Reading his Twitter feed now and this comment
Because you've written something that's useless to me. I don't know if the game is good or bad or what. I just know how much money you have.
Seems particularly foolish. You don't like Dan brought the game's price into it; fine. But the review is crystal clear on how Dan feels about the game on its own merits in the nearly ten paragraphs he spends talking about the game.
It's this kind of pedantry that makes me instantly sympathetic whenever a publication eliminates review scores, because you get people latching on to things regardless of how prominent they are within the review themselves, and attempting to dismiss the entire piece despite Dan clearly finding the game itself "frustrating" and "soulless".
I also disagree value should be a verboten topic in review scores because prices are subjective. Given the U.S. tends to be be one of the cheaper retail markets, differing regional prices make value for money, more of a concern, not a reason for negating it as consideration.
And assuming a future prospective consumer cannot look at a review when the game is, say, $20, and realign their expectations based on that new information appears very condescending.
Nintendo games seem like a bad example since they rarely drop in price, and if they do it's after a very long time. At least that's my experience. Also, as Brad said: "most people are savvy enough to reframe a value determination in a contemporary context"
Brad out this way more eloquently than me.