"Everyone is praising this one game to high heaven, let me give it an average review score and the media will give me the spotlight for having the contrarian opinion which means more visibility and more potential subscribers"
Being a contrarian is his MO, and it works well in his favor here because anyone who calls him out on it will just get called a fanboy.
It seems so weird to me this ideology, as I will call it, that critics are not allowed to dissent with the consensus on something. With someone like Armond White at least you can trace a history of contrasting views that have the appearance of trolling. With Jim Sterling all I ever see regarding this Zelda review is "he's a contrarian" with maaaybe a mention of how he dares give Uncharted 4 a measley 8.5/10.
Nobody ever mentions how he broke with the critical consensus that said that Final Fantasy XIII was a good game, because in that case every on the userside agreed with him, in which case he is allowed to be a contrarian.
Maybe he just thought Legend of Zelda was a 7/10 game. Maybe he uses a personal scoring basis rather than the industry standard that says a decent game gets an automatic 7/10. Maybe he has bigger issues with things in the game that other reviewers were able to overlook, which is reasonable since people have different tastes.
Spoilers: All of the above are true in regards to his BotW review. It's not like he just slapped a 7/10 on the game. He gave a reasoned argument for why he thought gameplay elements like the weather and the durability of weapons were a huge detriment to his experience with the game.
No, you don't understand, BotW deserves high praise from all reviewers. It is objective fact that BotW is an amazing game and anyone who gives it a score lower than 9 is just looking for a fight, and to try and take away the score Zelda deserves.
That is how some people actually think. ---
You are now breathing manually. Lets put a little lead in the air, and see what falls over.