While it is pretty disappointing with how often the Giant Bomb staff unfairly dismisses games (or entire platforms) due to not doing their research or just due to the biases of the individual members, at least people can frame the opinions that they hold in the context of what each one likes and dislikes.
One of the great things about Giant Bomb is how they build their content to be personality-focused. This means that over time, you can get a good sense of where each member's likes and dislikes lie and can take those into account when they are giving their opinions. With most reviewers or critics of games, you don't know where the individual is coming from, so you can't get a good sense of how much weight you should attribute to a particular opinion due to not knowing the biases that they all have, but with Giant Bomb, they discuss this stuff so often that you can get a really good sense of what biases they have and can weight individual or group opinions based on that.
I usually find myself in agreement with them, but I know not to give their opinions much weight when it comes to stealth games, character action games, or third-party Japanese games. And in particular, I know not to take Ryan's opinions on games too seriously because he prefers games that are "an experience" or "like a roller-coaster ride," which is totally the opposite of what I love the most about games.
I also understand that there's no way they can cover everything, so they have to write plenty of games off quickly, but it still sucks when they write off great games like Dishonored or Dark Souls just because they weren't willing to invest the time or effort to understand a game that is different from the norm. I've gotta give Patrick a lot of props for going out of his comfort zone to understand these games that everyone else writes off, and even if his analyses aren't always accurate (he misread Etrian Odyssey 4 big time), it's great to see one of the staff actively trying to broaden his horizons, which they all should be doing considering how small their staff is.
Yeah that's fine. They do do that, and it does come off as slightly lazy. I'm just talking about in general, when someone says why didn't they cover x or y. The point of the site isn't to inform people that something exists, but to give their thoughts on stuff.
The majority of the most visible staff at GB call themselves "games journalists." With that term comes an implicit expectation from the consumer of their product that their output will be properly researched and well-informed, whether they are just offering their opinions or impressions or writing a definitive review or news article.
I think it's hard to argue that Giant Bomb sometimes does a shoddy job of informing people about games, especially when the game in question is one they're not personally interested in. There are plenty of examples where they jump into a game blind, and then proceed to mark it down on issues that they would not have had if they understood the game better. At the very least, they should do the tutorial, read the manual, or simply play the game for a bit beforehand. I feel Patrick takes his job more seriously than the others in this regard.
It doesn't bother me much, because I primarily go to Giant Bomb for entertainment, but I still think it's a valid complaint.
It absolutely is valid.
Much of their video content is Quick Looks, which are meant to give an accurate representation of a game and to give their opinions on it as well as entertain. Not only are these videos often being done by games journalists, each video often exceeds 30 minutes, which is a pretty significant time investment.
It's absolutely reasonable to expect games journalists making a long-form video that goes over most every aspect of a game, and eventually offers their final opinions about the game, to have their facts straight.
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