Come now Selnor, everyone has their opinion and Mike's is that Lair wasn't all that bad, now I may not agree with him, but you can't simply right off his opinion as false. As someone who holds LO as one of the best RPG's ever, I'd think you'd have more understanding for someone who has opinions that vere off from the opinions of most reviewers.

I've played much much worse games, this one offers a pretty unique experience with some pretty special highlights as well. If I compare the game to all the 360 games I played so far, I would say well above average.

IGN user reviews, those with the writing style showing that they actually played the game, most actually seem to like the game, many of them even loving the game:

http://rr.ps3.ign.com/rrobj/ps3/object/761161/

User reviews are not a very fair estimate though because you have to remember the type of person that actually takes the time to write a review. I would guess that almost everyone who writes a review either had an extreme view of the game or wrote a review that was motivated by fanboyishness. What I mean by this is that most of the reviews were probably very good or very bad, because if you just kinda liked the game you probably won't take the time to write a review. This is also coupled with the fact that some people write reviews simply to further their console, so a 360 fan will give it a 1 while a Sony fan will give it a 9.5

This is not to say your argument is completely without merit, just that these are things to consider when presenting that argument.

@ Torillian

Personally I've found that many professional reviewers are politically motivated. I have especially read some very biased reviews from Gamespot (it really seems to affect their opinions for which platform a game is on, if the game is 360 exclusive or not, which seems to be judged favourably).

IGN is much better but honestly they suck sometimes as well. Super Rub'a'Dub was actually a pretty fun cheap little game well suited for certain people, I had a lot of fun playing this game with my girlfriend (luckily there's a demo), actually more so than with for example a much higher ranked game like Calling all Cars.

I don't know what's up nowadays, but it really seems especially US reviewers are pretty useless at their job. Unable to word well why a game alledgedly sucks or rocks, sometimes very weak arguments or trivials are being highlighted and in the next review with similar "issues"left ignored, there's very little consistency or objectivity.

I think that some of these discrepancies you mention simply come from the fact that any review is based off a single person's opinion. The fact that one reviewer does not like Super Rub'a'Dub doesn't mean that noone else will like it. Other than this though I agree with what you are saying, published reviewers can be just as biased as anyone else. I personally put more trust that they are trying to be unbiased simply because they are not some random user on the internet, but instead are putting their name and reputation behind what they write.

@ Torillian

Agreed, IMO reviewers should really investigate and poll around for second opinions for example within the family.

Professional reviewers should write reviews based on intended target. A sports fan may not like an unrealistic party game, FPS, racing game, etc. Personally I don't like any MLB, NBA or American Football game, but of course I shouldn't give a game like that a bad score if I was a professional reviewer, I must compare to other similar games and assume the reader does like such a sports game. If I had to write a review for such a game I would ask fans what previous games made them so fun and such try to imagine what I would or wouldn't like if I was a fan.

Too often I get the feeling their approach is more like: I don't like the game, well that's my opinion and deal with it. That's a too simple, worthless and unprofessional approach. First and foremost there needs to be consistency, you cannot drag a game like R&C: TOD through the dirt claiming the game to have a weak story just after having praised Gears of War in the past. (Looking at Gamespot guys, R&C story telling is leagues above Gears!)

Resistance 2 will be a lot better than Gears of War 2. Resistance 2 online will be a better experience and Resistance 2 looks a lot better than Gears of War 2. The online experience on XBox Live is crap - full of people who ruin the gaming experience. You also have to pay for XBox Live that sucks too and playing for 8 hours straight your console should not die on you. The PS3 online gaming runs better and there is like 0.02% chance of the hardware failing a lot better than the XBox 360 33% hardware failure rate.