Hopefully the guy you contacted will take what you say as constructive criticism. At least, that's what he should be doing. 

And congrats on the job! I'm sure there will be more games to review. Sooner or later you'll get to play a good one, too.

I see reviewing games as a necessary evil most of the time. As long as it's consumer-facing, there's always that need to stick to something somewhat formulaic. I personally feel that as soon as we start getting into different kinds of analysis the writing ceases to be a "review" and becomes "criticism." The former is about purchasing advice, and the latter is about intellectual exchange. IMHO, anyway, but what the hell do I know. :)

I could see game reviewing as being between a rock and a hard place. On one hand you may not want to hurt someones feelings, by the review you'll give. But on the other hand, you still got to tell it like it is.

Reviewing, too me, is giving a rundown on how the game made the player feel. What worked, how did it work, and what was the result? etc. Sure it may hurt the developer's feelings, but I think it should be interesting for that developer to see how they affected someone. Take it in stride, and just look to the future. 

(ehem *Tony Hawk* ehem)

I think what remorse I've had about reviewing in the past has less to do with what's written here and has a lot more wth other things. One, as I was covering games at The Daily Texan years back, there was some stuff that just never ran because there was the issue of a lack of space. Part of me never really liked having someone take the effort to send us games and them never getting reviewed or a review not running. Then again the one's that never ran weren't particularly good nor high profile either. Wasn't my decision a lot of them time not being an editor. I actually bumped heads with editors over it as I essentially took on a de facto video games editor role but had no control of what went on even if by our measure of website the video game content was by far some of the most read content we published. But the other editors had their own pet interests so I was handcuffed.

I also think early on, I was significanly more lenient on certain games than I would be now if I actually hadn't soured on the entire reviews process. I was pretty light on Dirge of Ceberus and there were some more objective technical critisisms I just don't think I was experienced enough in criticism to point to. Then again, I was also for all intents not writing for possibly as hardcore  an audience as IGN or 1UP. But I tend to look back on my period as a reviewer with some remorseful feeling just because I feel I was way too green in retrospect.

What you've described is my worst nightmare in reviewing. Right now I'm only reviewing games I've paid for with my own money, or were gifted to me by friends, who probably won't read the review anyway. If I play a bad one, which I often don't considering I'm paying money for them, I'd have absolutely no problem giving it a poor review.

But I'm dreading the day I'm going to have to give a game a negative writeup after it was given to me by a small development house for the purpose of review. I imagine these studios are often very friendly, polite and personable in their communication, as opposed to (again, what I gather) an almost machine-like PR operation that comes from the bigger devs.

@Chris, The PR people for the game I'm talking about are incredibly polite and helpful. All of my emails were acknowledged immediately. Honestly I don't think that a bigger dev would have cared.

@Everyone, Thanks for all of the positive/understanding comments. I wrote this late at night while I was feeling frustrated, so I was afraid everyone would think I'm being melodramatic. Thanks again.

If you want to keep a wall between the developer and the reviewer, Rachel, ask your editor to be the go-between when you're experiencing problems. That way, you have no contact with the developer, and you won't feel as conflicted about publishing less-than-stellar reviews. 

A lot of people in the press may not agree with me because it's become somewhat fashionable to "review things based on how the reviewer feels," but I think that many games feature attributes that are much more easily quantifiable than other mediums. While I agree that a player's reaction to the artistic intentions of the developer are subjective, I don't think game reviews as a whole are "subjective." Video games require some sort of weird hybrid between a product review and an artistic critique.

For some reason it's become acceptable in "enlightened" circles to say that all reviews are subjective and leave it at that. This mantra is at best overly sentimental and at worst senselessly reductionist. The problem with this point of view is that video games bridge the gap between consumer product and cultural artifact. This means that, in some ways, one can review them objectively.

If I bought the newest version of Quicken or Dragon Naturally Speaking, and they didn't balance my checkbook or respond to voice inputs, I would give them negative products reviews. Similarly, on the level of a computer application, if a game features broken input response, crashes, has screen tearing, etc., I have no problem giving it a negative review. The fact that the application, as the developers programmed it, doesn't work on a fundamental level ameliorates any guilt I might feel: Objectively speaking, a broken product is a broken product. If a John Deere lawn mower broke a month after I bought it because of a faulty belt, I wouldn't feel bad slamming it in a product review.

That said, as your article indicates, this particular game features aspects you like: "Charm oozes from the menus and story sequences." That is a subjective evaluation that may make it difficult to distance yourself from the intent of the creator. It gets you thinking: What if the developer ran out of money? What if the publisher imposed a deadline? You become worried that mitigating circumstances prevented it from being a more polished product.

Sadly, I don't think there's an easy way around such concerns. My advice to you would be to remain self-assured about your assessments, both objective and subjective. If the software is broken, that's pretty easy. If the story or art style don't jibe with you, mention that in your review's text. Use adjectives and adverbs like "overly florid graphics" or "one-note story" to indicate that it is a subjective assessment.

Also, I'd try to keep in perspective the number of games released every year, most of which are pretty bad: Do you really have room in your heart for every employee who helped produce every single one? Probably not. I know that's a bit abstract since you formed an attachment to one particular game, but it may help to keep in mind that these aren't the only people who tried and failed. It happens all the time. It's OK to think something is bad even though someone might have spent a lot of time on it. I guarantee you famous film critics don't lose sleep when they pan a movie that could have been better. 

@ Jason, with hindsight I realized that's what I should have done. Oh well, at any rate this has turned out to be a great learning experience for me.

Awesome, awesome comment, James. I feel like you do: Games have many components that you can review objectively. A reviewer relaying her personal experience with a game to her audience is fine in moderation. But if that's all she's doing, then is she really telling her audience anything about the game? 

Reviews need a mixture of the objective (how the game controls, looks, sounds) and the subjective (how the reviewer felt while playing it). If a review is strictly objective, the reviewer might as well make a bullet-point list of a game's good and bad features and call it a day. If the review is purely subjective, however, it's not giving any information as to whether the game is worth a look.

Always write for the consumer/player and you won't go wrong.

What Demian says! We always preach that to our writers.

Nobody sets out to make a bad game, but they do happen and it would be a disservice to everyone -- yourself, the developer, and the consumers -- to call them anything else. But it's important to be articulate about why it doesn't work for you. Think of it as a "truth to power" situation...they can't improve unless they know what needs to be improved upon.

I've had to tell design and project leads I wasn't enjoying their game in person, to their faces. I've never once just said "It sucks!" and left it at that. Instead, I tell them specifically what elements aren't working for me in a way that comes across as constructive feedback. It might be too late for them to actually change anything, but at least they know where you're coming from, and it gives them a chance to respond...something they don't normally get to do.

But it doesn't get really weird until they send you Christmas cards after you slam their game in the published review.

Rus, is right. Honest critisism is something developers do take to heart because end of the day they are trying to create something people will enjoy and want to play. I'll pull a quote from the unpublished third of my interview with Andy Schatz on Monaco to give a bit of developer perspective:

"

“What I tend to do is if anyone likes something about the game and says it, I try and emphasis it. If anyone says they don't like something about the game or are confused by something, quite often the next thing that comes out of their mouth is either a suggestion on how to fix it or 'But I'm probably just stupid.' Those second two things are usually worth ignoring. But the first thing is absolutely the most important thing that you can do as a game developer. Looking at what it is that confused them, what they didn't like … What I need to do was a game designer is figure out a way that people in the future won't say that same thing again.”

Again, I don't really do reviews anymore, but I think really catching some insight from developerss like Schatz over the course of the year has helped me realize as long as it isn't mean-spirited chances are being honest and candid with your criticism really is for the benefit of everyone, readership and developers.