You Call That a Review?

A couple of weeks ago, I read Greg Schloesser’s review of UTOPIA over at Boardgamenews.com and I wasn’t surprised to see that the author had applied his usual, community-appeasing tactic of failing to present anything approaching a committed opinion or tangible insight into his critical evaluation of the game.  I’ve often doubted that Mr. Schloesser plays the games he is sent to review and his comment that UTOPIA, with its conceit of impressing a royalty figure through building projects, had an original theme made me consider the possibility that his “review” template could be as much as ten years old.  Glancing over the review, the few attempts at inserting a solid opinion seem to fall completely flat- “I really enjoy the challenge of optimally using the cards to perform the actions necessary to achieve these goals”or “I find the design clever, and the challenges it presents intriguing” could, in fact, be applied to any number of board game designs produced over the last twenty or so years.  I’ve always said that recounting core rules in a bullet-pointed list doesn’t make for a game review, but can these feeble and almost entirely generic comments constitute anything approaching critical evaluation?  And what’s worse, does an overall lack of authoritative viewpoints or serious and impartial criticism coming from somewhere other than a street level actually harm our hobby?