Except that food critiques tries to please his readers. Game journos doesn't care about how the target audience sees the product.
Food critics don't try to please their readers and if they do its an byproduct of what their main goal is which is informing people of the experience they may or may not have. Game journalists do the same thing.
Stick to what you know and don't use analogies you hardly understand. Go visit some Michelin star restaurants some time and do a compare and contrast, you'll realize very quickly how stupid it would be to 'please the readers'.
Fans who actually played the game >>>>> people who can't beat cuphead tutorial.
You know what's stupid about what you've written? You list the IGN review of Path of Exile but you don't highlight the fact that less than 1% of the player base even makes it to the end game and the IGN review highlights a HUGE problem with the game the game's learning curve (actually I don't think most people even get to Act 3) which is a massive waste of resources on the dev's part. It also means that the game is pretty much unapproachable by the majority of gamers out there, so yeah the IGN review is legitimate. IGN's target audience is greater than just hardcore ARPG fans you know that right? Same goes for the Michelin guide, hence why you see them rate various restaurants from simple sushi shacks, to fast food, to so called high end restaurants.
And if you're a fan of a game and you're giving a review then it's going to be discarded because you aren't exactly thinking critically of it now are you? Anyone who is writing a review that's trying to be unbiased will literally have to put a disclaimer that the game is for people who enjoy specific challenges and if you had to give it a rating for the general population it's going to be a LOT lower than the rating you would give for fans of that genre and then a rating for that subgenre. But most places don't and force you on a simple scale, so you have to drag the overall score down by quite a lot if the game is more niche.
Not really a hard concept to understand.
