Metacritic changed not so long ago their posting format and adopted a microblogging like Twitter with 140 signs stance in that regard. Why was that done? I understand there are different demands between expressing the overall feel towards something in few sentences, but why is even a mid sized review, like many on Steam not welcome anymore? Even 200 words just become a wall of text and sometimes that is needed to express complex feelings.
Metacritic is not a place for complex feelings, in fact, that’s expressly against it’s design intent. Metacritic exists to summarize review content from multiple sources (including users) in one place, for an at-a-glance take on industry & user sentiment, extracting a rough signal from the noise.
Writing an in depth review on that platform is very likely to be lost in the cacophony of amateur reviewers, and most readers are there just to gage overall sentiment. Anyone looking to be persuaded to try a game is more likely to rely on the descriptions provided by the professional critics.