I think you may have screwed up your former and latter references here (or possibly I'm just confused about what you're saying). Trying to untangle some negation a little, I would agree with the statement "a review shouldn't preach about the subject matter, but a review should discuss the subject matter." I take it that you are asserting "a review shouldn't preach about the subject matter, but a review can legitimately (but need not) discuss the subject matter." If so, our disagreement is relatively small.
All that said, I'm confused by your distinction between content for a review and content for an article. I would tend to think that a review should cover more than just gameplay-- it should be the full review of the game, including discussion of, for example, whether the story is good, whether the dialogue is well-written, and so forth. (Note that this was labeled as a review, not as a game-play preview or something like that.) And in fact, the content of this review goes well beyond gameplay, discussing the quality of the soundtrack for example. I would think that discussing the good and bad aspects of the story line would also be appropriate, including issues like gender treatment and degrees of violence. I agree that issues like "the controversy about the game" and whether, in fact, lots of 10 year olds are buying the game (as is sometimes claimed by the media) or almost none are (as is sometimes claimed by game manufacturers) would be misplaced in a review.
no subject
All that said, I'm confused by your distinction between content for a review and content for an article. I would tend to think that a review should cover more than just gameplay-- it should be the full review of the game, including discussion of, for example, whether the story is good, whether the dialogue is well-written, and so forth. (Note that this was labeled as a review, not as a game-play preview or something like that.) And in fact, the content of this review goes well beyond gameplay, discussing the quality of the soundtrack for example. I would think that discussing the good and bad aspects of the story line would also be appropriate, including issues like gender treatment and degrees of violence. I agree that issues like "the controversy about the game" and whether, in fact, lots of 10 year olds are buying the game (as is sometimes claimed by the media) or almost none are (as is sometimes claimed by game manufacturers) would be misplaced in a review.