Most of the times, whenever you try a new food, or go to a new restaurant or meet this new person you ask a friend what do they think about it, is the food great? does the restaurant have a nice vibe? is this new person interesting? Depending on their opinion you add that to your judgement and decide what to do. It does not matter if the review is good or bad as long as you can trust it, it works for you.

Game reviewing is pretty much the same thing, you look at a video from someone else's experience playing the game and based on that you decided wether to buy it or to put your money into something else or if it's even worth playing. A decent review takes in account the good and the bad things in a game objectively, gives credit when credit is due and mentions the game's flaws or improvements it could have made. Sounds pretty simple and yet the reviewing process can vary a lot from reviewer to reviewer.

Haven't you ever wondered why sometimes a game gets a 9 here a 6 there and a 10 in another place? One could easily blame the site, "meh they're delusional how did they gave it a 6 the game is really good jabba jabba" well it's not the site or the reviewer, it's the experience, the main reason we like or dislike games is the emotions it makes us feel while playing them, feeling that on games from the same publisher (Metal Gear, Mario, Halo) makes us defend the series and feeling that on similar games makes us defend the genre, we stand up when someone criticizes them, but the truth is we're not defending the series or the genre or the publishers we're defending the experience, we defend the joy we felt while playing them.

Think about two people who play Metal Gear, one has so much fun trying to be sneaky and clearing missions without being detected replays the levels several times to get familiar with the enemy, doesn't mind getting caught every now and then he sees every mistake as a lesson and lives the story as muchas snake, he has such an amazing experience playing the game that it easily makes it into his favorites list, in fact he probably plans to make a playthrough in a cardboard box. The other one keeps getting caught starts to get frustrated dislikes all the silent secret agent stuff and prefers to go all out gunning people and keeps losing, doesn't even finish the game and sets it aside puts it below a stash of games for it to rust in dust.

Then ask each of them to write a review, the first one will say how inmersive the game is, he'll probably compliment the story the creators the gameplay the publishers the guy that made coffee at kojima productions hideo kojima himself, encouraging everyone to play the game to feel the same joy he felt. The other one will say how bad the game was, he'll butcher the gameplay destroy the story, trash talk the series and the genre itself, discouraging everyone in ording to prevent them for playing it so they can avoid the torture he just endured. One does not have to be a genius to realize that once the score comes into the equation these 2 guys will probably give completely different scores but that's not based on the game itself it's based on the experience they had. Now, is metal gear a good or bad game? See for yourself :P

Anyone can set up a video camera take some gameplay footage and talk about the game, but reviewing is more than that, is trying to share your experience of the game to the rest of the world is trying to explain the way the game made you "feel" sure you do it by talking about technical things like the gameplay, graphics, sound, story but they're all affected by the emotion produced by the game, a reviewer that is 100% objective has no enjoyment is just a machine that clears a game gives a score and moves on to the next one. It kills the purpose of gaming.

Now the problem comes in when we let reviews affect our judgement, we decide the fate of a game based on the score it got, I see this everyday at the boards. The game got a 6? Not good enough for me, this site gave it a 4.5 this one a 6.3 that one a 3.2 while there is a tendency at the end of the day it is you who should decide not a score, not the experience of someone else but yours.

When you let a review influence your judgement is when you lose sight of the value of your own experience as a gamer

"Because to influence a person is to give him ones own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of someone elses music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him"

Quote from: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Reviews should be a guide, not a veredict. It's not about the quality of the camera or the footage or the fancy words we use it's about sharing an opinion, an opinon of a friend, one that we can trust. At the end of the day it is you and only you who should decide what to do, to have your own experience to share it with the rest of the world