I have been frustrated reading Jim Sterling's all-over-the-map "journalism" for a year now, and it's no less cringe-worthy than it was when I first discovered him. (his humor was funny for about the first article that I read by him, but it got old very quickly...)
I find that Jim Sterling is infinitely worse than the 18 year old PS3 fans which he goes out of his way to enrage. Not only do I find the scores on the games he gives to almost be the inverse (or differing within + or - 4 points of the average review on metacritic) of what the games actually deserve (which isn't that big of a deal alone), but his reasoning about why the games are "bad" (or good) are usually very poorly explained, or it becomes apparent that the reason why he liked/disliked the game was based a shallow reason. I find the inflammatory nature of his comments to be consistently irritating, unprofessional and unfunny.
The guy pretty much comes into reviews of many famous games with a preconceived bias, like writing negative articles about Heavy Rain before even playing it, giving some low budget game a "so and so game is BLATANTLY better than... game X". It's really hard to determine if the dude is just an unfunny version of the onion magazine, or is just a pretentious prick who actually does take himself seriously. (I would say both, but I'm leaning more on the latter) I really don't know for sure, but based on his rebuttals, it seems that he is dead serious in most of his comments.
The thing that really gets to me are how he gets so hurt by negative critiques of his disrespectful tone and generally against-the-grain-for-the-sake-of-it writing. What a poor little snowflake. The fact that he simply highlights immature 18 year old comments (low hanging fruit, who are not really reflective of game fans as a whole) is pretty lame too, as there are often quite a few constructive comments who he responds to with a certain level of hostility and defensiveness, if at all.
I also agree that just about every other reviewer on Destructoid is pretty decent, which I found surprising.
Sadly, I think that Jim Sterling will continue to be successful precisely due to his inflammatory humor and the group of (how should I put it... "ass-kisser" groupies?) irritating fans who excuse his rudeness and immaturity. Seriously, just because he writes in all likelihood from a country protecting freedom of speech doesn't mean that toning down his rhetoric wouldn't do the world of gaming journalism a big favor.
The fact that this dude equates "fanboys" of games to be the equivalent of terrorists and religious fundamentalists shouldn't win him any favors with anyone, yet it seems to be that articles like those that get Destructoid most of it's page views, alas.
In some ways, Jim Sterling is the "Xah Lee" of video games. If you don't know who that man is, trust me, you don't want to know.
That said, he really is only a video game reviewer, but I find it appalling that this slacker is adored, when he should be completely ignored, or better yet, fired.
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Completely agree with you 100%
Date: 2010-06-13 03:28 am (UTC)From:I have been frustrated reading Jim Sterling's all-over-the-map "journalism" for a year now, and it's no less cringe-worthy than it was when I first discovered him. (his humor was funny for about the first article that I read by him, but it got old very quickly...)
I find that Jim Sterling is infinitely worse than the 18 year old PS3 fans which he goes out of his way to enrage. Not only do I find the scores on the games he gives to almost be the inverse (or differing within + or - 4 points of the average review on metacritic) of what the games actually deserve (which isn't that big of a deal alone), but his reasoning about why the games are "bad" (or good) are usually very poorly explained, or it becomes apparent that the reason why he liked/disliked the game was based a shallow reason. I find the inflammatory nature of his comments to be consistently irritating, unprofessional and unfunny.
The guy pretty much comes into reviews of many famous games with a preconceived bias, like writing negative articles about Heavy Rain before even playing it, giving some low budget game a "so and so game is BLATANTLY better than... game X". It's really hard to determine if the dude is just an unfunny version of the onion magazine, or is just a pretentious prick who actually does take himself seriously. (I would say both, but I'm leaning more on the latter) I really don't know for sure, but based on his rebuttals, it seems that he is dead serious in most of his comments.
The thing that really gets to me are how he gets so hurt by negative critiques of his disrespectful tone and generally against-the-grain-for-the-sake-of-it writing. What a poor little snowflake. The fact that he simply highlights immature 18 year old comments (low hanging fruit, who are not really reflective of game fans as a whole) is pretty lame too, as there are often quite a few constructive comments who he responds to with a certain level of hostility and defensiveness, if at all.
I also agree that just about every other reviewer on Destructoid is pretty decent, which I found surprising.
Sadly, I think that Jim Sterling will continue to be successful precisely due to his inflammatory humor and the group of (how should I put it... "ass-kisser" groupies?) irritating fans who excuse his rudeness and immaturity. Seriously, just because he writes in all likelihood from a country protecting freedom of speech doesn't mean that toning down his rhetoric wouldn't do the world of gaming journalism a big favor.
The fact that this dude equates "fanboys" of games to be the equivalent of terrorists and religious fundamentalists shouldn't win him any favors with anyone, yet it seems to be that articles like those that get Destructoid most of it's page views, alas.
In some ways, Jim Sterling is the "Xah Lee" of video games. If you don't know who that man is, trust me, you don't want to know.
That said, he really is only a video game reviewer, but I find it appalling that this slacker is adored, when he should be completely ignored, or better yet, fired.