I'd love to like such a trend, I just don's see one. Can you name a few sites from this trend I seem to be missing?
I've been waiting for Polygon, but sadly it is far from being well designed imo. Few things that jump at me instantly when I try to read Polygon: tiny serif font but giant line-height in article texts (I hate waste of screen real estate, and I'm not even using a laptop or a tablet), spacings and paddings between page elements so vast I feel lost in the woods, sticky logo/menu line at the top (come on, I can find +1 button myself), images way bigger than I'd like them to be without lightbox view, no proper labeling of check-boxes (tried to sign up / login) and some other questionable design choices. What bugs me most is fading text in the descriptions on the main page.
Content wise (which is more important compared to design anyways), it may just be too soon to speak about quality/objectiveness. I like The Verge though, so all my great expectations about the Polygon's content stand until proved to be wrong. Congrats on the (re)launch.
I was referring to The Verge and Polygon, also Marco, df, etc. but they tend to be opinion rather than news.
I'm not sure why you have an aversion to those aesthetic decisions they've made, as most of them are technically correct and quite pleasing to my eye. They all contribute to conveying the game's innate experience and delivering an honest review without you having to actually play the game, and they do this well.
