Terramax: I'd say the "inform" is the most important part, unless you mean "entertain" as in "interesting/enjoyable to read". But isn't that true with all writings?
For amateur reviews it would be fine to be just entertaining, but you'd have to make certain you really are funny, instead of just throwing random jokes about. And also be sure to not misinform people. Even then it would feel, to me, more of an opinion piece, or a rant.
Good professional reviews tend to cover more areas or aspects of games than amateur ones,
but amateurs have a habit of revealing the writers feelings on the subject. I think the best coverage would be gained by reading both, but that probably was what you were getting at anyway.
I think you miss the point about entertaining. I don't me just being funny, but writing review that speaks to the reader at a personal level than just writing a boring essay, which appears to be the case with these reviews that go on for about 4 pages and/ or reviews without a writer's distinctive style.
Professional reviewers 'inform' all the time, without any feeling and, to me, seem 100x more shallow than amateur reviews/ reviewers.
I personally love the rants on many amateur reviewers. Generally, it's the only way to balance out the 99% of reviews that rate many games too high and are completely blinded to any faults, no matter how obvious some are.
Professional reviewers have a habit of rating their favourite genres or the most sought after games high levels and games they dislike abysmal.
One of my favourite games is Myst IV: Revelation. Now, fair enough, the game has some glaring faults. It's obscenely hard for starters, but it's pretty much the revolution of point and click adventure games, and about as good as they're ever going to get.
So many details and little extras they add in, kicking out all the stale, boring elements of the genre i.e. instead of having to read endless diaries, we get a pendant that tells the story in flashback, and any diaries there are, have voice overs to do the work for us so we sit back and relax.
PC gamer gave it 35%. Now, as a point and click adventure game, it's almost perfect in every criteria. It should be rated high for all those who love those kinds of games. And despite the complexities of the design of the game and the many features, I was shocked that the review was not even half a page long.
The same magazine I then gives Crysis 98%, despite the many complaints and drawbacks.
Now, I'm not arguing it's a bad game. But Crysis and Myst IV: Revelation have a lot in common. Both push the genre and hardware to the limit (or Revelation did at the time), an eclection of everything the genres have done in the past and taken to the next level.
At the same time both of them can be critisised to subdue on theirselves for being pretty much the same as every other typical game in their genre in the market, but just more tweaked and refined, adding nothing substantially new to the table.
But Crysis is rated way higher simply because FPSs are the 'in' thing, and an obvious favourite genre for the reviewers, rather than fairly rating all their games equally with every kind of customer put into consideration.
To me that's snobbish, unfair and elitist.
Then there's the debate about the importance of advertisement, especially on internet review sites, the fact some of these guys get their paycheques from the very companies they're reviewing for, to me, severely clouds my judgement as to how these people would give an honest opinion of a highly publicised game.
Now before anyone points this out, I know this isn't the case with every game. Okami and Psychonauts got their fair share of raved reviews.
But at least I know when I read an amateur review, the person isn't being given cash in hand for his judgement.
A question I'd like to ask is why reviews don't take up the same rating style as Famitsu magazine. I've read they have 4 reviewers for every game, and at the end, all 4 give a rating from 1-10 each and tally it to total/40.
