Another day, another journlolist that has no idea what the fuck they’re actually doing.

I lied, I lied. Jed Whitaker isn’t “another” journo who has only appeared just recently, his name is quite familiar by now. So what’s the matter, you may ask? Well, he published this article on Destructoid:

http://archive.is/RQN7T (original version)

http://archive.is/HNzSx (post-change, the change is actually pretty hilarious, if massively unfair to a significant chunk of the potential audience… but nothing of substance was altered)

Most people commenting on this have latched on to Jed’s attitude, which is best described as “sanctimonious asshole”, but what I find more interesting is how this article is, above and beyond all, a staggering display of reviewer incompetence.

Jed, if you’re reading this, what the hell were you thinking?

You don’t have to wait long to see the bullshit. It attacks your mind and senses immediately, straight from the headline. Granted, it’s a small article, so there wasn’t a lot of room to begin with, but it’s still fascinating, in a morbid way, to see how quickly the bullshit arrives.

“Valkyrie Drive: Bhikkhuni’s PC port is perverted garbage”

That’s the headline, word-for-word. A lot had been said about the “perverted garbage” part. Was it necessary to be so immediately antagonistic? Maybe not, but that’s not what I’m going to talk about. I’m also not going to talk about the “Dynasty Warriors for pedophiles” (or “aspiring pedobears” in the edited version) bit, because, again, Jed’s antagonistic attitude is quite well-known by now and many people have already said everything that needs to be said.

There are two other words that immediately caught my eye in this headline. Specifically, the words “PC port”.

When I first saw the headline in my Twitter feed, my immediate reaction was “LOL”. In this headline, Jed takes his opinion about the game in general (“perverted garbage”) and uses it to describe a specific version of the game. Based on just the headline, you’d be forgiven for assuming that it’s the PC port that added all the boobs and panty shots, that the original game wasn’t like this. Of course, that’s not true, and if you read the whole article, it becomes pretty clear. What isn’t clear is why the rest of the article has to be as bad as the headline.

The article is, essentially, an unholy conglomerate of two things that should always be kept separate: a mini-review of the game and a mini-review of a port. Just like the headline, opinions about the game and opinions about the PC port are intertwined, with no real distinction between the two. To be fair, Jed tries to distinguish between the two, but thoroughly lacks the mental discipline to actually do so.

Near the beginning of the article, he links to a review of the original Vita version, written by someone else. So far, so good. He then gives a quick description of what the game actually is to familiarize those not in the know. That’s fine, I guess, but the article posits itself as being about the PC port. Wouldn’t readers interested in that already know what the game itself is like? I guess some might not, but still…

The next paragraph begins with this line: “Instead of going in-depth and reiterating things already said in our Vita review, I’ll just give you a quick breakdown.” Well, if you could actually do that, Jed, that’d be great, but that’s not what you did! For three mercifully short paragraphs, you aren’t just describing the game, you’re describing your opinions of it. In other words, you’re giving a review, no matter how brief. Since your reaction is to the game’s content, your review applies to the game in general, in an article that was ki-i-i-i-i-nd of supposed to be about a specific port.

Yes, it was way shorter than CJ’s review of the Vita version, but even then, it’s still a mini-review… of the wrong object entirely. What’s the point of providing opinions about the game’s content in an article about the technical merits of a port?

This off-topic rant is followed up with a single paragraph about the actual port. I shit you not, that’s all there really is. And you have to love how the paragraph starts with the word “port-wise”, as if it’s a topic to be quickly mentioned and then discarded. In an article that should’ve been entirely “port-wise”. He describes only two aspects: “stable framerate” and “lots of bugs”. How were the PC/mouse controls handled? What resolutions does the port support? Yadda, yadda, there’s so much more to talk about, but Jed didn’t. Probably because he spent the entire article being disgusted at the game’s sexual content instead of talking specifically about the port, which is what he should’ve been doing.

The final paragraph begins with a doozy:

“Not only is this game buggy as hell, but it offers nothing of value whatsoever.”

First, we once again descend into opinions of the game as a whole in an article that was supposed to be about a port. The whole final paragraph does that, actually. But the clincher that seals the deal, the bit that raises the bullshit to a whole new level, is Jed saying that “this GAME” is “buggy as hell”. As opposed to, you know, “this PORT”, because the Vita version is, apparently, glitch-free. Jed even stated that, with this port, you’re “trading in stability for headaches”, indicating that this is specifically a characteristic of the PC port, but then ascribes that same characteristic to the game as a whole.

You really didn’t think this through, Jed, did you? Hell, I’m pretty sure I put more effort into this reply than you put into your digital word-vomit. Considering that you’re a published journalist and I’m a random nobody on the Internet, that’s pretty pathetic, don’t you think?

Jed’s antagonistic attitude aside, most of this article would’ve been fine if Jed decided to write a second review of the game as a whole, to complement and contrast CJ’s somewhat more positive opinion. Saying something like “this is a second review of Valkyrie Drive: Bhikkhuni, please note I played the PC version, while CJ played the Vita original” and then spending a paragraph to talk about the port and how it compares to the Vita version and how that may have impacted the reviewer’s experience would’ve been fine.

Instead, we have an article that pretends to be about the PC port, but really isn’t. Being able to separate your opinions of the game as a whole and your opinions of the technical merits of a port seems like a simple thing, but, apparently, it was too hard of a task for Jed to tackle.

EDIT: An earlier version of this response had the wrong spelling of Whitaker’s surname, with two letters “t” instead of one. This has been corrected.