Metacritic is evil.

[veloper]

Destructoid has always been somewhat good. They still have the courage to hand out low scores to games published by the big companies.
If a game gets a low score on Destructoid that's a warning sign. High scores in their reviews still don't tell you much though.

angryjoeshow.com is very silly, but Joe usually makes fair points and he's not afraid to be critical.

A low aggregate user scores on metcritic, if enough people have voted (say 100+) is also something to watch out for. Usually the hated game really is poor, IMO. Spore. DA2. C&C4.

 

[cgmetallica1981]

Another thing I find really stupid is how the majority of the gaming community thinks a 3 out of 5 or a 7 out of 10 is bad. Seriously, it's like 6 is a 0 now.

 

[Doclector]

Really, I just use metacritic as a huge load of links to other reviews sites. I read a ton of reviews, and try to get the truth out of it all.

I do trust the escapist's reviews most of the time, but due to perhaps the fact that they cover so much more than reviews, they only review a fraction of releases.

 

[Pedro The Hutt]

I think you owe each one of us 10 bucks.

I would pay up but seeing as half the people in this thread (I'm not quoting official statistics here guise, no need to jump on this too) decided to argue semantics instead of guess what I meant (if it was THAT hard to comprehend) and answer the question.

So frankly, y'all don't deserve the money. Sorry to those of you who contributed to the thread that some people had to ruin it for you.

So in short, anyone who says that many reviewers are ~not~ on the payroll of the publishers of video games is wrong, right?

Well, sorry to say, they'd be right. =p That only applies to the biggest sites and even then they aren't sponsored by all publishers. And even ~then~ it doesn't always mean it'll influence the review. I still have vivid memories of the official Sega Saturn and Dreamcast magazines giving Sega made games bad scores if they, y'know, were bad, sponsorship be damned.

But if you're that uptight about the EVUL CORPORATIONS breaking the fingers of reviewers if they don't give bad games favourable scores, you could always try reading reviews on smaller sites, they often have to buy their own games. This also often means that their reviews are later than those of sites who get copies sent by the publisher, but, y'know, c'est la vie. And rest assured, getting free copies doesn't stop many sites and magazines from blasting truly awful games.