Metacritic, Gamerankings. Individual sites I go to most often for reviews are Game Informer and IGN.

user reviews are crap. Most users take the extreme and pick either 9 or 10 for a game they like or 5 or 6 for a game they hate. I trust professionals over average user scores any day.

Especially when fanboys are involved. If they liked a game even a little bit, but they want their game to do well, or tell people "you should buy this game!" they'll rate it a 9 or 10. Telling someone to buy a game and rating it high are two different things, but you don't get that from user reviews.

yeah, go to gamefaqs and look at their user reviews. Everything is 9 or 10 if it's good (their opinion), or 3 or 4 if it's bad (also their opinion). I mean even red steel got a couple of 10s on gamefaqs.

i dont usually bother reading reviews, The games i usually play are ones from highly respected studios , first party nintnendo and sony stuff, or major SE games. Having said that, very few games would fill me with enough confidence to preorder it.

Usually a highly awaited game will show its true colours as soon as it hits the shops, the web is always full of people giving opinions and great games usually get pretty much a unanimous reception from everyone.
Ive never read reviews for motorstorm, resistance, RE4, bioshock or any of the other major stuff ive played recienly, however after playing them myself, my feelings pretty much meet the general publics reception to them.

gametrailers

IGN.

It can be very informing, however to read the comments posted in response to reviews.

Nobody reads printed words these days?

IGN & Gaimetrailers on teh internets, Ngamer for magazines.

I couldn't disagree more. User reviews are often fanboyish in nature and you never know how many games that user plays a year. How much would you trust a user's Heavenly Sword review if they had never played God of War before?

Pro reviewers are generally unbiased as possible, they play a boatload of games a year (and therefore have a better idea if a game's features are new, innovative, or just another rehash of another game), and they generally have some kind of experience in writing and journalism. 

IGN and Game Informer for me

I generally the videogamecritic's reviews tend to be fairly in line with my tastes, I never put stock in the pro-sites reviews
the best sign is just the voted reader averages with large number of votes, if there's a game I'm interested in but I'm unsure of and 1500 people average out giving a high number I'll be more likely to take a chance on it