The score is a guide. I'm not about to go buy a racing sim which gets 95 on Meta because I hate every racing sim I've ever played, and there's no reason for me to start liking them.

And if I really want a game, barring catastrophic scores (1-5), I'll still get it.

The biggest problem with that is: if you review every game as it is, then Fifa 10 and fifa 11 and fifa 12 should all be wonderful games, as they probably won't change much of the gameplay, as they seemingly got that right now. However, the sequels will get a hit in scores because of repetition, no innovation and so on. Why should they (in this regard) be considered as "for what it is", when its borrowing or building off previous games is exactly a reason to view it differently.

I stopped paying attention to the big game site reviews after the GTA IV mess. I do like to read the reviews at gamefaqs though, you get different opinions. Some are fan boy rants, but most of the so called "gaming journalists" are fan boys anyway.

I make up my own mind, but I will look at gamerankings/metacritic to see what the general opinion is. I tend to ignore their 'average' score however and look at the list of individual scores. I'll then read a few reviews plus some of the odder ones to see what they say.

trust the score when it's high；trust the love for the game when the score is low.

Irrelevant for Japanese games for the most part... however, it does affect me with western made ones.

Average review scores on metacritic mean everything to me. A score less than 75% is considered below average. I tend to only buy games that average 90% +(AAA) on Metacritic. I only looking at the scores. I never bother reading the reviews, too many of them and takes too much time.

I don't purchase games solely based Metacritic scores but they do influence me.

I wasn't even considering Batman AA before I saw the 92 on Metacritic. In that sense they're valuable to me and I think they're doing everyone a favor if they get people to try great games that may not have been on their radar.

never... reviews are basically more opinion these days then they used to be lol

I do care, I always try to only have the games I would like