Sadly, the power of the gaming press is not always so illusory. The "Death of Adventure Games" mantra gained wide currency amongst reviewers for many of the multi-genre gaming magazines and websites, and is still trotted out occasionally by the ill-informed. How much influence this pronouncement has had on publishers is, perhaps, debatable, but it is no thanks to such reviews that adventures are still being made.
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It's the gameplay elements of each genre that appeals to the players and brings them back for more. These gameplay elements then 'define' the genre. Therefore it is important that the reviewer has played sufficient games of a particular type in order to write about them in a knowledgeable way. Conversely, it's not possible to fairly review a game unless you are familiar with the genre or game type to which it belongs.
This underlines the importance of the reviewer being someone who understands and likes the genre and wants to see the quality continue to improve. Unfortunately, too many of the reviews of adventure games in magazines and on multi-genre sites are written by those who actively dislike the genre and are openly hostile or ambivalent towards it. Often such reviews fail to critique adventure games for what they are, but rather criticise them for what they are not (eg other genres, as in "this game is boring it has no fighting in it"). Such generally destructive reviews serve no useful purpose as they mainly focus on the perceived shortcomings of the genre rather than the merits of the particular game under review. It's the equivalent of saying "This genre sux".
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