If you can download a demo of a game do it before buying it. I think it is the best way of knowing a game without crippling our budget. Friends who buy the game are one of the best source you can have for judging a game, you can go visit him and asking him to show you the game. 

Recently Tom's was speaking of Crysis as probably the next game of the year, pfff! no comments.

I was also thrilled about Hellgate : London, and was thinking of purchasing it. Then I saw the demo and was not impressed at all, 40 bucks saved.

http://www.gamerankings.com/

The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.

Just make your review one word: "Sucks."

Let's see 'em spin that.

Generally, for a long time gamer (not mom and pop) it's best to have a few reviewers that like the same stuff you do. If you read someones reviews for a while, you get to know whether they can be trusted. 

If they give a good reveiw to a game you think sucks, or if they take off for someting you like (like cut scenes) then you get a feel for whether their opinion is valid to you.

Gamestop had lost my readership much earlier then this. Genreally Penny Arcade or Ars Technica are good places for unbiased reviews, see if you agree with their past reviews for yourself.

Also, Yatzee is a reviewer for the Geraldo generation. I still have too many brain cells left for his reviews to be funny. maybe if I get a lobotomy or something, then he may be funny...

I trust game reviews about as much as I trust government agency "press conferences" and all hardware reviewers that cut & paste company propaganda into their "reviews". 

Oh yeah, & testimony on WMD, too.

I have now stopped using Gamestop just like I quit buying Music from the Music stores. 
And others are doing the same as I can see them starting to cry NO! we do not like DRM and take it off please.

It is getting hard to get the truth on a game, I have seen the write up's where it is great! Buy it you will love it. And then I get them home and they are junk , half finished boring games that some even do not have instructions with them to see how they work. Take there money away and it will stop!

Just goes to show that you cannot blindly trust any site. As far as gaming is concerned, you have to check multiple sites and correlate the results.
Relying on only one site is to risk exposing oneself to the issue raised in this article.

All "review sites" are just garbage. For goodness sake, they are all bought and paid for. Look at the ridiculous fawning over Nvidia graphics cards. You'd think those folks have cured cancer. 

People are too stupid to understand that reviews are opinion. Crysis SUCKED, look at most REAL people reviews on Amazon, Metacritic, or other places where people can actually post their experiences. But look at the review sites. Did those idiots at the review sites play a different game than I did (I wasted $50 on the horrid affair)

"Worse, there was a little tweaking, for want of a better word, of the actual reviews. On K&L site, the review pull-quote attributed to Gamespy read: “It's the best emulation of being in the midst of a Michael Mann movie we've ever seen”. In fact, they said that a long time ago at an E3 2007 preview of the unfinished game. The Game Informer quote reads: “A mercenary, a psychopath and a bundle of cash…what could go wrong?” That quote does not appear in the review so I’m not sure where it came from."


You should have done a bit more investigation yourself instead of regurgitating this story from other sites. 

It was never claimed that those quotes came from a review, they were in a section marked ‘press’ (not review)

In fact it would be impossible for them to have any possible connection with being quotes from a review because I saw them on the site weeks/months ago before any review would have been possible.





after having read about this on numerous tech website, effective as of immediately, gamespot is off my favorites list [oh no you didn't!]. Oh yes, I did.

boycott these money grubbing lamers. stunning.

Anyone with sense buys or doesn't buy a game on based on its review.

Unless you have more money than sense, in which case, go ahead and buy leisure suit larry, be my guest!!

In reply to Chris : No we don't.

this is why I download games to c if they really are worth the (holland) 60€ a pop

Of course I use reviews - buying blind is a mugs game

Who actually buys/doesn't buy a game based on a review?

don't really need anyone else, do we?