I'm really struggling to find great games criticism. I'm almost convinced it doesn't exist, except, perhaps, on YouTube. I do my best, but I'm just one dude. :\Like, for example, the other day, I was linked to a Dead Space article after someone had read my Dead Space 3 piece from last fall. They were all "I think you'd like this based on what I read." Well, the article was a mess. Its core theme was that Dead Space was "grossly conservative," yet it failed at each and every term to actually prove its point of view.One person who's routinely cited as 'one of the best voices in games criticism,' wrote a big thinkpiece on why the Xbox was bad. It amounted to "I don't watch movies in my living room, I watch them on my computer, so clearly the idea of the all-in-one media device is outdated," and "...yet this is a rich boy's black box for playing Call of Duty and Halo on -- and even that assumes fans of those franchises can and will continue to invest in the living room fantasy, will continue to invest in the same game mechanics, the same brands, the same ideas but with better graphics."It's an utter nonsense statement, backed up by nothing. And this person is considered one of gaming's best writers by an awful lot of people. It's embarrassing.Another critic, again considered amongst the best gaming has to offer, complained that The Witcher 2 was "too hard" to play--this on the revamped Xbox 360 version. So he complained about the game, despite not really having much to say because he hadn't gotten past the training section. He wrote another article praising the non-story of Dark Souls while damning Skyrim for using too many proper nouns, as if someone saying "the ragged flagon" or "Jarl of Windhelm" was the reason the story wasn't good. Instead of, y'know, breaking down why Skyrim's narrative failed, he resorted to nonsense complaints.I wish gaming criticism had its Atlantic, New Yorker, or Cahiers du Cinema, and it doesn't. Instead it's got Buzzfeed.These people all have way better writing chops than me, but all too often, it feels as if they don't... y'know, actually do any meaningful criticism. Too much games analysis is utter crap. When someone does dig at something, it's usually just about themes. "This game is important/not important because it's about Subject X or Y," as if merely presenting a topic was enough. Rare is it that I see pieces which have something meaningful to say on that subject.When the 'best' games criticism I've been linked to recently is a half-baked review of Battlefield Hardline that'd get a failing grade in my lower-level film crit classes, it leaves me somewhat disheartened. Seriously, mentioning current events =/= good writing.Long-form content? There's not enough, but it's there, and sites like Polygon and Kotaku are doing pretty great on that front. Polygon actually just published a piece on Looking Glass that's awesome; it might actually have supplanted the Arkane piece as my favorite thing Polygon's done. Unfortunately, long-form content is all too rare.USGamer's got some amazing features going on, like that feature on isometric games from a little while ago.