You are continually missing the point on the distinction of product vs art. A product has flaws due to lack of budget, time and so on.

Art has legitimate choices based on anything and every choice is equally legitimate.

Except for the part where games, while they can be art, are also almost always products (and certainly, Silent Hill 2 was meant to turn a profit) and some design decisions are made not because the developers thought it would have the highest impact on the player, but because they had deadlines to meet, or they wouldn't eat.

Furthermore, "emotional response and thematic/symbolic significance" apply to products, as well. Apple's entire product line is carefully designed to be visually pleasing and unique/fashionable feeling. Is that art? What about logos on cereal boxes and milk cartons? Certainly you can't just slap something together and expect people to want to buy it. What about houses, and cars, and computers? What about the food you buy from a restaurant?

Almost never do you have enough time or budget to make the perfect anything. Choices come down to "what can we cut that will have the least effect on this game?" Anyone who is in game development will tell you that; see Fez for an example of what it takes to do everything you want (and even then, the developer probably has a few regrets).

It means it must be criticized in the same way art is. That is, whether or not it succeeds or fails in its intention. Is the intention of Silent Hill 2 to place the player into a foreboding dream world of horror? Has it succeeded? If so, its technical limits are simply of secondary concern.

If games are art, we need to do away with our obsession with technical prowess (graphics, control schema and so on) and start questioning how these things interact with the player, again not from the standpoint of HCI (as that would simply be another way of techno-obsession) but from the standpoint of emotional response and thematic/symbolic significance.

Well, for WtfWhereAreMyClothes, he was driven away from the game - and thus missed the possible intent of being placed in a foreboding dream world of horror - due to weak controls. Graphics, particularly art direction (of which "photorealistic" is an option), and especially control schemes are a way the developers present their game to the audience, and they can mess it up. It is not an example of techo-obsession to wish for better controls, and frustration is a perfectly valid emotional response.

Ps. Thanks for the two article links, will check them out.