There already is one, its called gamespot...

People that say idea sucks don't have a clue...its a great diea. Spinal Tap video explains what you are trying to do...

while I don't know that I can help with this, I am interested in seeing this come to life.

I'm game.! :>

Great idea! If you ever actually do this I'd be happy to pen some reviews, even if I've never played the game in question (wow, I am like a REAL reviewer already!)

I have a better idea. Why not just make a review site where actual people rate the game themselves. No 'reviewer' rates the game, just people, any people who visit the page with the game, vote on the game itself. The top 5% and the bottom 5% then get thrown out (due to those people who are just trying to spam Zeroes or trying to 'fix the score') and there you go. You have a much more accurate score of what people actually think, vs one guy who probably only played the game for a few hours and may have his own bias against certain genres and series.

Throw a couple moderators and a forum on the site and it runs itself.

Because a score without a review is equivalent to a salt shaker with no food.

The people posting the scores could also post their own reviews.  The point is, everything would be done by regular people, ideally those who had played the game.  Not just by a group of 3-6 people who play every type of game for a set amount of time and then put up a 'score' based upon their own personal opinions (never having finished the game).  A review is also rather pointless when you obviously haven't finished the game, or even played very much of it, which those on review sites like IGN, 1Up or GameSpot do before they post a review.

Got it in one. That's the issue with any user review system. 90% of the people who have played a game can't be bothered to write a review; 90% of the people who write a user review haven't played the game. Look at Metacritic's user score.

How would it be funded? If every game is guaranteed to get top marks, there's no incentive for bribery sitewide advertising and swag!

I've been saying to get rid of review scores for years, just use the buy, rent, avoid, for fans only system. Then maybe people will actually READ the review and not just the score. Never gonna happen though.