http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/saints-row-2

Metacritic Score 72. 72?! It's broken and unplayable even on modern gaming PC's.

The professional reviewers apparently had zero technical issues with this game, even though it's literally a candidate for worst PC port ever made. People with GTX 970's paired with i7's have a hard time playing this game.

Now I know what some are thinking.... the technical issues shouldn't mar a game's review if the game is good, right? NO! If the game is practically unplayable because of technical issues then it should be marred by it. User reviewers aren't afraid to lay out the technical issues.

Yeah, there are some reviewers that are mad about not getting what they expected. There are plenty of people giving Arkham Origins 0/10 just because it wasn't made by Rocksteady. Of course everybody here should be able to sort out the rift-raft reviews. Professional reviewers must be afraid of biting the hand that feeds them.

I think the only reason Assassin's Creed Unity got the headline of performance issues was because the console versions had them too. Even dopey pothead gamers would know they were being lied to by pro reviewers if every version of the game was poorly made.

I watch occational TotalBiscuit and Angry Joe videos.

User reviews on Meta Critic and Steam can be pretty good, I read both the positive and negative so I have a decent idea about what I'm buying.

I also read articles on PC Gamer and sometimes Rock Paper Shotgun, of the more "official" places to get news, reviews etc. I prefer those.

They don't come off as crazed fan boys (ok, RPS do sometimes) and they mainly seem to focus on PC gaming and so if a port svcks, I can usually find out.

I used to read Gameinformer and IGN, but it's just, I don't know. I just don't trust them all that much.

When it comes to other people on youtube, some mentioned Pewdiepie, Pewdiepie is more of an entertainer than a journalist, his let's plays are more designed to entertain than inform you about a game, so I'm not sure if I would even bother mentioning him.

Oh and I occationally watch Force Strategy Gamings Force Feed, but not all that often.

That's why you read multiple reviews and look at more than just the score.

For the past 20 years or so I have had no faith or respect for the gaming journalists, just like I have no faith or trust in mainstream journalism.

I do look up information on the game and then go and look at some lets plays that actually plays the game and then see if I like it or not.

Yes actually, he's an annoying, childish person who fancies himself some sort of valuable addition to the zietgeist of... well the zietgeist of something, I dunno what though. A friend showed him to me and I was like "How can you stand listening to this? If I had to be around this person IRL I'd end up punching him in the face."

The above applies to nearly all YouTube celebrities/personalities though.

I have subscribed to a local gaming magazine (yes, on paper ) that still seems to maintain quality. On the internet i only read user's opinions. Digging the truth from between the "greatest thing to happen ever" and the "crime against humanity" is sort of fun

Yes!

I avoid most. IGN in particular, I'm certain they demand money for good reviews

Note that journalism isn't limited on product reviews.

I watch TotalBiscuit and Jim Sterling frequenlty,and after them I might watch the Zero Punctuation or Angry Joe's review on a game.

Bad thing is Angry Joe isn't doing reviews as frequently as he did,and he misses a lot of games.

I like Yahtzee's videos mostly because they are fun,I even watch reviews he makes about games that I have not any interest in,and know beforehand that I won't play,just to laugh with his humor. He often though is the only one who manages to communicate how I have felt for some games,and this uniqueness of him,of being able to feel what players like me feel,and communicate it,makes him special.

I watch Jim Sterling because his show goes beyond telling if a game deserves a dollar or not,he offers food for philosophical thought.

Finally,I watch TotalBiscuit because he is the only guy who games exclusively on PC,and thus reports platform-specific problems or good sides,which interest me because I play on PC too. Most other reviewers are playing games on consoles and base their reviews on console experiences,and are obvlious to PC-platform specific things,features,and problems,thus their reviews leave much to be desired

I don't respect any game journalist anymore than I would respect Hollywood tabloids..

nor do I believe any reviews anyone posts (be it a journalist's review or a review from an average player).. I instead will shell out a bit of cash and come up with my own opinion myself..

"A man who bases his world views off of the opinions of others, can not truly call himself a man"

I was watching some TotalBiscuit and Super Bunnyhop and noticed that they are PC-centric people and seeing as how I am not a PC gamer (anymore) I'm not sure how relevant their stuff will be. I think they are entertaining and informative, but I need news more tailored to the PlayStation 4. I do like PlayStation Access as far as YouTube channels go, they do not do reviews and almost all of their editorial-type videos are quite funny. Plus they are British so they get extra points.

I just see the Youtube people as wannabees who are trying through using Youtube to get exposure and popularity to become one of the sell out so called journalist, so they can sit on the park bench and have the man in the trench coat drop off the brown paper bag to them.

I respect nobody in any form of journalism. Journalism now a days has turned into partisan opinion pieces, spun so you think the way they do, and it seems 95% of the time they report on things they know nothing about, and make themselves look stupid while doing so because they didn't even bother to research what they were reporting. It's rare to find a journalist with integrity any more. There's no journalists like Ernest Hemingway around any more, that's for sure.

I dont trust much if any media, especially when it comes to games, I'll check to see if it has glitches or I'll just research it myself and look at multiple reviews. But like any unbiased knowledge that must be gained you have to make your own mind from multiple sources.

Don't jump on the hype train, and never trust any loud personalities on well loud anything, I never trust anything that needs to be loud to be noticed or relevant.

Joe Vargas is my only source of game reviews these days for 5 reasons.

1 - we have similar tastes(Bethesda style open world is the ultimate game play experience)

2 - he doesn't take himself too seriously and is a true gamer(not afraid to make fun of himself and is only now a full time journalist by popular demand)

3 - he actually shows you everything a game has to offer in his reviews

4 - he calls it like he sees it and doesn't pull any punches when calling out the devs on their F ups (not afraid to get angry about it and dares the industry to try and silence him)

5 - he considers others game play styles when making recommendations(doesn't down vote well done features just because they aren't his cup of tea)

Angry Joe has been a full timer for nearly 5 years because we the gaming community wanted a real gamer with the balls to stand up to the corporations of the industry and tell them what we all want to say, " You done effed it up". We saw in him the integrity and honesty that we all crave in our journalism and demanded he quit his day job to make the Angry Joe Show full time and thankfully he did just that. AJ has me covered when it comes to most AAA gaming info. I trust and respect him enough to not bother with anyone else.

Sadly I like his videos when he's not yelling .

/shrug

About the only reviews I look at these days are on Kotaku (and sometimes on RPGamer.com, but they're just an RPG site, not trying to be "journalism").

Only other video-game talking heads I view periodically are Extra Credits - they do some interesting pieces on game design.

I find all the hub-bub about "video game journalism" to be somewhat overdone... but that's par for the course on the internet. People with really strong opinions about things that aren't worth the energy they put into it.

Well I don't really have time to read up on all the reviews and such, so I usually just go to game rankings for the compiled scores. I'm not sure how exactly that site works though, but anyway games that have a high score are usually fine (the video game sites can't be paid that much to transform dung into roses).

Of course problem with this is that some gems tend to slip through, since I sort based on rating. A good example would be Metro; the score's 80% ish, but its my favorite game of all time.

From time to time I do watch totalbiscuit's videos. I get games based on steam's featured ones as well.

For gaming, almost no part of gaming journalism is respected by me. This started around the time when I noticed the guy who did the Penny Arcade Report had some sort of love affair with the words why and how. I actually feel an article is hard to take seriously when I see either of those words at the beginning of the headline now. The main reason I hate headlines with those words is because I end up reading them and imagining some condescending jerk made them. They don't feel very pleasant for me to read thanks to this.

I don't put much energy into my lack of respect for video game journalism since it isn't worth the energy. I visit sites that focus more on Japanese games since they tend to be less like Polygon in content and actually focus on the games. I don't feel like seeing constant social commentary when I just want to know about games.

I do have respect for Totalbiscuit, though. I also like Siliconera since they tend to care more about games than if it goes with their political views. Superbunnyhop is also pretty cool.

I don't trust journalism in general. Too much politics entangled into it.

I don't follow gaming "journalism".

Although I must say I like Angry Joe. His review of Rome 2 Total War was excellent and right on the spot (I hated that game so much on release).

EDIT: minor.

Angry joe

Either there's been a decline in the quality of journalism overall (including gaming sites and general news outlets), or I've simply become less of an idiot. Gaming websites like to run 'click-bait' because they want to sell advertisemants and generate 'shares' on the major social media networks. News websites are often doing the same thing, so you'll see CNN go "Let's drop all the news stories, because there was a plane crash! WE MUST TALK ABOUT THIS AND ONLY THIS FOR THE NEXT THREE MONTHS!" What's really funny to me about this, is that a handful of international news outlets seem to do all right.

The http://www.bbc.com/ is on the cusp, but they've stayed pretty reliable. http://www.dw.de/ is a little known website that does a great job. There's also http://www.sciencedaily.com/, for people who want 'science news' with a link to the peer reviewed journal it was posted in. I'm not presently aware of any decent video game review sources, because there's an issue of 'taste' and the 'free goodies' handed out to people who write about video games. I generally ask people I know, to see what they think. Going through Steam has a really nice perk, in that it tells you how long someone's spent playing the game right next to their review. In that way it's kind of like the 'Amazon' of video game sales. Whenever a game isn't sold on Steam I'm generally less inclined to buy it on that fact alone, because Steam will give you reviews from people who have actually bought the game.

I used to trust Gamespot, but I never had a reason to, and I've noticed recently that they give consistently low reviews for reasons I often cannot understand. I would say I trust Game Informer. I'm not sure I have a reason to, though. I just agree with their reviewers often enough and so I think of them as a place to go to see a review that reflects what I might write. I don't respect them because they have some kind of integrity that is not found elsewhere, I might say I respect them only because Ive yet to have a reason to not.

That means little. Many of us play offline (Steam thinks I've played Skyrim for 7 minutes). In fact, I'd go so far as to say that most of the people whose opinions I am most likely to trust are the very people who are most likely to play offline.

Yes, but that's not universally true. The reviews don't have to be perfect, either.

I've just found them to be reasonably trustworthy, enough to consider basing purchase decisions on them. (I recently bought a mattress that comes shrink wrapped and rolled up in a duffle bag, based on customer reviews from Amazon and the price of the product. I'm still sleeping on the mattress, and I'm quite satisfied with the quality.) Steam's reviews are good enough for me to base a purchase decision on them, and that's all I really care about.

"If I read this information and then buy the game based on what I've read, will I be disappointed?"

My exact thoughts as well. I don't support or respect any specific "game journalist". Look through the sources that are available to you and come to your own conclusion about something. Don't believe in something simply because IGN said so, and the internet hive mind that go along with it.