I think I see Dunkey's point. You only have one reviewer from say, IGN representing the site's viewpoint on a game through their review. It's not "John Dickity gives Bubsy 3D a 9.5", it's "IGN gives Bubsy 3D a 9.5", so it's weird to see IGN a few days later unanimously agreeing that Bubsy 3D was actually shit.
I really think more review sites need to go the EGM route and have multiple reviewers gives their opinions on one game in the review.
There is a kernel of truth in Dunkey's criticism, but I think it misses the forest for the trees. IGN hires a lot of writers because the cover a broad - maybe the broadest - amount of media possible. They cover way more than individual youtubers or even personality-driven sites with a few staff like Giant Bomb could. The point of IGN isn't exactly in-depth criticism, it's a consumer guide that offers opinions on pretty much anything out there. It's a one-stop-shop type of deal, geared more towards casual consumers looking to make purchasing decisions. It's not consistent, but it casts a wide net a smaller staff couldn't.
That's also an entirely fair reason to ignore/discount/not read them personally, it's just not really a knock against them. It's just a different kind of media, the same way Rolling Stone is different from a punk zine.
This was coming from a transgender reviewer who was one of the most unfortunately harassed reviewers of her time there, and one who constantly included gender roles as a source of compliments and complaints in her reviews. She was absolutely in the position to go harsher on this game's score, especially on a position that was incredibly important to her, and she gives the game a score that says Superb.
The writing simply does not match up with the score given, especially how harsh she (rightfully) is with the game's pathetic portrayal of women. And don't get me wrong, there's a lot of things wrong with GTA V, it's an incredibly mediocre game in nearly all aspects, but I fail to see how what she wrote there correlates with her score (even having read the rest of the review).
At the end of the day she knows her own feelings best, no? It's condescending to suggest otherwise. There's nothing in that paragraph that negates the game being a 9 if the reviewer felt the rest of the game was great. I really doubt she pulled her punches here; there is a lot of great media out there that has issues that are worth addressing, but don't crater the work as a whole. Final Fantasy 7's Honeybee Inn bullshit sucks, for example, but I don't think many people, if anyone, would consider a bad 20ish minutes of a 70 hour game worth writing off the whole experience over. Bad? Definitely. Worth writing about? You bet. Worth holding up as an example of what not to do? Absolutely. The same could be said of the issues the Persona series has.
The difference between general reviews and hyper-focused criticism is that reviews describe a piece of art as a whole, whereas criticism extrapolates on specific elements. People are complex and so are games, and it's very rare that any one issue with a game is going to sour them entirely. The radio in GTAV is often spotty and unfunny, but it's also a relatively minuscule part of the experience. Note that I think it's completely fair if it ruined the experience to a harsher degree for you than it did for the reviewer; I just think it's weird to want the reviewer to articulate that for you as opposed to, I dunno, just disagreeing and moving on.
It's entirely reasonable to be disappointed with that part and still thoroughly enjoy the rest of the game, and it's also unfair to insinuate that someone - especially someone who has written their review of the game already, giving you the best window into their experience possible - is somehow "wrong" about their own opinion on the matter. Life experience is not a set of RPG stats that you can mechanically examine to determine what someone's opinion should be.
