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Thread to review a review

Posted: 29th August 2015 00:21

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Cactuar
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Member of more than five years. Celebrated the CoN 20th Anniversary at the forums. 
Oh man. Am I the only one who thinks that the 'review' has really become a bland example of journalism? Where the hell are these people finding jobs? It is a joke, honestly, that people get paid to write reviews anymore.

What am I on about? Mostly music journalism and review. But this extends to film, too. Where reviewers are too busy talking about the artists or actors and their personal lives, or going off on tangents about things that have nothing to do with the actual material that is being reviewed.

So this thread is to review a review.

I will start with one of my favorite bad music journalists, Ryan Dombal of Pitchfork.

I will review his review of D'Angelo's Voodoo reissue from December 2012.

Here is a link to this terrible excuse for music journalism.

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17407-voodoo/

Ryan Dombal user posted image

Reviews

D'Angelo - Voodoo (2012 Re-Issue)


Dombal immediately shits all over any notion that he is writing a review of a music album in his review of D'Angelo's groundbreaking Voodoo. Ignoring the fact that his job is to critique recorded sound arranged into composition, he storms into his review with all the arrogance of a flannel-bearded hipster gentrifying Brooklyn.

In Dombal's first paragraph, actually, in his first sentence, he 'ironically' says one of the most cliched devices a writer could possibly say by proclaiming:

Quote
It's impossible to talk about Voodoo without talking about what's happened since Voodoo. Or, more accurately, what hasn't happened since Voodoo.


I'm serious. Click the link. The entire first paragraph then outlines what D'Angelo may or may not have been doing in the decade since the release of Voodoo, already forgetting that he is writing a review of an album, not the artist's personal life. He follows this up with your run of the mill racism, starting the next paragraph with this gem:

Quote
He's also been arrested-- for disturbing the peace, marijuana possession, carrying a concealed weapon, and driving under the influence in 2005, and then for offering an undercover NYPD officer $40 for a blowjob in 2010.


Again, I wish I was making this stuff up. Dombal has written one paragraph and one sentence at this point and completely fails to aknowledge the fact that he is supposedly reviewing music. He has immediately both sullied the artist's reputation and tarnished journalism before saying anything about the recording he is supposed to be reviewing. The second paragraph then goes on to further call in to question D'Angelo's character, while it digresses into name dropping and ludicrous comparisons to contemporary artists of D'Angelo and how his "genius" "stacks up to them". How one person can simultaneously try so hard to sound sophisticated and intelligent with his arrogant grasp of the English language but sound so damn ignorant is beyond me.

The third paragraph is no better, offering a few lyrical quotes while Dombal rants about "the era" that Voodoo was initially released in (the age of the dying CD technology, Napster, pre-iPod era), as if those things have anything at all to do with how the damn thing sounds or the technical feat that the album is, instead choosing to view the album as an enigma rather than a masterpiece that shook the foundations of music so hard, the artist himself was severely affected by it. But again, his review should not be about the artist and at this point, that is all it has been (of course, to mention the artist or elaborate on who he is wouldn't be an issue if the focus was on the music and the recordings).

This review is a staggering 15 paragraphs long. It isn't until the seventh paragraph that he even begins to talk about the album and what may have influenced it and even then, at this point he has talked about ?uestlove more than anything.

The rest of Ryan Dombal's review spirals into ego-maniacal ranting; Dombal is so sure of what this album is about conceptually and spiritually that you'd think he was the one who wrote it. The second half of the "review" is literally Dombal trying to prove to the world that he knows a thing or two about African-American culture, lifestyle and music and everything about Voodoo, as if keeping it tucked away on his iPod means that he actually gets it. As if the album means anything more to him than being a tool he can use to get laid in his self-obsessed, hipster world where white people have the right and authority to tear apart black artists limb from limb; to degrade an African-American musician and reduce him to a mixture of influences, stereotypes and objectify him in contrast to his art.

This review isn't even akin to that of a fan-boy ranting, if only it were it might have been forgivable. But what Ryan Dombal does with his "review" of one of the greatest recordings of all time, is reduce it to a series of quotes, stories and hard critique of the artist himself, rather than elaborate on the sounds that were achieved on the album and it's recordings. Dombal reduces the album to a compilation of black culture, focusing too much on the star-power that touches it; Dombal drops names and quotes from D'Angelo, his peers, his contemporaries and his influences in a series of paragraphs that refuse to aknowledge the music itself. It comes across not as a super-fan gushing about an album that blew him away, but as a prejudiced, bigoted, arrogant fuck-tard who thinks he knows an artist inside and out, better than the artist knows himself.

Ryan Dombal's review of D'Angelo's album Voodoo is not a music review of a music recording. It is a self-indulgent, masturbatory exclamation that he knows it all; It is a critique of an artist and a reduction of that artist to an object by a racist bigot who rode the wave of hipsterdom into the new millennium, capitalizing on the gentrification of the neighborhoods of the very people he claims to know so well, as suggested by his questionable journalism. The fact that Dombal goes out of his way to first smear D'Angelo's character only to give the album a perfect rating of 10, while providing no insight as to why the album, not the artist, deserves that prestigious perfect Pitchfork rating only further proves that Pitchfork (an online music magazine that first started off reviewing mostly Heavy Metal but spiraled into a black-culture consuming monster that has a staff of 44 but only 4 of those 44 happen to be black) and their "senior editor" Ryan Dombal are nothing but racist jaggoffs who not only appropriated African-American music into their publication, but blatantly claimed it as their own by deciding they were the authority on it.

Review Score: 0/10 for not reviewing music whatsoever.


If you want more bad writing, seek out Dombal's recent interview of Destroyer, where he seriously asks (or in his snobby, asinine language, phrases it as a statement instead, in an effort to sound intelligent) singer Dan Bejar "So you’re not listening to Taylor Swift in your downtime".

http://pitchfork.com/features/interviews/9...yers-dan-bejar/

It is a joke.


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Post #209524
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Posted: 16th November 2015 03:05

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Cactuar
Posts: 263

Joined: 26/5/2015

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Member of more than five years. Celebrated the CoN 20th Anniversary at the forums. 
On a more positive note, I've decided to go. I found a pretty nice review of Fallout 4 over on Destructoid. Instead of sorting through all of the crap reviews for it, and trust me there were a lot, I thought why not review the better review I found?

Who: Chris Carter

Website: Destructoid

Link: http://www.destructoid.com/review-fallout-4-318096.phtml

Chris Carter: user posted image

(Looks a bit like Nick Lachey, no?)

Reviews

Fallout 4

Mr. Carter starts this review of with a quick abstract on his introduction to the Fallout series. His first foray was the first installment, which is refreshing in an industry that is full of people who were introduced to the series by Fallout 3.

And so, also refreshing is that he doesn't ramble on with too much exposition, instead offering a brief but informative amount of information to allow the reader to know where he is coming from and what his history with the series is. And then he wastes no time diving into his review.

Because of this, the review starts off on a strong note. He very bluntly jumps right into a quick summary of the main story, one which he describes as weak, already separating his review from the lot of his peers. Having played all of the main entries in the game, I am aware instantly that the reviewer also has, since only Fallout: New Vegas even comes close to the first two entries in the series in terms of story-telling and writing, something the reviewer agrees with.

Diving further into the review, Mr. Carter takes time to touch on the various new aspects of the game; The new crafting system, the new, real-time dialogue interaction, the large world and vibrant colors (which are a stark contrast to Fallout 3's watered down locations and environments), new companions and settlement building, changes to the VATS system and the first-person mechanics. But you know the reviewer has a true sense of the world of Fallout when he devotes an entire paragraph on the changes made to the Power-Armor, which the player now steps into, as if it is more of a vehicle than armor and how it runs on a very scarce fuel found scattered throughout the game, forcing the player to be conservative with their use of it.

One more paragraph covers the new perk system and the various changes made to it before Mr. carter sets his review apart from the rest (about 10 or 15) of the reviews that I've read on the game. Whereas almost every other review of Fallout 4 seems to downplay the inevitable and expected glitches found in almost every Bethesda game, this review actually shows some warranted criticism of of these bugs and furthermore, his final score of the game (a 7.5/10) reflects that criticism; The reviewer actually kept these bugs in mind when scoring the game. A great way to realise the significance of this is to go back and read some reviews of both Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas. The third installment received almost universal high scores, while the Obsidian developed FNV, almost universally mixed reviews, from mediocre, to average to good but very few excellent scores.

Why is this significant? Because I believe fanboyism comes into play a lot. Most of the reviews of Fallout 3 that gave the game high praise also ignored the absolutely broken game that it was on it's launch and were by people either being introduced to the series for the first time, fans of Bethesda's games and game engine, or who briefly played the older games to get a feel for the universe. Or a combination of the three. Fallout: New Vegas on the other hand, was widely criticised for these same game breaking bugs, by these same reviewers that gave the third installment high acclaim. Coincidence? Perhaps, but I'd be a fool to think there wasn't writer bias, or 'influence' from Bethesda on Fallout 3 reviews.

I don't want to stray too far from actually reviewing this review, but FO3 was written by and developed by Bethesda staff, whereas FNV was written by and developed by Obsidian, which is the successor to Black Isle Studios/Interplay, the studios that made the first two games in the series, and who's staff consists of a lot of ex-members of those defunct developers. So in many ways, FNV is the true 'third installment' in the series, whereas FO3 was meant as a re-introduction to the universe for old players and a compilation of the themes and universe of the first two landmark games (something Bethesda themselves have stated in the time that has passed since FO3's release).

But in the end, the writer's seemingly unbiased review of the fourth installment in this wildly popular series stands apart from his peers' reviews. This review tells it like it is: Fallout 4 is a very, very good game that is fun and engaging. But it has a lot of glitches that affect the overall experience, some weak writing and some unrefined concepts and mechanics. He places FO4 firmly between FO3 and FNV in terms of quality and experience but makes clear that the overall game feels a lot like Fallout 3.5 as opposed to a full-fledged, well refined sequel to the weakest entry (Fallout 3) in the main series.

Review Score: 9/10 for being a refreshing, unbiased review to a 4th installment in a series that the reviewer has played since it's inception. The review isn't too long, doesn't try to downplay any faults and keeps in mind the overall experience when determining it's final score of a high-budget, big-studio videogame.

Well done, Mr. Carter.

This post has been edited by Dynamic Threads on 16th November 2015 03:06

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