When all’s said and done, webcomics are a damn cushy media to be reviewing. While the total audience isn’t small, it is somewhat fragmented with readers spread out over different genres and formats. At the same time, there are few centralized communication channels. Reviewing webcomics are not too different than reviewing books, only without gray ladies like the New York Times to give everyone an air of legitimacy. On the plus side, the low-pressure environment means that webcomic reviewers are, for the most part, free to state most controversial opinions and not have to worry about backlash.

Compare that to, say, video game reviews. Pretty much everything that can be said about video game reviews is encapulated in the story of its patron martyr, Jeff Gerstmann. For Webcomic Overlook readers unfamiliar with the controversy, here’s the Reader’s Digest version: in 2007, Mr. Gerstmann was the Editorial Director of the Gamespot website. Eidos Interactive had bought up a bunch of adspace on the site to promote it’s new Kane & Lynch game. Gerstmann gave the game a negative review, and shortly afterwards, he was fired. Rumors quickly circulated that his termination was directly tied to Eidos pressuring Gamespot to fire the guy, and those rumors only escalated when several Gamespot staff members quit in protest.

There’s a lot of stuff digest here. There’s the confirmation, in many people’s minds, that video game reviews are basically just big ads for the video game companies, and you can lose your account like an advertising agency would if things don’t go right. So how do you, the reader, know that the review you’re reading is not merely of a multi-million dollar marketing strategy to trick you into dumping money on a worthless game?

Then there’s the issue with the rating. Did you know the controversial review actually scored a “Fair”? That’s a middle of the road 6.0-6.5, according to Gamespot. I video game reviews, this is called a bad score. Video game reviews live and die on Metacritic, which is supposed to aggregate all reviews everywhere. If a game doesn’t score at least in the high 80′s, it’s considered a bad score. And we can’t have one guy’s opinion ruining the average, right?

Worst of all, video game companies aren’t the only thing putting pressure on video game reviewers. There’s the gamers. Gamers are competitive by nature. So when a game they love is given a low score, they bay and cry and accuse the reviewer of being ignorant about video games. How dare they bring the Metacritic score down! Woe to those who commit the heinous crime of daring to say that they didn’t enjoy Fall Out or Grand Theft Auto.

So there you have it: the messy double-edged sword of video game reviewing. Give a game a good grade, then you’re in the pockets of the game companies. Give the game a bad game, then you’re an ignorant moron who should never touch a keyboard again. Yet people want to put up with video game reviews because a new game is upwards of $50, and no one has the sort of disposable income to throw away on a game that’s no good at all.

This is the sort of cutthroat world that Erin Stout, the heroine of video game webcomic Critical Miss, finds herself in. Yes, Virginia, this is another video game webcomic review! Critical Miss is hosted on the Escapist website, and it’s written by Jonathan Grey Carter and illustrated by Cory Rydell.

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