When I skimmed the Polygon review I rolled my eyes and thought it was dumb at first.
I started thinking that if I was reading about this on Eurogamer (my go-to gaming review site), there would be a review that completely ignored any social commentary on law enforcement (and there was), but it also wouldn’t feel out of place for someone at Eurogamer to write their own feature opinion piece separate from the review that made all the same points about policing that Maddy makes as part of her review at Polygon.
I don’t know if I can really articulate why it feels appropriate to me to talk about policing in Spider-Man, but less so to incorporate it into the review. Maybe it feels that way because it feels like the author bringing the context of a contemporary social issue into a game that wasn’t intended to grapple with it? I don’t think that should be off limits in talking and writing about games, but it also feels strange in a review. Maybe that just leaves us stuck chasing the mythical “objective review”. I don’t know.
Anyway, that’s where I land—half-examined confusion about what I want to see in a review.