I can't trust game reviewers anymore!

[Ollie]

This is absolute rubbish! To me it now seems like game reviewers are either seriously peer pressured or paid a ton to give a horrible game a good review!
On to the point, the other day I borrowed Uncharted 3: drakes deception from a local blockbuster after hearing about how great and fantastic it was. Today I finished it, wasting about 8 hours of my life that I want back. Whilst the graphics, gameplay and voice acting were amazing, Uncharted 3: drakes deception has a ton of flaws like I was left with a ton of un-awnsered questions, that at the end made it clear they will be making another Uncharted, therefore milking the franchise. Uncharted 3 felt like it once was part of a bigger game, but naughty dog (uncharted's developers) cut half of it off for Uncharted 4. Somehow this game got a 10/10 from a ton of game reviewers, thats just ridiculous.
I have also seen the same thing happen to other games like call of duty, which is clearly being milked as a cash cow, even the sims 3 is being milked dry, along with pretty much every other EA game. Thankfully some game developers don't milk their franchises like Rockstar games (who put a lot of effort into their games) and Quantic dream.
Back to the point,thankfully there are only a couple of reviewers who can still be trusted to bring us reviews telling the truth like Zero Punctuation (though be aware his videos are very rude with strong language, etc.),phreakindee on youtube (AKA Lazy Game Reviewer), IneCompany on youtube and some others.

Thanks for listening to my rant.

[Minty]

I suppose it is all down to how players perceive it, along with the time span given to reviewing a game before doing other work if they are writing professionally. There has been a tendency over the last few years for them to gibber on about "amazing graphics, amazing effects" and skim over the gameplay. How good any game is depends on how big is the "go back" factor to it once completed, and sadly that is rare with today's games.

You only have to look at the sales resurgence of the previous Elder Scrolls game Oblivion despite the antiquated graphics to see that - for a game that was released six years ago to reappear and spend several months at No.2 in the retail chart (stopped from reaching No.1. only by Skyrim) ought to be unthinkable. This is what happens when you've hundreds of games that as you say are merely rehashes of the same old shoot ups, Warcraft clones or whatever.

PC/Console magazines are the worst for giving biased reviews to games that are being heavily advertised in them. I got Just Cause when it came out due to the lavish reviews it got - waste of money! Had I waited even a month, the pile of traded in copies at my local game stores would have been warning enough not to touch it. Phreakindee on youtube (AKA Lazy Game Reviewer) is very good with his reviews, though I thought he was taking the piddle when he started asking someone to buy him a copy of Showtime so he could review it - seemed he was letting his popularity get to his head and looking for a way to make money (or save money) out of what he was doing for fun.