https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zw9WHzFibUQ

I know a lot of people dont like this guy but please just give this video a watch.

He brings up some very good points about the sad state of gaming journalism today. 

I partly agree that reviewers don't always "get" the games and their reviews are mixed based on wrong expectations and reviewing being based on a boring, cookie-cutter list as opposed to more dynamic, perspective-giving reviews that many movie critics give. To add to the discussion, I want to post an extra credits video discussion about reviewers that sums up my thoughts.

There was good video game journalism in the past?

Well yeah...or at least it wasnt as toxic as it is today.

When the only video game journalism around was in magazines, it was top notch. The Internet slowly changed that. Now it's like how it was for the Atari 2600 when there was too much product and most of it was the same stuff repackaged a dozen times over.

Yeah sucks that most video game magazines are going away.

It was no different when there were just magazines. Hell, EGM was kind of like Metacritic before Metacritic, averaging the scores of multiple reviewers, even sometimes the scores of people who had no business reviewing a certain genre or franchise.

And you always have people who will read a review from someone they trust and be turned off, and it applies in music, movies, and books as well. Idk why he would think games should be different, or held to a different standard. And those people he described are most certainly a tiny minority.

How many people actually base what games they buy on the metacritic score or just on reviews? I learned a while ago that most reviewers will give games of the genres they don't like bad scores. If they don't like a genre, don't do reviews on it. I would more likely trust someone's review if they like that genre.

I believe that the majority of gamers don't really base their choices on reviews. Probably more on word of mouth than anything.

Honestly they shouldn't give numeric scores and if they are numeric it should maybe be on a 5 or 10 point scale. I just listen to what they say and usually have to balance that against all others. In other words, if one reviewer said a game had...oh I dunno...too much water, and no one else mentioned it I probably wouldn't take it to heart.

Yeah, I pretty much agree with that. (On a side note, I despise Metacritic and hope it crumbles to the ground in flames).

Unfortunately, the gaming media is really who we're supposed to trust to tell us what games are good or bad. There's a lot of corruption in the gaming media, and I really don't trust it either.

When I'm undecisive about games, I watch Let's Plays. Then I'll check how much content is available in the game, so I know how long it can keep me entertained. I'll usually make my decision based on those 2 things.