User reviews tend to be far more reliable than professional critics. Critics have so much incentive to go against the orthodoxy, there’s no trust with them. The big review sites like IGN are meaningless to me. The numbers have also gotten inflated to the point of meaninglessness. Like I don’t think there are very many games I would describe as “10/10, perfect”, yet that is a common score from reviews sites for any new game.

Sometimes there will be specific critics whose reviews I trust, but almost always those come with a lot of examples of actual gameplay. Like, I used to really enjoy TotalBiscuit’s reviews (rip), but he always published his review as a video where you could see exactly how something looked when he talked about it. He wasn’t trying to tell you if a game was good or bad, he was simply telling you “what is it?” And “what do I like about it?” Then you could decide for yourself if you thought you would like it too.

Definitely not the only one. But it’s not just games either, it’s cinematography too. Or even food, really. When you watch 500 movies a month, everything looks exactly the same. Not to mention that half of these critics companies are completely untrustworthy, and often post either uneducated reviews, or just plain garbage. Think of something like IGN’s Redfall video. The game is obviously horrible, but the person playing it didn’t know how to hold a controller. Or the one with Cuphead, where they failed the tutorial.

tldr: I only really trust opinions of my friends. These review sites have no value

How come? :)