Endless Space 2: Penumbra is the latest expansion/DLC for what is on balance a decent space-4X strategy game. In it, Amplitude has brought a new exotic faction and an entirely new mechanic available for all the species (though the newcomers, the Umbral Choir are inherently better at it). Hacking is the name of the game for the UC but if you think of it as a new layer of espionage mechanics, you won’t be far wrong.
I love the Endless Universe. I am perfectly comfortable saying that. The hybrid of science fiction and fantasy across multiple games has never really been done as well, nor to the extremes which Amplitude push it. As such, it was an amazing opportunity to get to write the review of the latest expansion for ES2.
As a freelance games journalist, you don't typically get to pick all of the games that you review. In fact, it's probably better for the field as a whole that you don't. It's all too easy to only put yourself in for game franchises and game styles that you really like, so everything you put on the page starts to come across as homogenous, the same boring pablum of superlatives in one article as every other.
I'm sure you can think of entire publications which have fallen to that kind of insidious rot. No one who is interested in stories about video games (or any other field in which a layman can be and often is as conversant as the "experts") hasn't been exposed to what's essentially just bad journalism. Stories that all look alike. Writers that all look alike. No tension, no actual discussion, none of that.
So you have to try and push out of your comfort zone whenever you can and whenever your editor will let you. Some people just make their bones getting known for one kind of thing. And that's okay – for them.
For the audience, if there is no editorial voice that has shades of conflict and shades of drama other than the never-ending and oppressive outrage machine, then the whole site starts feeling like a song made up of one note.
The writer has to be willing to say truthful, critical things about that which they love most and do so in a way which doesn't cause the part of the audience who also loves those things to tune them out. That can be a bit of a delicate bit of maneuvering.
Hopefully I bring a bit of that across.