I'll generally read single player reviews before buying a game. I never used to, but I've been burned by buying some absolute shockers (Damnation, Terminator: Salvation.) Even then, I'll still prefer playing a demo to reading a review, as I feel like my personal tastes vary from those of most game reviewers (e.g. I prefer gameplay that allows me to take my time and indulge my OCD rather than "fast paced" games of any type.)

It's a different story with MMOs: without exception, every MMO review I've read has been worthless, because the reviewers try to extrapolate the quality of the overall game from their personal experience, which is likely to be quite different from mine. Just ask anyone who was ganked a thousand times in White Sands whether Age of Conan deserved all those 85+% reviews at the time it was released (though I think it's a better game now.) They also try and measure the game against some mythical "uberMMO" which seems to be identical to Darkfall (even though they all hate Darkfall too.)

Reviews are only opinions. Often educated ones - which is nice. But opinions none the less.

Getting so uptight about something that you have nothing to do with (except having played it) is a little weird.

Lately I have found reading game reviews quite boring, it seems the reviewers want the best of everything with a game, whether its on PC or console. What I read are comments by the actual gamers themselves, sometimes this works and sometimes this doesnt. But in the end its whether I actually enjoy the game or not

I appreciate reviews and the amount of work that goes into detailing their experience with a game. I also take them with a grain of salt, as I understand that their tastes may be different.

I like to do as much research as possible before buying a game, as my funds are limited these days, so I will use every resource available. Reviews, demos, game play footage and hiring first are all gold.

Reviews come in handy more and more as I have less expendible income due to the costs of living continually going up (recession, proposed increases to GST, phones, power, rates, water etc) so therefore reviews become near vital to any purchasing decision I make now. The last game I bought (Assassins Creed #1) 3 months ago cost $40 at the Warehouse and I would've read 3 or more reviews to make sure my $40 was (pretty much) well spent. Game Junkie reviews get pasted into a word doc so when a good game ends up in those bargain bins, I can refer back to the doc and get the idea on how good/average/poor it might be. Reviews help out hugely.

As a gamer I read game reviews. However, be the review good or bad, my decision to buy the game is still based on my experiences with downloadable demo's or the previous release in the franchise. For example, I'm huge Call of Duty Fan and I'm mad on playing Modern Warfare 2 at the moment. I also enjoyed Army of Two (as did my wife as we could both play), but the demo for the 40th Day sequel was not to my liking as they had changed the split screen to be vertical split from the Horizontal split. However, I still purchased the game and enjoyed the campaign (albeit quite short) and the online play is much improved from the previous release. So - in my experience - whilst reviews can provide insight into areas of the game that I would otherwise not think about, reviews are not a reason I purchase a game or not.

I think you should stick to one or two websites/reviewers, that way at least you should get some kind of consistency. And if you still don't like a review, like you said gerald, demos are good or just go out and rent it...

I read reviews from several sites and also take into account my bias towards certain games and game types. I place a fair amount of faith in the reviews but only from a trusted few sites. Generally I am interested in a certain game and as long as it isn't rubbish then likely to get.

I used to use Gamespot as my sole source of reviews but then they had some bad press regarding how much say a publisher had in what a review said and fired a large number of their writers. I now look at gamespots reviews with a heavy amount of scepticism. I also tend to shy away from the early reviews of games (pre-release ones) as find those sites to be less critical than others (likely picked by publisher due to friendly reviewing or bias towards certain games).

Overall I do place a fair bit of credence to reviews but I also do my own research. Mostly I am not too picky as long as the games aren't rubbish then I enjoy them. I also find the comments in the reviews of more importance than the actual scores (though I like scores!). Highlights if there is anything in the game that may annoy me (A Resident Evil 1 type control scheme for example...).

Individual reviews may give some indication as to the quality of the game, but as Paul states they are only the opinion of that particular reviewer. So I find that keeping an eye on trends in reviews is a very helpful gauge as to whether a game is generally pretty good (www.metacritic.com is really helpful for this). With the price of games these days being unreasonably high, the last thing I want to do is to pony up my hard earned bucks for a real stinker.

Metacritic is good in that it averages out all of the reviews from all of the sites to get an average. It then links back to all of those reviews so that one can choose their publication/reviewer of choice knowing where they scored the game compared with all the other publications/reviewers.

I like to find a reviewer who likes the same stuff that I do, and throws a lot of contrast into their reviews - the good with the bad. In fact the more bad the better as it helps make the buying decision more informed.