It’s one thing to spend half your time writing articles about how much you like boobs and farts. That’s fine with me, and though it makes the seem very unprofessional, some people dig that. What I do not like is people writing articles and speaking from an authoritative position on a subject that they clearly do not understand. How many people will read the article I mentioned and think that everything isn the article is 100% factual and true?

It’s great to have a sense of humor, and to entertain your site’s visitors. But when you try your hand at journalism, check the facts please. With the internet at your fingertips, you have no excuse not to, and I will not “lay off” when stupid people spread wrongful information just because they are too lazy to do some basic research.

I once read an article stating that all that the journalists at GR wrote about was tits and farting. Do you know how many articles on GR are about tits and farts, pro-blogger Martin?

45%.

45% of the articles on GamesRadar pertained to boobs and farts. Now, what was the other, what? 55% of the writing on that website? You say it’s unprofessional blabber, no? Well, I love harshly criticizing what people do for a living, but isn’t this a tad stupid? What, do you think that GR is three guys who work on the website together online? What’s this I hear, then? They actually have two major office buildings?

You know, I have to admit, the articles on the UK side of GR are pretty bad, but you can’t just drive a whole site into the ground because of some of the things there. You know, it may be obscene, but when I’m not reading IGN or Gamespot for news, I go to GR. Why? Because it’s funny, goofy, irreverent… no– entertaining as a whole!

Lay off for a bit.

As for the article, that list is idiotic. Some of those games are certified classics. This sort of myopic analysis makes me think of other bloggers who create “Greatest (fill-in-the-blank)” movie lists without including a single black and white film. “Black and white? That just sounds boring.” I’ve actually heard people say that. As a student of film, it boggles.

Your point about confusing technical limitations with poor design is sadly true. There is a thread on GMC, the question: “Would you play a game with Atari graphics”. It’s disappointing enough that people base their play choices on graphics, but when “Atari graphics” becomes a synonym for “crap graphics”, that starts to make me angry. I very nearly posted a tirade about that in the topic, but had second thoughts because most people seemed to understand the difference. It’s no secret that I’m a dyed-in-wool Atarian. I hate see those older systems disparaged, because I used to use and program on them everyday, and I’ve made a point of studying them deeply. The hardware work of Jay Miner et al. and the software work of the likes of Activision deserve the utmost respect.

Last night I was reading some reviews of Atari 5200 games, and so many of them were negative because the reviewer felt the developer had not improved them enough over the more primitive Atari 2600 versions. He completely failed to appreciate that the Atari 2600 versions were simply pushing the hardware far beyond what was expected of it. The Atari 5200 hardware can’t be exploited in the same ways and the games he was reviewing were already pushing it to its limits. It’s dumb to penalize them for not doing the impossible.

As a gamer, I know there are literally hundreds of different things that an author can write about when it comes to games. It’s when you get down to writing “The Top 10″ or the “Blank Games of All Time” lists, you know the author is having writers block. Any idiot can make a top whatever list, which you can clearly see by the GamesRadar author in the above links. It’s just sad that the author couldn’t even pick games which can be equally agreed upon. Mirrors Edge? Sonic and Knuckles? This guy doesn’t know what a bad game looks like even if one kicked him straight in the face. Superman 64, White Men Can’t Jump, Congo… there are plenty of other games out there which look much worse than what the author has mentioned. It’s too bad that GamesRadar will never understand this, and it’s the driving reason why I don’t even bother to give them hits.