| Commercially? No one. While I've no doubt that there are some reviewers who review games thoroughly and ethically, I feel the vast majority do not. The problem is two-fold, in my opinion. First, since it's a job, reviewers are forced to get reviews out as soon as possible. Often this results in incomplete or rushed gameplay, which is not indicative of how normal people play. Second, there seems to be a lot of shady stuff going on in the background. In general, there's a lot of pressure from publishers to review games well. After all, that's where a lot of money comes from, as well as the ability to review games early. Making reviews a business is a bias that is extraordinarily difficult to ignore.
Now, non-commercially, that's a different story. I generally agree with Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation... though of late I think he's been a little off the mark. I'll generally take a look at the reviews on Gamefaqs for console games, keeping in mind that they're extremely biased and relatively poor quality in the good reviews (the poor reviews generally have to argue their points, making them more informative). Still, looking over the highs and lows generally paints a pretty good picture of the game.
Honestly though, my number one source is my brother. We have very similar tastes in games, and though we don't always agree 100%, if he says a game is good or bad, I'll trust him on it. |