Does anyone still read or care about written reviews at all?

Great game reviews died off soon after the PS2 era. They have been horrible ever since.

I still read them, but they have no value over my decisions. There is only 2 reviewers on the entire internet who I can generally trust their opinions because we have extremely similar tastes in video games. But everyone else is a joke to me. I don`t like ANY of the GS reviewers as they like the exact opposite of games I like. I sense a very strong PC gaming bias among GS reviewers so I cannot trust them.

I wanna say written reviews are what I care about, but I can't because most are so terribly written and lack proper focus these days. I've never seriously cared for scores.

used to love reading reviews. now I can tell if I'd like the game from hd vids, then I check metacritic. If it's not a flop I'll play it.

Reading is for nerds

Yup.

What score did it get? WHAT!?! WHY?!?

(Reads the pros and cons) WHAT?!? WHY!?!

(Reads the full review)

Sometimes on GS I start to watch the review, get bored, then read it because it's faster. The video reviews and the written are almost exactly the same word for word

I also have a subscription to PC Gamer, so I read that.

For figuring out if a game is good, I generally use gameplay videos or (gasp) and actual demo.

I play Nintendo, nuff said

I prefer video reviews because I can listen to the reviewers evaluation and watch the game at the same time.

Even though the many of Keven Sorbo's reviews are highly disagreeable; He has a lovely voice.

Same, I'm more likely to get all the content of the review that way. I'd just skim a written review unless I was really interested.

I still prefer a well written review to a video review.

i still read reviews but now i don't trust IGN as much as i used to they gave MCC a 9 and i had many issues with my game progress losing saves, i think it is more about 7/10 not a 9/10

they also gave dragonage inquistion a 9/10 an goty and i have not really enjoyed myself at all with it compared to other wrpgs like skyrim or mass effect this ones not really a goty material imo, story is lame, characters boring, plot is generic and way too many uninteresting factions

so yeah ill look at a review but i won't take the score very seriously anymore till i play a beta or something myself

I still read reviews, and give them some small semblance of importance, but on the whole I find them mostly useless and more than ever before, out of touch with my own opinions and thoughts. Not to sound pompous or arrogant, but honestly, I feel like most journalists are just not very good gamers, and worse still, many seem to have casual centric tastes, and that in itself is a problem for me since I class myself as a hardcore gamer.

I've watched so many online streams etc of games being previewed or played by journalists with sheer cringe, only to then read their opinions shortly after, stating a bunch of flaws the said game had, all because there was too little hand holding, because the person playing simply didn't get it, or because it wasn't designed exactly as the said person wanted. These days too many journalists I find struggle with anything that dares to be too challenging or raw skill based, and also find that too many journo's review games for what they want them to be, instead of what they actually are.

The other big issue I have with gaming journalism especially, is the complete lack of consistency, and the conflicts of interest associated. Some games will get berated for having bugs, frame rate issues etc, other games will get let off completely. Some games of a certain genre will be scolded heavily for having a weak narrative, others completely let off. Some critiqued for not being innovative enough, others not. Certain games being knocked for being more of the same, others not. Certain games that feature a heavy emphasis on both SP and MP, will have a review that completely focuses on the SP and mostly ignores the MP, whilst other games will have a completely different reviewing criteria and break up. With some games real world server reliability is of concern, whilst with other games a staged PR review event as a testing ground is sufficient. That's not even getting in to the issues around advertising revenue and conflicts of interest.

So yea, I care about reviews to some small extent, but less and less so the more time passes, and the more out of touch journalists and gaming sites actually become.