I am not asking to write review for me nor one particular group. It still doesn't excuse shitty reviews methods, lying/underselling features or problems, rushing out reviews without spending much time on longer games/barely cracking the surface for the sake of getting there first for view counts (as pointed out by Dunkey), and not to mention a good amount of these professionals didn't finish games they gave dishonest low scores to games they didn't like, nor deserved such a low score, but weren't glitchy nor game breaking. All you're doing side stepping the issue and making up shitty excuses for their lack of ethics and their intellectual dishonesty.
And how much is this actually occurring? Is this 50% of reviews? 20%? 10%? 5%? And which reviews are corrupted? It's easy to throw nebulous accusations, but where's the real evidence of this?
Do reviewers need to finish a game to review it? And for some games, what does this even mean? Ending the main quest? Ending the main quest and doing all the side quests? Do they need to max out their levels, and skills in every skill/tech tree so they know what they all do, and pick up and test every item with every mod? In practice, the idea they have to "finish" a game is potentially absurd and meaningless. Not least because of the economics of it: the effort required to fully delve into slower or complex games (think some strategy and RPG) is likely not worth it, because the article won't be worth the salary cost of so many hours sunk in. They need to play enough of a game to get a good enough of an idea to write a review, which may be substantially less than all of the game. And that is fine.
Nor can or should reviewers be robbed of their opinions. They should have some right to like or dislike a game in ways many of their audience might disagree with and say so, without being called dishonest and unethical. If they genuinely are dishonest and unethical, then let's see the evidence indicating they lied rather trial-by-media them and their entire profession into the dirt.
If they are pressed to get a review out to be amongst the first, presumably because page clicks equals ad revenue equals
them getting paid, why are we slagging them off? Who's making this situation? The reviewers will be a very small part. The publishers could be blamed, likely they set deadlines and that deadline is probably bad enough for a reviewer, who might of course also want a work/life balance. But also consider, so could us as the public be blamed, because we're the ones happy to click on the shitty, as-fast-as reviews that makes such a business model work.
Here's the thing: if we want ethical, reasonable, fair and honest game journalism, then it behoves us to have those standards in criticism of game journalism. Otherwise, we are exactly what we criticise and we can go fuck ourselves just as much as the game journalists can.
