I do in a way, but I'm a little confused on buying a game and it turns out to be crap.

Yes, reviews and impressions in general heavily influence my purchases.

Of course. It's not completely determined by that, but it is a factor.

Generally it works this way:

Be made aware of game through article, advert, etc and decide my interest in it based on the genre, developer, IP, and other factors.

If I have little or no interest in the game, I likely will never buy it, unless it starts to get phenomenal reviews.

If I do have an interest, I will usually wait for reviews before deciding on a purchase, including general feedback from other gamers. Excellent reviews can easily crank up my interst, as was the case with Half Life (which I originally had only a mild interest in). On the other hand, bad or mixed reviews can kill my interest completely (as in Rogue Squadron III or Luigi's Mansion).

If the game hits highly both on my initial interest and reviews (such as Super Mario Galaxy, or Knights of the Old Republic), I'll grab it as soon as I can. Otherwise, it will depend on my finances and time - if I'm looking for a new game and nothing else is standing out I'll get it. Otherwise, I'll wait for the price to drop to $20-30.

For example, right now I'm looking foward to Banjo Kazooie 3. Assuming I have a 360 at the time, I'll likely get the game as I was a huge fan of the first two installments. If reviews are in the 9+ range, I'll get it ASAP. If they're around 8, I'll likely grab it anyway, but not necessarily within its launch window. At 7, I'll wait for clearance, but anything less I'll skip the game completely.

I usually have a couple of sites or reviewers who I have observed to have similar preferences to me and therefore I know that their views on a game will be similar to what mine is likely to be. I don't really read lots of reviews though because you can really get a pretty good impression based on a handful of reviews.

These days I also tend to look at videos more often than simply reading articles. Gametrailers gets a lot of action from me and has been a huge help. Obviously you cannot work out from these whether the gameplay is solid but you can see whether its the sort of game you would enjoy.

Sometimes it doesn't matter what the reviews say because there are genres I simply do not enjoy. If a "mini-game" collection was given scores above 90% across the board it wouldn't influence me to buy the game for example.

Ultimately information is good and gamers should become informed before making decisions. At the same time though there are other factors which gamers should take into account before making gaming decisions (such as personal preferences for example).

Well

ratchet for me turned out to be a dissapointment, I expected a AAA ps3 game, but got a game that actually felt boring..

AC is amazing, and COD4 is also amazing. Heavenly sword was a dissapointment, and based of reviews of 79 it was.

I base my game buys of reviews most of the time.

I normally don't care about reviews... Except ign. I trust ign's reviews and normally don't get disapponted. Should have listened to them on assassin's creed. The game is boring :(

I do but only to a certain extent. Reviews help me to better judge if a game is worth getting and in what order (similar to misterd above), but I can more about what the reviewers say (both professional and not) than the end score.

I find scores can often be deceiving if taken on face value, as they may dock games for relatively minor stuff that may not actually affect your purchase decision. The bottom line is, is the game fun? Is it a good value for the money?

For example, I just picked up Dewy's Adventure for the Wii. Not well scored (65 on Metacritic I believe) but a lot of people and reviewers said it was fun. Well, it is. My kids and I are enjoying the hell out of it. But I waited for a price drop and for what I paid ($40), I'm quite content with my purchase. If I'd gotten it as soon as it came out at $60 CDN then I wouldn't have been quite as happy as that's a little much for this game.

On the other hand I've picked up some highly reviewed games like MoH:H2 and been disappointed. Not that it's not good, it's good, but only good, and not worthy of some of the glowing praise the review sites gave it. In this case I wished I'd waited to see more reviews from people owning the game.

not really, i just buy games that i have wanted for a while and ones that people say are good

I used to buy any game with a stellar review, but in the past few years I've been buying what interests me. Reviews whip me into a frenzy, especially when it's a highly anticipated game, but I've been known to buy some average games, and some certified crap if the subject matter interests me. To my suprise, some of the games that have gotten horrible reviews turned out to be a lot of fun (Red Ninja, Bullet Witch). At the same time, I've bought some certified blockbusters and lost interest after a few hours. Strange.

It is a factor. Name brand (Final Fantasy, Super Mario), previews, reviews, buzz, sales, type of game, difficulty, length, cost, and more all influence my purchases.