I really hate it when they can't be specific about what's missing or lacking. It lacks a certain "something"? Really? Well, the devs can just put that at the top of their list then!

But the purpose of a review is to put the reviewer's emotions and judgement into words that have meaning. It doesn't give anything to the reader OR the devs to say that it lacks "something". It is not relevant information for me if I were looking to buy the game. I don't care if it's more "intellectually honest" if it's useless information anyway. Why am I reading the review in the first place if he can't put into words his feelings and thoughts?

And yes, I am nitpicking about one small paragraph.

It could have been "no multiplayer", he didn't specify after all.

Well the problem isn't that you can't come up with a reason, it's that you have the intuition that it in all honesty it won't be the reason. 

Parrottmath, you must be a great educator, because I almost never got back the reason I got exactly a 90 on a paper instead of 95-100. Believe me, I tried on occasion, but I have seen the wisdom since then in there not being a good answer. Even the GRE has an essay section that is graded holistically, where really it comes down to what does the paper feel like to someone with a (hopefully) highly developed intuition. Essays, games, and movies are such complex works that if you deny that when you are scoring the game you are relying on a heuristic, an emotional memory of a long experience or many experiences, you are in effect deluding yourself with your mind's own explanation mechanism. These medium are about intellectual or emotional satisfaction, and pinpointing the flaw can be more apt to end in error or just intellectual confusion in many cases. 

The problem with just repeating the results of gameplay is that the emotion captures holistically how ever many hours they put in to it. Even doubling that time doesn't change the fact that you are encapsulating an enormous amount of information in a feeling.

People look down on the response it feels like this or that as a reason. I am reminded of how Garry Kasparov said he went about playing chess. He did an extensive amount of preparation and after that he played "by sense of smell", where emotional responses to ideas likely encapsulate thousands of hours of experiential wisdom. People often think the best chessplayers calculate better than the rest, but really chess calculation is intractable. They just sense what the most reasonable moves are based on intuition, feeling, or "sense of smell". They calculate better, but only because the best moves are sniffed out with less effort than the common player. (One chess champion, Vasily Smyslov, was known as "the hand", because he had such an intuition it seemed like his hand knew what to do and just reached for the right move)

David Hume wrote "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of passions", and he probably wasn't thinking about this, but it is another way in which this sentiment is incredibly wise.

He's basically making an argument that he can't support. It's his job to make an argument for the judgements he makes. If he makes judgements without arguments then his judgements have no value to me, because I cannot assess their value on my own. I might ignore the flaw if that "something" is indeed missing multiplayer. Or I might care deeply about it if he says that crafting is missing.

If he can't support the opinion well, then the review is no different than some random anonymous vote in metacritic that gives the 8/10. The vote certainly captures the emotion of the voter, but I'm reading a review precisely because I want more than emotions. I want to know exactly what's bad and what's good with the game, and what interesting mechanics are in it (if any).

I'm going to rate this review 6/10. The structure is great, the grammar works and I like the general pacing and layout. Having played the game, I think the review is spot on, and they cover the technical details well. This would be a 10/10 review of the game, but unfortunately it lacks a certain something so I have to downgrade it quite a bit. Too bad, better luck next time.

You should feel instinctively against the previous paragraph as much as you should feel against proper reviews not making proper points.

Wow....I think these comments are something!  I give them a 9/10 for commenting...Why not a 10...not sure, but let me go back and re read the comments and see if I can find that missing 1 pt!!

I edited in a parenthetical aside about Vasily Smyslov on reply #7. I don't know if the comment would have been a 10 out 10 or not if I had quoted the source, world champion Boris Spassky, who said "Vasily Vasilievich has an incredible intuition, and I would call it his "hand"- that is, his hand knows on which square to place every piece, and he does not need to calculate anything with his head." I did not know if talking about chess at all would add that certain something or detract from the comment. (though I will add this address http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chesscollection?cid=1012973 to read more, every named quote was from a world champion, I find it especially delightful how Vasily talks about getting in touch with his pieces feelings, their likes and dislikes (the value of this parenthetical aside is also debatable))