(08-15-2016, 12:05 PM)icyplanet Wrote: Ha, you mean... never trust them at all? They've always been the first place I go to for game reviews. Always found them insightful and interesting.
Seriously though, they might be interesting - maybe even insightful, yes - but I no longer take anyone's word as the actual "truth" in a subjective area such as popular culture (cult followings, anyone?). Someone says that something is the worst game/movie in the decade and I might actually enjoy it to some extent. Same works the other way around too.
For me reviews are very subjective since it's just one persons opinion. If people say in quantities that it's "bad" then I am lowering my expectation and if they praise it, I raise my expectation but in no way am I letting it become the only thing that matters. In the end how I experience things myself is the only factor that matters. If I like it I like it and if I don't I don't, my opinion might change anyway in the future as my knowledge and experience grows. Someone else will disagree in both cases and that's fine. Another thing is that I very rarely buy games at release so I don't usually get into the hype before launch. My expectations are many times very low since I play the games years after the original release and due to this I enjoy a lot of games.
In other area such as GPU or CPU review I look at the statistics, not the opinion to make my decision.
However, if you feel that the source is trust worthy then go for it by all means. Who am I to judge? But what I still have to say is that be critical and check other sources too.