A decade ago, the gaming world went gaga for Deus Ex, a dark conspiracy thriller with expansive ambitions and supernaturally bad dialog. Though flawed and ugly, many saw in it the future of sandbox-style gaming, and they had visceral fun playing it. Tom Chick, however, just saw crates. Lots and lots of crates. His minority report remains the perfect hype-ignorant video game review: so outraged were fans that the review's publisher ran an appropriately adulatory 'second opinion' shortly thereafter.
Rock Paper Shotgun honors the feat with an interview:
One angry fellow – he was a kid really – sent me a picture of himself, pointing a gun at the camera. He wrote something like "go ahead, make my day" in the email. I suppose that could be considered a death threat, but I would have preferred something more dramatic like "I will totally kill you because you didn't like Deus Ex!" I tried for a while to respond to everyone as graciously as I could, but I eventually petered out. So if you wrote me an angry email ten years ago, I apologize for not getting back to you.
Chick also explains how the notorious "7-9" scale of game review ratings works: you ask an editor if it exists, he says it doesn't. Then, when you assign something "3," it does.
