What a shitty review.

I liked it. I wish more reviews were specific with examples.

he had specific examples sure but he was criticizing a game for teaching you with death. This is the same reviewer who said dark souls was great for teaching you with death. This is why people dont like kotaku.

I didn't read any criticism in the review. Just the "X" part of the ratings box, where he says there was a frustrating amount of deaths/retries. Maybe he didn't get frustrated with Dark Souls like he did with DK. They are completely different games ya know.

Kotaku's pretty shit; as one of the commenters pointed out, there is a lack of any standards for what constitutes quality in games on Kotaku, and he was all like "well we have different reviewers with different opinions," which is funny because the review says the "Kotaku" review and not just "his" review as if it was agreed upon by the site or something
Kotaku is the National Enquirer of the internet

but crump thats why they got rid of numerical ratings. There is no Ultimate Standard, and I respect them more for that than other sites that pretend to have one.

but i mean it's a contradiction; how can there not be a "standard" and how can kotaku have a bunch of different opinions while simultaneously there is a single "kotaku" review for dkc: tropical freeze? if that holds, then there should multiple reviews for the game, instead of just totilo's "kotaku's final word" review. personally, i think it should either be that, or there should be some form of guiding philosophy/theory constituting what's good or bad and the people writing for that site generally believe in that philosophy/theory

kotaku isnt a person and can't have an opinion??? you're stupid??? kotaku is still bad though??? why dowe have to make up fake reasons for them to be bad when we agree and know they're bad??? question marks???

The guiding philosophy is that a game is worth playing or it isn't. But even that is tainted by past experience and the assumption that the audience has a similar gaming history. Really all a reviewer can do is share their experience and make a recommendation that would make sense to the average reader. Only games (or non-games) that offer many interpretations/experiences depending on the player would be worth having multiple reviewers, and I don't think Donkey Kong Country is one of those games.

I don't get what you're trying to say, though; so you're saying that Donkey Kong Country isn't a game that can offer many interpretations/experiences depending on the player. Doesn't that mean that there is a universal standard of quality for that game, even if it's just Donkey Kong? If so, why would Stephen be so adamantly "it's just my opinion, brah?"
I honestly think they should just drop the "The Kotaku Review" part of the article's title and replace it with "The Stephen Totilo review." It would solve all of the problems.

also flavio the point isn't that "kotaku can have an opinion," the point is about scholarly standards; i.e. the scholarly standard opinion is that the universe came into existence due to the big bang, some people might not agree with that notion but that doesn't change the scholarly standard. Same for standards regarding ethics and other branches of philosophy, i.e. relativism doesn't hold up well among academics at all, so it isn't the standard. Game design theory is another scholarly body of thought, as with ethics and science

Also gawker is the one who got rid of numerical ratings, not kotaku itself.

The overall recommendation that you should play it is not being questioned, Stephen is only defending the minute details of his experience. Yes I suppose there is universal standard, but it's just is there anything interesting in this game that outweighs the frustrating/boring parts and would the average reader feel the same way. I don't see why it needs to be any more specific than that.