It’s not often I find myself having reason to question the British Media, but after Daily Mail’s mind-boggling decision to put Anne Diamond in charge of reviewing video games, I have little choice. It may be a bit sexist or ageist or whatever-ist to say so, but maybe a fiftyish mother of four is NOT the best choice to be a video game reviewer. Let’s go ahead and use her own words to show just why she probably wasn’t a smart move.

First, let’s try her “review” of Scarface: The World is Yours. She says:

Players take the role of Tony Montana, one of the most ruthless gangsters ever depicted on film–by Al Pacino in the Eighties. This is set in a land of Mafia violence. The language is the most shocking aspect and there’s unrelenting rifle fire. Dead bodies are everywhere. The violence seems hackneyed in comparison with the more modern games. But it’s disturbing that so many teenagers presumably have access to this mindless garbage over and over again.

Give me a minute to breathe deeply before I start screaming abuse at this moron who clearly couldn’t tell a controller from her own left butt cheek in the dark with the aid of both hands and a flashlight. First, I played this game myself, not so very long ago. Her hyperbole is as deep as it is troubling–dead bodies are not “everywhere”, nor is the “rifle fire” “unrelenting”. This review strikes me as the product of a Thompsonite with an agenda, and that agenda bodes poorly for adult gamers.

It doesn’t get any better from there–she frequently depends on her sons, clearly biased sources of data, to provide her with information as evidenced by her Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare “review”. Her nineteen year old calls it “worrying”, at least while Momma Dearest is in the room. She acknowledges that she plays the games only on a minimal level–her “review” of Clive Barker’s Jericho reveals that she only played until she got her visor messy.

And perhaps the high point–if there is a high point here–is her Resident Evil 4 review, in which she expresses the truly crackpot theory that even adults should not be allowed to buy the game, and this elevates her from mere crank to dangerous threat to civil liberty.

Honey, I hate to tell you, but we’re ADULTS. The LAST time Brits tried to tell us what to do we dumped a whole lot of tea in the harbor. You can play dictator with your own children. We are NOT your children.

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