I was going to write a post just like this, but i dont have to.

While I don't necesarily think that many of the things you talk about Civ 5 are as big a deal as your making them out to be (other then the AI, which is a big deal but many people don't care about AI as can be seen by the love for MoM or MoO 2) I do agree with your general point that reviewers often don't get that deep into a game before they give it a good review. The most infamous example of that might be Black and White, a game that was released to much hype where you played a god raising a giant pet who helped you rule your kingdom, kind of part god game, part pet game. The first few hours of the game were incredibly interesting and original so initial reviews were glowing. At least a few reviewers were later forced to apologize for their A+ score when they realized that the game wasn't very deep, had poorly designed mechanics, and got boring pretty quickly once you got past all the cool stuff.

Most of the time though you don't get to see apologies for overhyped games, people just disagree and move on.

Game reviewing is much like other media. They crave access. They crave dev interviews before release. They crave priority notice on what's going on. They crave early preview builds, exclusive interviews, and all that stuff.

Sure, they can just report what is out there....but that's not what media perceives as a competitive edge.

At best, gaming media tones down the criticism where a fan would call it like they see it. (And probably exaggerate a great deal.)

At worst, gaming media speaks highly of average quality and treats serious short comings as minor failures.

Fans have the luxury of being as negative, judgmental, honest, ect.... as they want. People in the business world, be they developers or gaming journalists, have to deal with reality as much as they would like to otherwise.

So I generally use gaming reviews as news announcements, because someone gets paid to spend all their time on the internet seeing what's out there, that I don't necessarily have the time or desire to spend doing. In that sense, they're helpful. They're also more condensed than player reviews by far, and are generally in the ball park of what fans are thinking about a product.

So that's what I use them for; to gauge whether or not I should even get interested. Then I go to player reviews to decide if I want to buy.

I've pretty much stopped reading written reviews in favor of Gametrailers' video reviews. They tend to lean more towards console games, and they don't do as many reviews total because they're exclusively video, but they do get the "big name" PC games in there. Their scoring system ends up with the same kinds of quirks as most others', where they might sound like they're slamming the game but it ends up getting a fairly high overall score, but overall they aren't afraid to point out game faults and actually show them to you in the video. As Tridus pointed out, in the case of Civ5 nobody really got "great" at the game to start seeing scaling issues and AI flaws, but it wasn't a willful act of deception on the part of the reviewers, it's just how the system is set up.

The important thing for me is not the overall point score. I look at how much I like the genre and what it's supposed to be, and how well the game implements it. As an example, let's take Alpha Protocol. It was always supposed to be a stat-based shooter, like Deus Ex of Old. You can aim, but your accuracy is greatly determined by how many points you invest into that particular weapon skill. This was never a secret during the game's development, yet it got slammed for it in reviews because games aren't made like this anymore and everyone wants the ME2 treatment (not that there's anything wrong with how ME2 did it). That part of the reviews I basically ignored - I knew what I was getting into and I like that system, so it didn't bother me. In fact, I feel that Alpha Protocol captured the feel of the original Deus Ex quite well, but for a lot of people nostalgia is always deceptively more positive and even though lots of people loved Deus Ex, they hated Alphas Protocol using the same system.

Eh. In Elemental's case, the popular opinion preceded the reviewers opinion. And Elemental was one game I immediately sunk 8 hours into because of things like needing to see the tech and adventure trees maxed out to appreciate everything....So while I know this will be an unpopular opinion, the reviews on Elemental were (generally) on point...even if some reviews went a little farther than just reviewing in the course of being negative.

It's stupid to claim its just kids. Besides, after Spore, I support any reviewers who want to ding a game because of it's DRM so long as they are clear about it.

I've played ACII a lot and this DRM hasn't been preventing from playing the game. I've had more problems with SecuROM in GTA IV.

I think it only makes sense for DRM to influence a game's point value if it affects the actual playing of said game. For example, Ubi's always-on connection requirement for Assassin's Creed 2, where if you lose connection you get dropped from the game and have to resume from a previous checkpoint is obviously an issue where I can see the game's score being dinged because the DRM is integrated into the actual gameplay and can easily affect enjoyment/progress.

On the other hand, your example with Steam and HL2 sucks, but ultimately it doesn't impact playing the actual game (once you go through the hoops once on install, you're good to go). In this case I can't see how dinging the game points is really justified, especially for largely temporary issues like the auth servers being slow on Day-1.

I would certainly like for reviewers to mention a game's protection scheme and if they experienced any issues in getting the game installed and running, but I do believe the game review should actually be about the game, not its protection scheme. If the scheme interfered with gameplay (again, as in Assassin's Creed 2 example), then it's fair game to ding points. Otherwise, any initial installation issues should be mentioned, but not impact the ultimate review point score.

EDIT:  After reading the original question again, I realized my answer was commenting on the overall thread without answering the original question.

1. I think professional reviewers are affected by advertising and are also trying to make an educated guess as to how well a game will be received based on graphics, sound / voice-over quality, technical issues, and a set of criteria by which they compare games.  User reviews are based purely off of how "fun" the game is to the user and how well it meets their expectations of what the game "should be".

2.  Users play the games a lot more in depth and either find them to have a magical "fun factor" despite other flaws, or they find the games "just don't work" despite being very high in quality.  These factors make them shift their reviews higher or lower than what a professional reviewer might find who may not truly know the genre.

As far as professional reviews go, I only look at them because they often have a comprehensive breakdown of features and gameplay that a user review might not have.  They are good for a quick guideline.  I don't read as much into the actual review because the bigger a website / company gets, the more they are affected by advertising dollars, especially around the big name titles.

User reviews are usually a better indicator of game quality, but the caveat is you have to actually read through some of the reviews and make sure the people writing it have the same sensibilities as you.  There are so many different types of gamers, so while many may not like a particular strategy game, the only reviews that really matter to you are the ones who like the same kind of things as you.  Spore is a good example, the game was dumbed down to have broad appeal.  A lot of casual gamers really loved the game for what it was, and a lot of hard core strategy people hated it for what it could have been.

Perception and expectations are another factor.  Advertising dollars also play a lot into this....they can build excitement in a product that can translate into good satisfied reviews, or negatively with shattered expectations.  I think Civ 5 is getting some of the latter right now, though Firaxis will probably improve the product in an expansion to get it back up to the Civ 4 level of quality. 

As far as Elemental goes, I was really disappointed, but I have tremendous faith in Stardock to improve the game, not to mention the Stardock community to make some awesome mods for it eventually.

Regarding user reviews objectivity, was reading one site recently and saw some 0/10 reviews for E:WoM based on accusations that Brad and his team have right wing political views. Now THATS a way to judge the game

"Regarding user reviews objectivity, was reading one site recently and saw some 0/10 reviews for E:WoM based on accusations that Brad and his team have right wing political views. Now THATS a way to judge the game"

And don't forget the PC Gamer fiasco where a bad review of Elemental was sensationalized by quoting Brad out of context.

customer reviews are worthless because randoms are morons and usually incapable of stringing coherent sentences together. i try and read all reviews that are released for a title im interested in, and im yet to experience this fictitious bribery of professionals. taken as a whole, they are more or less on the money with their praise or criticisim when i finally get to play the title myself.