It's not an excuse, because it's not a problem these reviewers recognise as needing an excuse. Your belief that reviews should be accurate and serve a consumer purpose is a personal one. It's not one I disagree with per se, but there are other people out there who'll see a review as just being a personal expression and it shouldn't serve any higher purpose, and they've just as valid a viewpoint. One could argue that sites like Metacritic would select which reviews to include as being objective, but that in itself is subjective. How do you decide if a 7/10 score is objectively based and worth including, or just a personal opinion posted to the 'net like so many blogs?
The confusion comes from the fact that the term review is loosely used. The definition of review is this
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/review
Whereas journalists and individuals have been using the term under different contexts. This has been happening for a long time as journalism became more and more concerned with creating impressions than talking about facts and people found it easier to get some form of popularity with the help of the internet. So now people are accustomed to use the same term for all contexts.
So what we have now are reviews with the aim to inform if a product is worth purchasing, personal opinions, parodies, space fillers written by people who dont even care or know about the product they are writing about, personal blogs etc falling under the term "review"
When I begun talking about this subject it was due to my concern that there is this mix up of all these kinds of "reviews" being thrown together as if they belong in the same category quality and content wise. And obviously not all are providing a good idea of what they are reviewing. This is not just isolated in game reviews of course.
Its only natural that some people will complain about some of them being badly written
So lets go to your below argument
See, that's a subjective interpretation. I take Zero Punctuation, the few episodes I've seen, as legitimate criticism dressed up in a humorous style, but still intended as a real review on whether a game is good or not based on the reviewer's opinion. I consider his review scores as just as valid to a Metacritic score as any other.
You see I didnt say anything about it being legitimate or not. Zero punctuations legitimacy is subject to its context. It is legitimate because the..."reviewer" makes his position and aim very clear. And I accept and agree with ZP's points even though the areas it is covering are sometimes
on purpose and knowingly unrelated to how good a game is in its totality (but valid points regardless), whereas other reviews are not. ZP's "review" may choose a point of view under which it "shits" on a game's face with very valid points I agree with wholeheartedly. And yet the game may be worth experiencing and the reviewer seems to know it. Note that it does not provide scores since its aware of its approach. Thats why I have these games in my library and I see where ZP comes from regardless. But the same cant be said for every other review out there that takes itself seriously while knowing less about the game they are reviewing than Zero Punctuation
In my opinion, Sakura Taisen and Telltales' The walking dead seem to have very similar top level game mechanics. I base this on playing the demo of walking dead and a couple of the Sakura Taisen games. A review of The walking dead could point this out and place that game in a cultural context.
If you do a review of Virtua Fighter 6 it might be interesting to compare it to other fighting games like Tekken, Street Fighter etc.
But sometimes it can make sense and we have seen good reviews making references to other games and media. But regardless of whether they refer to another similar title or not though all good reviews make an in-depth analysis of the gameplay mechanics of the game which is the
common interest. It depends on what context you make other references to. Sure some reviewer can be creative and make some other references such us how fighting games evolved from the projectile shooting fighting games like Street Fighter to the 3D realistic fighting games like VF. Or they could cover the different gameplay approaches between Tekken and VF for informative purposes or to give an idea of what new it brings into the table compared to other games. But would it really make sense to underscore or overscore Virtua Fighter because Akira doesnt supercharge, throw projectiles and jump like Ryu or because its fighting system has a much difficult learning curve than Tekken? Of course not.
Similarly you can make reference to DMC being one of the first of its kind to bring in the genre the depth of a fighting game in its combat system or that it lends inspiration from RE but it wouldnt make sense to criticize it for not having the depth of Virtua Fighter or being as horrific as Resident Evil.
You wouldnt criticize Gran Turismo or Forza for being less fan because they dont have cinematic crashes like Burnout, becuase they dont have power ups like Blur and because cars dont drift endlessly like Ridge Racer
I assume that "it" is the game here.
So in order to good review according to your criteria you would have to know the game's target audience and the "experience it wants to offer". First of all, the game is just a product and cannot "want" anything, so I assume you mean what the developer/publisher aim for.
Wasnt it obvious?
So let us take the hypothetical Barbie Racing 4. The publisher states that is aimed at girls aged 6-10 and that it wants to offer a "fun casual game". If I were to review that according to your criteria I would have to imagine myself being a 6-10 year old girl and then do the review. But that would just be fake because I am not an 8 year old girl and trying to pretend would never work. So you can only do a review from your perspective based on your experiences and abilities.
Simple. It doesnt matter much because almost all media outlets are adult or teen oriented, they dont view the 6-10 year old as the main audience of their media outlet, and even when they do, they know that the 6-10 year olds dont understand reviews or have the same demands as an adult. The developer also knows that.
there there) 
