I really hate it when they can't be specific about what's missing or lacking. It lacks a certain "something"? Really? Well, the devs can just put that at the top of their list then!

That is what all qualitative judgements are though. We have an emotional memory of the game, and that is its quality. Then we start justifying our emotions, or just say we can't put our finger on it if we can't find anything. The reasons come after the feeling and may or may not be related to the feeling. I think "I don't know what is missing" is more intellectually honest than just searching for reasons that sound good because the truth of what is unfavorable is complex and difficult to put in words. I wrote about this issue in the psychology and trait trees thread I made. Memory is reality for the most part, and it is subject to biases and irrationality. 

But the purpose of a review is to put the reviewer's emotions and judgement into words that have meaning. It doesn't give anything to the reader OR the devs to say that it lacks "something". It is not relevant information for me if I were looking to buy the game. I don't care if it's more "intellectually honest" if it's useless information anyway. Why am I reading the review in the first place if he can't put into words his feelings and thoughts?

And yes, I am nitpicking about one small paragraph.

Our emotional memory is a heuristic and the corresponding events don't necessarily get imprinted. These emotional marks carry inordinate weight in our memory: the high point, the low point, and how it ends. If you play the game 40-100 hours, you have emotions that come up when you are asked how good is the game, but because it is a heuristic, the corresponding events that were imprinted with these emotions may not be there. I just hate seeing reviews where they give it 8 because of no multiplayer, or some other reason that just sounds weighty, when it just didn't feel like a 9. Reviewers have no special rationality when it comes to their memories, so I don't expect them to always know why. I appreciate the same paragraph that you resent, because I think that it could have been this game is missing multi-player in its stead, or some other reason that has nothing to do with why the game feels like an 8.

It could have been "no multiplayer", he didn't specify after all.

Hmmm... I see Burress point, but Heavenfall points out exactly the purpose of the other person's JOB.

My professional job is to grade papers and educate, and suppose I give a 8 out of 10 on a paper. The student asks me what they did wrong, I reply... well it just didn't feel like a 10. I felt something was lacking. What was lacking replies the student. Its that certain something that would make it an A paper.

If I have ever done that I would lose my job, plain and simple. If I cannot come up with constructive criticism of the paper, then why would I reduce the grade from that paper. If it qualifies all points there is no reason to lower the grade.

The professional review must hold to this same standard when they are grading the game (and being paid to do so). If there is a emotional low or high, well the reviewer should mark this down as they are reviewing. It is their job to supply an appropriate review of the material and not just well this is my gut feeling about the game. Plain and simple that end feeling is as simple as I'm too lazy to find out exactly what is wrong with the game to write it down.

There is no excuse for the reviewer to not be able to determine the feeling from this experience, as they can repeat the results of gameplay.

I am pleased with the 4 / 5 result of the game.

Well the problem isn't that you can't come up with a reason, it's that you have the intuition that it in all honesty it won't be the reason. 

Parrottmath, you must be a great educator, because I almost never got back the reason I got exactly a 90 on a paper instead of 95-100. Believe me, I tried on occasion, but I have seen the wisdom since then in there not being a good answer. Even the GRE has an essay section that is graded holistically, where really it comes down to what does the paper feel like to someone with a (hopefully) highly developed intuition. Essays, games, and movies are such complex works that if you deny that when you are scoring the game you are relying on a heuristic, an emotional memory of a long experience or many experiences, you are in effect deluding yourself with your mind's own explanation mechanism. These medium are about intellectual or emotional satisfaction, and pinpointing the flaw can be more apt to end in error or just intellectual confusion in many cases. 

The problem with just repeating the results of gameplay is that the emotion captures holistically how ever many hours they put in to it. Even doubling that time doesn't change the fact that you are encapsulating an enormous amount of information in a feeling.

People look down on the response it feels like this or that as a reason. I am reminded of how Garry Kasparov said he went about playing chess. He did an extensive amount of preparation and after that he played "by sense of smell", where emotional responses to ideas likely encapsulate thousands of hours of experiential wisdom. People often think the best chessplayers calculate better than the rest, but really chess calculation is intractable. They just sense what the most reasonable moves are based on intuition, feeling, or "sense of smell". They calculate better, but only because the best moves are sniffed out with less effort than the common player. (One chess champion, Vasily Smyslov, was known as "the hand", because he had such an intuition it seemed like his hand knew what to do and just reached for the right move)

David Hume wrote "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of passions", and he probably wasn't thinking about this, but it is another way in which this sentiment is incredibly wise.

Woah, did David Hume just get quoted? These forums just got more intellectual, brah.

He's basically making an argument that he can't support. It's his job to make an argument for the judgements he makes. If he makes judgements without arguments then his judgements have no value to me, because I cannot assess their value on my own. I might ignore the flaw if that "something" is indeed missing multiplayer. Or I might care deeply about it if he says that crafting is missing.

If he can't support the opinion well, then the review is no different than some random anonymous vote in metacritic that gives the 8/10. The vote certainly captures the emotion of the voter, but I'm reading a review precisely because I want more than emotions. I want to know exactly what's bad and what's good with the game, and what interesting mechanics are in it (if any).

I'm going to rate this review 6/10. The structure is great, the grammar works and I like the general pacing and layout. Having played the game, I think the review is spot on, and they cover the technical details well. This would be a 10/10 review of the game, but unfortunately it lacks a certain something so I have to downgrade it quite a bit. Too bad, better luck next time.

You should feel instinctively against the previous paragraph as much as you should feel against proper reviews not making proper points.

Well if reviewers always knew what games were missing, they would also be the most creative game designers. We toss out ideas by the bushel here on the forum, but we really have little idea what the effects of our suggestions would be (except me, my ideas are always the best ones).

Davrovana, I think it is always a pleasure to work in one of the most controversial statements in the history of philosophy to a debate. It is such a delight to be repulsed, then attracted, and repulsed, over and over again to such an idea, and then realize, hey I am basing my analysis of this statement on how it feels to me. Does that say something for it?

Wow....I think these comments are something!  I give them a 9/10 for commenting...Why not a 10...not sure, but let me go back and re read the comments and see if I can find that missing 1 pt!!

Don't bother; you won't be able to point out exactly what's missing. There's just a certain something that would've made the comments 10/10, but I can't put my finger on it.

I edited in a parenthetical aside about Vasily Smyslov on reply #7. I don't know if the comment would have been a 10 out 10 or not if I had quoted the source, world champion Boris Spassky, who said "Vasily Vasilievich has an incredible intuition, and I would call it his "hand"- that is, his hand knows on which square to place every piece, and he does not need to calculate anything with his head." I did not know if talking about chess at all would add that certain something or detract from the comment. (though I will add this address http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chesscollection?cid=1012973 to read more, every named quote was from a world champion, I find it especially delightful how Vasily talks about getting in touch with his pieces feelings, their likes and dislikes (the value of this parenthetical aside is also debatable))

Yeah, I remember the essay section on the GRE, and all of my papers I've had to write in grad school were scored based on a particular criteria and if they couldn't argue correctly on how that criteria was met I always received a higher score. To be graded poorly without justification is a failure on the educator and plainly so with the specification that are presented clearly to others.

Unfortunately in my field, I do not have the luxury of being allowed to use emotional memory or heuristic memory, these arguments just don't hold water and one would be completely ignored (no matter how right you are) if you rely on such explanations. You have to be right and know why you are right based off of clear logical reasoning. The same standard should hold for professional reviewers.

Overall, I believe the reviewer was far and provided adequate presentation as to why he gives the 4 / 5 throughout his essay, but there was no reason for the emotional overlay at the end without a better justification. Since the method of presentation he is relying on their is to utilize other's understanding of the feeling of that "something" it is a colloquial term and only will be understood by a few people who understand what that expression means.