>  past couple of months

Fucking lol. Professional reviews have been a joke for as long as I can remember.

The only source I trust for reviews is VGChartz, because I know the reviewers - I know what games they like and what they don't, and because the site has earned my trust in hiring good reviewers.

This has been true for reviews of most major Wii games in lots of publications since the dawn of ages (in some cases depending on the actual reviewer, not the publication).  But as long as it was mostly for WIi games, those who had similar complaints to what this article had were called Nintendo defense force, Nintendo apologists etc (inckluding in VGC).  So

What goes around comes around.

I'm guessing you missed out on Dragon Quest IX then, seriously no matter what Amazon Japan says, it's amazing and just get it

On topic: I'm not sure if it's just me, but I've found that 'professional' reviews are far far worse for DS/Wii/PSP games than they are for 360 and PS3 games.

Yeah VGC reviews are good but that's because they are made in the way of small blogs. A lot of passionate authors who play those games with love.

The problem is taste and that people want to make a science out of this.

Look at Fable III reviews. Sitting on 8/10 at metacritic, the reviews have a range from 55 to 100.

There are always some sites that LOVE to rate highly anticipated games low and early to get the clicks, but this tells me that there is not a common sense in rating games or any sort of entertainment for that matter.

Same spread with Halo Reach 50 - 100.
Heavy Rain 70 - 100
Alan Wake 60 - 100
Modnation Racers 60 - 98

Reviews are about taste. My girlfriend wants to play Kinect Sports with me but I couldn't get her to play Halo Reach with me. In her opinion Kinect Sports is a better game than Halo Reach. Obviously I don't agree, but well, it is her opinion. We need to stop to listen to reviews overall. Or try to find a reviewer (not a website a single reviewer) that has your taste and check his reviews.

 If you like a game, fine. If you don't like a game find something else.

Trust Your Instincts my friend :D

The game that finally and completely opened my eyes to the problems that reviews can have was FIFA 10. It got praise across the board, it was described as the best football game of all time, and yet, on it's release weekend, the official forums were full of complaints. The games main single player mode, the 'Manager Mode' was full of bugs. By the end of the weekend, a list of ~70 major bugs with the game was created by users (most of these were never fixed, but that's something for another thread). 

It ranged from players disappearing from your squad list, only to find them playing for someone else, to suddenly having a transfer budget of negative £xxxmillion, no matter who you're playing as, or getting fired because your lowly team 'only' managed a draw away from home to Manchester United and you're sat in third place in the league.

Questions were asked in review articles. If the players could spot these massive problems in one weekend of play, why did nobody mention it in their review? And I mean that, not one magazine or website mentioned these problems even in passing.

Ultimately, I realised why. They have a lot to get through, so with football games, it's easy to judge how well it plays by simply playing exhibition mode, as that will show you how the game actually plays in a match. You don't really have to touch any other mode, you can just rely on the press release to describe any new additions, and give it a score based on your few minutes with the most unimportant mode in the game...

The problem mention in the article isnt about taste, you even said it yourself: "There are always some sites that LOVE to rate highly anticipated games low and early to get the clicks".

On topic, something particularly funny with reviews is that gameplay will often lead the score of the other categories. Let say 2 games have average soundtrack or presentation, one has a great gameplay, one has a average gameplay. The one with great gameplay will get 9 or 10 in those categories while the one with average gameplay will get 7-8. Its always funny to see very bad games (gameplay) getting 3 out of 10 for sounds/presentation, while having good games with similar sounds/presentation getting 8 out of 10 in those same categories.

another good point. Look at Medal of Honor - it has some amazing sound effects, but reviewer don't judge it the right way. They don't have the balls to say:

Presentation: 6/10
Gameplay: 5/10
Lasting Appeal: 6/10
Sound: 10/10