Most game reviewers cater to a very specific market which I don't fall into anymore. Reviews are great for those people, the 'hardcore' group and message board types, but for casual observers of games who normally get their games two and three years after they release Reviews don't do much. Very few games keep their quality over time.
I also think paid reviewers are different from 'normal' gamers just in the number of games they play. To them some game may come off as old hat and boring because another game had done it before then, but if this is someone's first dynasty warriors game they don't care.
Nothing against reviewers, it's not their fault they play fifty some brand new games a year, it just makes those reviews hard to read for someone trying to judge whether this game is worth the $20 I'm about to spend on it.
I've also seen a lot of cases where a game got previewed one way, and there's an appearance that the site reviewing it feels the need to be consistent with what their previews said either positive or negative. As for them being trustworthy they probably are, you just have to be who the review is written for.
Game reviewers also get caught up in the overall package of the game sometimes. The GTA series has always had significant gameplay problems but the concept alone made it a 10. The mischief is fun, but when you're doing an actual mission and you can't aim to save your life and the combat is about as bad as it gets i don't see where it gets mythical status. I think maybe 4 cleared up some of those problems, but by no means all of them. Fallout 3 is the same case. I haven't played it, but listening to people we're hearing a lot of problems with bugs that hurt the game.
I disagree with the Jen Tsao thing. Reading her reviews and pieces in EGM for years and on 1up recently she's a different person. She is very different from anyone else I've ever read in the industry. I honestly believe she found the fun in Wii Music, I've only played it for ten or so minutes, but I played it with my four year old goddaughter who isn't alowed to play games much yet and had a small blast. I don't know if it's a $50 blast, but for that time she was having the time of her life and I couldn't help but have fun with it because of her.
Artistically games and movies are exactly the same in that one person often gets the majority of the credit while the team goes unknown. The programmers and bug fixers might as well be best boys and gaffers. Suda 51 gets the credit for making this game. He may have spearheaded it, but how much programming did he do for it? Did he do all the art? maybe he did I honestly don't know, but he is going to get the credit regardless.
Hype is one of the reasons why I don't buy brand new games anymore. Otherwise I'd never enjoy games like otogi, call of juarez, and alien syndrome.
More importantly than hype is the celebrity. People look at some games based on who makes it and make judgements before they play it. They may not have an agenda but you see that EA makes a game and you expect a certain game. You see that this is a need for speed game and you roll your eyes before you even play it. You just assume things about a game before it comes out. Non sports fans look at sports games all the time and hate because they come out every year and don't change much.
Look at Treyarch, those guys put out a lot of great games. Call of Duty 3 is damn good. You listen to podcasts where WoW is brought up and people are skeptics from the outset. But it's treyarch and people just assume it's bad. Horrible games don't sell well. I'm not going to trust any review on call of duty world at war because the overall majority of reviewers are jaded against Treyarch.
Sorry for the comma splicing and horrid sentence structure.
Miyamoto is more George Lucas than Tom Clancy.
Artistic merit isn't always good either. I don't get where people hate on refined games. Dead space may be super generic but the game is damn good. Give me a game that is polished and works gameplay wise to it's very core over an artsy project that falls short where it counts.