Gamer reviews or proffesional reviews

Since gamer reviews are raising in the game community I'm just curious which do you prefer? I go more on gamer reviews because they speak from their experience as a gamer instead of a paid proffesional reviewer.

For those who haven't watched a gamer review before watch this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YLKUmJNMa4

I'd actually put both of them on the same level.

Gamer reviews.

I find professional reviews tend to lok at the technical side of the games, like the graphics, sound and any obvious glitches in the game. In essence, they tell you everything about the game except weather or not ti's any fun to play. Gamers tend to focus on how much fun they had with the game.

The only problem there is that gamers tend to let their bias chow a lot more, and automatically rate the newest game in their favourite series 10/10.

Honestly, I'm abit paranoid when it comes to professional reviews from heavily trafficked website dependent on adverts, exclusives and so on... the gamer community tend to be more useful as a gouge.

I like honest professional reviews and quality gamer reviews. Childish and unfair reviews from gamers are painful to read.

As I say in every thread like this, I would have bought Dirge of Cerebus if I trusted the user reviews on this site.

I tend to listen first to professional reviewers, then get a consensus from the gamer population, and then judge for myself. But I make sure to get a good mixture from both sides. I love quality Youtube reviews.

Since gamer reviews are raising in the game community I'm just curious which do you prefer? I go more on gamer reviews because they speak from their experience as a gamer instead of a paid proffesional reviewer.

For those who haven't watched a gamer review before watch this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YLKUmJNMa4

RubMyDucky

Honestly? Neither.

I generally like the pro reviews; however, if I come across a gamer that I know writes well enough, I'll compare the two to see how close they are. I usually throw out the ones who rate games as "Abysmal".

I'll take professional game reviews over player reviews anyday. There are some well written player reviews out there, but a lot of them are fairly emotional reactions that are often lacking in content. A well made game that has some feature the player dislikes gets a 1 out of 10, while another player likes the same game and rates it a 10 out of 10 with no thought for flaws in the game.

If I'm unsure on a game, I'll usually check out metacritic to get an idea of the overall consensus and to look over a number of reviews to get more of an idea of specific features liked, or complaints about the game.

It depends. I thought gamers reviews were alot more fair to a game like Sonic Unleahsed. But then there is the matter of most gamer reviews being fanboy drivel. I'd say that non-fanboyish or quality reviews are the best. The professional reviews are a bit hard to relate to much of the time. GameTrailers has excellent reviews however.

both are equal, everyone is entitled to their own views on games, and no opinion is better.

I'm never certain why someone would prefer gamer reviews, to be honest. Unless you're one of those folks who honestly believes that every professional reviewer is in the pocket of one or another publisher/hardware company/developer, aren't professional reviews the same as gamer reviews....except done by gamers who happen to also be solid writers forced to at least abide by the pretense of journalistic integrity/non-bias and who also have a lot of experience in writing reviews for games on a professional level? It's like asking which I'd like to know more: Roger Ebert's opinion on a new film, or that guy next door who's watched a few movies in his day. Paladin_King

I don't believe that, but I do believe many professional reviewers are sloppy and some get assigned games in genres about which they know nothing. I remember a review in Next Generation (the deceased US sister magazine of Edge) which praised the Legend of Dragoon for the bold innovation of fire doing extra damage to water based enemies. And then there's the Edge review of God of War 2 in which the reviewer spent most of the review talking about how much he didn't like Kratos as a person, then there's the Eurogamer review of a recentMMORPG whose name I forget where the reviewer lied about how much time he played the game, there was an EGM review of the first Madden on the PSP which gave it superb marks (9's across the board IIRC) and mentioned no flaws, but the game was so broken and buggy that EA recalled it, there's the fact that professional reviewers gave MGS2 a free pass (it had some severe game design issues) and didn't mention important (non-spoiler) ways that the demo was misleading, such as the lack of environmental interaction.

*Takes breath* I don't think most reviewers are intentionally dishonest or on the take, but I don't believe the fact someone is getting paid to write a review makes them competent, impartial and honest.