One of my pet peeves regarding gaming media is their tendency to rely on caveats so often.  How many times have we read "this game looks really good - for a Wii game", or "this actually controls pretty well - for a Wii game"? 

In particular, I notice certain game franchises getting a free pass for failings other games would get criticized ruthlessly for doing.  Why is it acceptable for games like Metal Gear Solid 4 to get by with rationalizations like "it doesn't control too bad - for a MGS game" or "the online is ok - for an MGS game" when other games, even in the same genre, improved on those issues years before (specifically, Splinter Cell in this example).  Shouldn't games be judged according to everything it is competing against - regardless of platform or pedigree?  Why the rationalizations?

I suspect the reason behind this stems from the gaming media demographic being comprised overwhelming of NES-era gamers, which may skew their perspective towards Japanese consoles and game franchises as a result.  While I doubt there is a specific intent to demonstrate bias, I suspect we would see far less praise for some of these console franchises if the people writing about them weren't from that demographic.  I'm an old geezer who started with PC games and can't understand why franchises like Resident Evil were rated so highly (until RE4, which I feel deserves its accolades) when the developers couldn't even figure out how to render/look/move/shoot in a 3D environment over 6 years after their Western counterparts had mastered that skill.

It would be refreshing to see a game reviewed on its merits and how it competes with other games sitting right next to it on the shelf - without any caveats.