The Almighty Aardvark said:
I don't understand all of this hate for immersion. It is probably one of my favorite aspects of games. The ability to create a world that feels real and gripping doesn't seem to me like something that should be disregarded. There is bound to be some degree of subjectivity to it as different things are going to work for different people, but that doesn't mean that a game shouldn't be criticized for doing it poorly, or applauded for doing it well.
The hate is not for the act of being immersed.
It's for the overly and poorly used term "immersion".
There's a difference.
But I disagree - games should not be criticized or applauded for the arbitrary line one associates with suspension of disbelief - since very often, one person's line can be on a completely different continent than someone else's (so to speak).
It's not like judging aspects like controls, gameplay, bugs, graphics, etc, since, while there may be a little variation from one person to the next - the results are often pretty consistent when reviewing those aspects.
Immersion on the other hand comes from way off in left field and has no actual relevance since that one element that could be completely off-putting for one person is the thing that another finds most appealing.
In such - it's a completely useless term for reviewing a game that gets used for that purpose far too often.