It means, in the context of the rest of the review, that all the things the reviewer complimented fit together in a way that impressed him and created what he considered an engaging game experience. The game was firing on all cylinders. It was fantastic. It was really on.

The rest of the review gave his reasons for feeling that way. The quote was part of his conclusion. I quoted it to demonstrate that the review did not leave out Bayonetta's gameplay, and was in fact highly enthusiastic about it.

In the review, the author is saying that the only thing that substantially detracted from the experience was the presentation of the main character, because it was pervasive and impossible to ignore. Readers who don't consider that an important factor can ignore that part of his review and see that he's praising the rest of the game as a well-crafted improvement over the first Bayonetta.

Your country says Poland. Is English your second language? If you're misunderstanding idioms, you might be misunderstanding the tone of other sentences as well. I don't mean that as an insult, just a possibility to consider.

Go back and read that review from start to finish. Note every sentence where he describes game mechanics and judges them. Then put the review down and ask yourself, did he tell you enough for you to say that it's a game you'd probably like or hate? If not, what did you want to know that he left out?

Do you see my point though? Your quote only proved the second part, not the first ;)

I'm not going to look in detail at another review, you can find what I did on the Evil Within review to see why. Cheers though, and a reply to my other post would be great. We may be cross posting again though. :)

I thing the whole discussion about objectivity/subjectivity is confused and full of semantic misunderstandings. Lets talk about something less abstract instead, for example tomatoes.
---
Joe Doe is highly allergic to tomatoes. Allergy is medical condition, nothing "subjective" about it. He could be very vocal about his allergy, but for a good reason: he could very objectively die by eating tomato by mistake. Perhaps he even make a living from testing meals and warning other allergics "this product contains tomatoes. AVOID BY ANY COST!", and it would be important and honest job.

But, if our Joe starts - for any reason - claiming that tomatoes are poisonous by themselves, not just for those people oversensitive to them, there might be a problem. And when he starts campaining for reducing tomato production, ban tomato salads from restaurants menu or - in extreme cases - destroing all tomato seeds and plants and erase the very word from dictionary, he surely alienate most tomato-eaters, plenty of neutrals and even some fellow allergics. Again, for a good reason.
---

For those who hate allegories: If anyone (not just reviewer) mistakes his or her personal (rather than subjective) viewpoint for universal (rather than objective) truth, it rarely makes world more pleasant place to live in.

That's the other extreme. I don't expect that, but people can always try their very best.

Ooh...
That's ambiguous. You see - I can't say that getting kicked in the nuts is objectively painful. Pain is a subjective sensation, a highly intimate experience. What I CAN say is that, objectively, getting kicked in the nuts is painful.

It's also somewhat a matter of definitions. Let me tell you - I've had a whole course devoted entirely to definitions of art (and, consequently, artistic value. Not always necessarily "beauty"). If you have a decent definition of art and its value, you can damn well make judgements that are correct or incorrect.
Saying that a game is "fun" is like saying eating a given vegetable is "healthy". It's a fairly general statement that could easily be proven false under certain circumstances (some people are allergic, eating too much can be harmful, etc), but nevertheless is understood by people and taken as useful advice, especially when coupled with more precise remarks.

Yes, and that value judgement should be as objective as possible.
See - you've taken "value" and "judgement" to SELF-EVIDENTLY refer to something subjective. I refuse to agree, which can trip you up if you continue to use these terms in such a way.
You said that we should get our facts right... Should we BASE our opinion on facts? Doesn't this mean that we're TRYING to say something true?
There's this old and simple theory that knowledge is true and justified belief. An opinion is basically a belief we have, the way we guesstimate the world to be. "2x2=4" is an opinion, a true one. "2x2 = 5" is also an opinion. We can have preferences, along the lines of "I like strawberries", but even for such subjective things there can be truths and falsehoods. For instance - if Billy likes strawberries, him liking strawberries is subjective, but the FACT that he DOES like strawberries is objective. It can also be reasonable to assume that we can utter true statements such as "If you like game X, you will likely like game Y". This can be further detailed.

I know that it can be complicated to have a grasp on what makes a game (from a given genre / for a given audience / blahblahblah) GOOD, but people who lack this understanding shouldn't review games. Similarly - if I don't know what separates good books from bad books, I shouldn't review books.

Somehow - reviews exist, discussions exist, quality assurance departments exist. I don't think we live in a world where people coming to the conclusion that a given game is "good" is purely a matter of coincidence. If it's grounded in what the game is like, in objective features it has, in facts on what people fancy and what they do not, it ultimately isn't completely guesswork nor arbitrary choice. It would be more productive to try and establish what it means for a game to be good, rather than disagree on whether such a term as "objectively good game" makes sense. It can probably be easier to come up with partial intuitions on what makes a good MOBA game, what makes a good strategy game, etc. If the previous sentence immediately brings to your mind certain elements of design, it's ostensibly why you should consider the possibility that these things aren't what you arbitrarily associate with a given genre, but your intuitions on what the truth of the matter is.

The is more to truth than lists and numbers. There is more to science than mathematics.

Here's a screencap of one of the subjective reviews for Dungeon Keeper 2:

In my opinion, all the things that really matter in a game are subjective (e.g. gameplay, art design, level design, atmosphere, etc.)

Most of the objective measures don't matter to any true gamer (e.g. graphical fidelity, texture resolution, audio fidelity, etc.)

TB is a complete and utter casual non-gamer. He's a tech enthusiast with political views. He doesn't actually play the games, hence he only does "first impressions" so he can just compare graphics settings, menu sliders, test bench on his SLI dual-GPU beast rig on ultra-high, and then judge a game based on how well his high-end rig handles them, while ripping a game to shreds for having even slightly blurry textures. He occassionally mentions older game titles for street cred, but literally hasn't touched them in 20 years.

Oh that's such a load of bullcrap. Someone who truly cares about the medium values all its aspects. This kind of attitude isn't any better than being a "graphic whore".

Your attitude sickens me as a gamer. And my attitude is definitely better than being a "graphic whore". A graphics whore doesn't appreciate a classic game just because of the graphics. I'm capable of appreciating games old and new. Now tell me that this is no better than being a graphics whore. Do you happen to be one?

It sickens you that I am equally fascinated by design as well as technology and that I respect the effort and accomplishments put into each and every area in game development?

So I do appreciate the increased authenticity that higher resolution textures allow, I value the effort artists put into the additional details and I am amazed when I see a shader that generates dense animated grass - how does that make me a "worse gamer" than you?

And sure, so graphic whores omit some older or uglier titles, in my experience they are at least being honest about it and ultimately still can tell a good a game apart from a bad one (among the "good looking" ones). :P