I listen to podcasts featuring people who used to score games in that separated way for Gamespot, and it frequently led to scores that were out of sync with what the content of the review actually said.

This is my point about why a single number doesnt make sense.

Things are not a simple sum of their parts.

Plus, who's to say if the visuals of Clair Obscur are better or worse than Hades II when they've got very different goals and art styles?

Also in support of what I'm saying.

How grindy a game is or how it's monetized often makes its way into a review.

Before I completely gave up on written reviews, I feel like it was increasingly obvious that reviewers were purposefully just glossing over painfully obvious mtxs and marketting dark patterns to the point I felt like they were clearly being influenced by the fear of losing special access to ignore what they knew games companies felt strongly about.

Some ex media org folks have talked about the politics internally that went into pressuring people not to acknowledge problems like this, though I don't recall the name of any specific source. I feel like there was a large group that split up and some of them talked about it. I want to say Jim "Stephanie" Sterling (I believe thats how they title themselves) has talked about it, but I can't quite recall.

Anyhow, I don't think the knobs being cranked can be fully to blame as I don't think that happens all that often because they dont even need to. It has happened a few times infamously though and devs regularly try to boil the frog in modern games

So many multiplayer modes are not designed to last, and no one, often times not even the people updating the features list on the Steam store page, care to mention if a game supports offline multiplayer like LAN. Some games blur the line, like Hitman, on just how offline their game and its content can be. That's what I'm missing from review outlets.

Definitely true.

Feels like the sort of thing movements like StopKillingGames would hope regulation would solve. Id love to see like, a mandatory nutrition facts label on games dictating a minimum amount of time from launch the servers will be active, whether you can play without servers, etc etc.

Real change has been happening by way of reporting on unionization and crunch. Harassers are being taken to court or otherwise removed from their position of power in their companies.

True and good, but with current admin, I think we're going to see a lot of these positive changes reverting as we come to realize that crime is legal for those affiliated and who bend the knee.