Yeah, review have always had a slant and people forget just how bad they where in the past. I would rather watch someone play the game and skip the reviews, however it must be said the old slanted review model has largely died off. We don't buy magazines with advertorials anymore, and the appetite to pay for such content is at a low point by both consumers and advertisers.

There was a brief period of time on the internet between the late 2000s and early 2010s where gaming journalism was genuinely decent because it was driven by passionate people who were trying to appeal to the gaming communities they were apart of. They were there to provide the community with good info and honest opinions first, and any money made was just a bonus. At some point, these priorities flipped, and internet journalism became job and then it became an industry that's soulless, faceless, and driven by endless greed.

Do you feel that way about the site reporting the linked article?

Yes, although I am not the first dood, but posting as someone who did read the linked article it is a barely veiled attempt to support the "writer's" media and looks more like a lazy filler article to meet a quota. I use quotes around writer as the article in question is 2/3s quotes more in the style of an interview with "Veteran games journalist Alex Donaldson" and a few comments from "Press Engine co-founder Gareth Williams" (nothing wrong with that per say). The other 1/3 is "data supplied to VGC by Press Engine..." (again nothing wrong with this on its own). The issue is when we take the article in its whole this seems more like someone talked to a colleague or two then put a header on it using in house data from a "... popular PR tool used by developers and publishers to distribute codes and press releases to a global database of journalists and content creators." and adding a few other comments from the very founder of the program used in house to round it out making a very thin and kinda lazy article. This reminds me very much of the stuff written I saw many many years ago when I worked at a newspaper watching that media circle the drain.

Also on the point of:

The sites are all completely cluttered with ads, a lot of the articles are just AI slop, and the industry is driven by greed.

This is not AI slop but good old fashioned 4:30 on a Friday human slop covered in ads, for example I got 2 pop ups with ad block reading it. This is what it looks like without ad blocker:

But then again, you get what you pay for and I guess the irony here is that the article (that could be used as a captain obvious joke) pointing out the collapse of games media is in itself an example of a degrading quality of writing leading to the demise of said media. The real joke is that the article does not even touch on the degrading quality of the writing and experience (other then a "...lack of diversification in content...") but instead putting the blame on every thing else (thanks google, AI, COVID and advertising spending I guess?).