Is this one of those situations you just can't win?

"Nice try, Fallout 3, but at the end of the day it sort of feels like you stuck in the female character option so male gamers could have acceptably curvy asses to stare at while still acting/being talked to like men. And if you approach it that way, that’s a pretty wimpy thing to do. We wouldn’t want to upset anybody by treating them as if they were actually female, right? Don’t worry though, Fallout 3, I still heart you."

Here' what some other "girl gamer" would have said if they took the author's advice:

"Nice try, Fallout 3, but at the end of the day it sort of feels like you stuck in the female character option so male gamers could have acceptably curvy asses to stare at. And if you approach it that way, that’s a pretty wimpy thing to do. Why would you want to upset us women by barraging us with chauvinistic language and stereotypes? Don’t worry though, Fallout 3, I still heart you."

Huh? Do female gamers need their own Bill Cosby to, as my sister would say "Tell them about themselves"? So much for the idea of the Monolithic Female Gamer category.

"Mon Petit Pont Faible, Obscurci Dans Le Brouillard"

Word? What is that?

I think this illustrates PERFECTLY the lofty, abstract, (bourgeois?), approach to game review that wants to throw the concept of a game being fun under the bus. I don't care how many Tolstoy reference you have, or what indie film style you shamelessly ripped off. If your game isn't fun, then lots of people aren't going to play it. If lots of people don't play it, then nobody will know about it. If nobody knows about it, then it can't very well "advance the state of the art" now, can it?

I'm all for "high brow" discussions and intellectualizing about games, but I'm not going to sit there and let someone blow smoke up my chimney about how "brilliant" some game is, or how it's "intentionally flawed" when I can tell its the product of the "shovelware" project management philosophy. If you can't get the basics right (control, a decent camera, etc), then why should I expect you to do anything "fancy"?

BTW, Google really is my friend, but I'm not going to look up that goofy quotation on principle.