Uhhhh... Who ever keeps a smile on your face???


I don't rely on any...

The Ghostbusters test? Any review site that gives Ghostbusters less than 80 is worthless.

IGN isn't more trustworthy than some unknown blogger, or a poster on this forum. Their posters played games for a long time... big deal, many of us have experience. They are talented writers, but it has no effect on their opinion itself.

Eventually, those non-famous writers might be even more trustworthy, since they don't have to care about pleasing every minor group of the several visitors, and pleasing the companies, to give them exclusive stuff as a "gift".

80?  Do you really think so little of Ghostbusters?  For shame.  Obviously it should get 105 minimum.

I just try and find somebody that in the past has had the same opinions as me on certain games.

Some people will lean more to the graphical side, some to the story etc. Reviews are inherently biased, you should just aim to find someone with the same bias as you.

Close.  Very close.

Here's my take:

Reviews can be objectively measured in several aspects.  Are all the facts correct?  Are all the facts complete--that is, did the reviewer play the whole game?  If you have a reviewer that is shown to consistently get facts wrong, see problems that aren't there, or complain about things which become non-issues after the first two hours of the game then you can question the integrity of the reviewer and the review.

Reviews can also be judged subjectively.  The best reviewer of any game is yourself.  You are the very best person at deciding whether you will have fun with a game or not, what you will enjoy in the game, etc.  Excluding yourself, the best reviewer for a game would have to be someone with exact or very similar gaming preferences.  If the reveiwer enjoys the same things you do then the review will likely highlight things which will interest you.  If the reviewer is annoyed by the same things that bother you then the review will likely highlight the things that would annoy you.

Thus, the ideal reviewer is someone with identical taste in games to you, who always plays 100% of the game before writing the review, and double checks all facts.

So, do you lean towards the 'reviews are for purchase decisions/play decisions' camp rather than the 'games as art' camp?

If you're coming fresh to a game with little or no knowledge of it, but just have a slight inkilng that you might like it, and then you open up any publication and see they've given it a very low score, then you won't be very inclined to purchase it.

The game magazine that I personally put the most stock in is Play Magazine, because I've been reading them since the mid nineties when they were publishing Diehard Gamefan. Although it is often true, that if a publication has a set philosophy and a game doesn't quite gel with that philsophy then the publication with the particular philosophy or expectations can also be a little rougher on games that don't meet them or differs from them and a little more generous with games that go better with those philosophies even if they have more flaws.

An example would be Play giving Mass Effect an 8.7 largely because they don't like the character designs and would prefer characters that look more like Nomura, anime characters, or like the ones in Kameo, Assassin's Creed, Heavenly Sword, Folklore, or Brutal Legend (all games whose artwork they seem to like) while most sites gave it well over 9.  And then the flipside of that would be IGN givingHeavenly Sword

 a 7 yet Play maintaining it was a 10 out 10 and one of the Ten Best of this gen due to its very high artistic merits (but probably in some instances repetitive gameplay).

Of course if you're in tune with the philosophy the publication uses you will often find yourself in tune to their ideas about various games. 

G4TV is trash, and Game Informer is ironically uninformative.

I trust VGC the most. IGN is usually consistent, but then they drop reviews WAY out of left field.

None of them. All review sites are biased and usually give high scores jus to incrise the hype and not because the game is good, GTA IV is the ultimate example. 1UP, GameSpot and Game Informer are the worst for me. 1UP is Sony biased, GameSpot made one of the worst reviews I ever read and Game Informer made one of the most infamous reviews ever for Paper Mario GC.

I only credit the reader reviews of GameFAQs where usually consist with my opinions.