So this article mainly made me wonder if he had every really posted good articles about video games. One of the earlier
articles he has had (its actually just one of his old comic articles) wasn't terrible but it does feel like it had similar traces of his current writing styles. So to go through some of his sections:
The protagonist: This one isn't too bad, he actually includes Gordon Freeman and Mario as good protagonists. The similarity to his current styles though I would say is the comment in the bad section. "tellingly idealized version of game staff" seems to have gone from a single type of protagonist who is bad to the only/overwhelming majority of protagonists, from his opinion at least.
The Sidekick:Ok I can get behind most of this portion, I don't necessarily agree that there are no good sidekicks but as a joke it works. I do dislike "anything voiced by a celebrity" as an awful sidekick. Once again I wont get too upset by this as it seems like he is going for a joke more than a serious viewpoint.
Villain: Why must I like the villain less than the hero for it to be a good villain? I don't even see a joke it just seems silly. His awful examples are just a bunch of tropes and thats making the mistake of saying any trope is inherently bad. Once again I don't really see a joke to go along with this as it doesn't seem to be exaggerating anything.
The game world: I would say the only one of these that are really bad is the illusion of multiple paths one. Even then not all invisible walls are bad and they can be a very necessary thing to have.
Indie games: Well I don't even know what he is complaining about. This one reaks of personal opinion being the clearly correct way of thinking.
The Future: He seems to think we are somewhere between bad and awful nowadays.