Many people (not just on this site) are irritated by the community's seeming overemphasis on the score that games (or any medium, for that matter) are given when they should really be focussing on the actual content on the review. I definitely agree that the written analysis of a game is much more important than what score it is given. After all, a game can be considered "the greatest game ever", but if you don't like the genre of game (for example, someone who is not a fan of RPG's or FPS's), then you won't enjoy playing it, regardless of how great the reviewers regard it as. Or maybe the game does not have elements you are looking for: innovation, for example. Maybe a game is just a very good upgrade and not an "out of this world" experience, yet it gets a high score anyways. Plus, game scores tend to have different meanings for different games: for Super Mario Sunshine, an 8.0 is a disappointment score to the reviewer, but for a game like Trauma Center, it's a pleasant surprise.

On the other hand, review scores are helpful in determining a play or don't play. In terms of a small range, such as 7.5-9.0, they really don't say much, but on the huge scale, a 4.5 game is significantly worse than an 8.0 game, and when a game gets a 1.0 range score, that tells you to stay far, far, away. For math nerds like me, they also help quantify quality on a site like GameRankings, but of course, you can't really express opinions through numbers.

In the end, review scores are likely here to stay, and I personally wouldn't want them to go away anyways. They are a helpful guide, but the written review will always trump the number, so they should not be followed religiously. One of these days, though, I'd like to see Gamespot or any reviewer abolish scores and gauge their readers' reactions (perhaps April Fool's?). Or better yet, there should be a reviewer that writes without using scores at all.