I always anticipate reviews for games I wanna play. They make me think about whether or not i should buy the game. But something happened to me last week. I saw Dante's Inferno recieve a single A average (which is still good) and saw that some sites bashed it. I expected higher for that game, so I decided to not go for the purchase. My wife ended up buying Dante's Inferno for me anyway and I enjoyed the crap out of it. Love it.

That makes me wanna not care for reviews much anymore. Like when Halo Wars recieved a 6.5 from Gamespot I was disappointed because I loved Wars and still play it. I ask you guys here now, do you care for reviews? I admit I still do and use them as references to recommend the games to others. And if so, what sites do you use.

I use Metacritic and IGN most. The bad thing about Metacritic, or Gametrailers are the sloppy reviews a GREAT game gets to make the average score go lower, like Mass Efeect 2's 75 and Killzone 2's 60.

I value the words inside more than the score. What I got from the Dante's Inferno reviews in a nutshell was that it was a God of War clone. I like God of War, so naturally I should like this game, not hate it. I don't care about the score given that is a result of it's lack of originality. I just care that it copied off the right game.

You'll find that outside of the scoring, a lot of reviews are very helpful. 

When it comes to Wii games, not so much!

Scores? Not much.

Content? Quite a bit, sometimes. Onyxmeth covered it nicely, though it resulted in me being interested in Darksiders rather than Dante's Inferno (the demo for which I thought was pretty bad)

Thats really true. Like the way you put it together. I just think that if the game is a clone of a AAA game like God of War and its actually a good game like i think Dante is, then it should get a good score. If there was a game that looked and played like Uncharted Drakes fortune or Uncharted 2, then they should base the review on how good the game is and not downplay it because its a "clone" or something. Good point Onyx

The best thing you can do is judge it yourself. Edge told me that FF X was a 6/10. and it is my 2nd fav game ever.

But yeah, Dante's is pretty fun! It was my first platinum trophy!

I kind of also get sick of how reviewers compare said game to another said game. Sometimes it gets really aggravating and you just want to tell them to STFU and review the game they are talking about for what it is, and not what it copies or what it could be.

I need to trust the reviewer to trust the review. Some reviewers hate all sequels; some reviewers hate all changes to tried-and-true formulas. I don't have time to read every review a single reviewer has written to understand their tastes, so I only trust the opinions of my friends in real life or here at VGC. Most games are too long for me to care really. Whether it gets a 0% or 100% average, I'm not gonna set aside 10-50 hours of my life for a game unless somebody I can really trust convinces me it's worth that much time.

With film reviewers, I can trust that they've studied filmmaking, film history, and art criticism, so they'll make a much more informed argument for or against a film. But at the same time, films are usually 1-3 hours, so I don't read reviews for those either. I just watch tons and tons and tons of them, even the bad ones.

Movie reviews are a damn joke. Like every universally acclaimed movie these days are damned boring as hell. With the exception of a few. But mainly all the movies that get ridiculously low scores are good.

I'll go on my impression of a demo more than review score. If there's a game I'm really interested in the review score won't relly affect my decision to buy. If there's a game I don't really care for then high review scores won't affect my decision to not buy. If there's a game I think I may like but I'm not sure then review scores will probably sway my decision if there's nothing else upon which to make a decision.

examples:
Bayonetta, the demo didn't really impress me, so the review scores aren't going to convince me to buy (post patch Bayonetta should be sufficiently comparable to 360 as makes no difference).

Dante's Inferno, I liked the demo, and if it wasn't for the impending God of War III it would be on my get soon list, as it is it's on my get eventually list. Review scores didn't influence me.

Darksiders seemed like a maybe but wasn't really on my radar, the reviews coming in for it has probably put it ahead of Dante's Inferno on my list of H'n'S games to get. I may end up getting it before GoW III comes out if the price drops a wee bit more.