This was a pretty dumb read. Lots of things just slightly wrong and mostly complaining.

First of all game reviews have always been about finding a core that you can connect with your audience about as with all reviews. Maybe its the game genre, it maybe it is a style or an emotion you have at your core.
And to that there are new trusted reviewers all the time, you just aren't personally hearing about them.

A new one that has gained following is IronPineapple who set their core to darksouls like games but because of their willingness to flub the definition a bit they have character and people have flocked to them for trusted takes about skill based games.
RyeGames is becoming a trusted voice in acting as a living games historian.
No new reviewers? Bullshit.

The one thing I agree on is how useful steam reviews are. Yes or no and show the percents and see what people said. Almost always there is a synopsis review and a more emotional review to tell you if its for you or not.

Or You Can Just Read Steam Reviews

Every indie dev at some point gets supermad about Steam reviews. However, 99 times out of 100, skimming the reviews on the game’s front page will tell you everything you need to know

And mostly read the negative one to see if there's any issue with the feature or lack thereof, or whether there's any performance issue or bug, anything you won't tolerate. Dev will tell you the stuff is good anyway. I rarely read from review site these day, and i find Yahtzee being very helpful in that he will be very enthusiastically tell you how some part of the game don't work, which is exactly what i'm looking for.

I like reading the RockPaperShotgun reviews. Nice writing, no score, usually some interesting points about the game going deeper than what a trailer shows.

The moment you see a pokemon or a cod title get a 9/10, you understand how these reviews are shit.

Every indie dev at some point gets supermad about Steam reviews. However, 99 times out of 100, skimming the reviews on the game’s front page will tell you everything you need to know.

I think I get both sides of the matter. Some devs seem to be mad simply because the review is not under their control, and the player isn't shy saying what's wrong with the game. But some reviews are like, "2/10 Chinese restaurant, there were no burgers".

Man, i just finished reading a review that spent half the time complaining that this top down merchant sim wasn't Kingdom come deliverance 2. Professionals really suck.

IMO due paid reviews and companies being too scared of getting sued for defamation or similar reasons I also do not trust "professional" reviews any more and stopped reading them. But while less professional and more subjective, I almost always read user reviews on plattforms that allow them like Steam on PC or the Play Store on mobile. At least you can tell if there are some issues that most people seem to hate and then you can judge for yourself if that is a dealbreaker to you or if you're gonna gice it a shot anyway.

Way better than any review is a free demo for an actual hands-on experience. Or I also often look for some gameplay on YouTube, especially if there is no demo available.

My complaining might just be sadness. When I was 25, I had the time and energy to dig into a game like this and find all the cool secrets everyone swears are there. Now I’m old, which is not great.

Same here :-/

I feel like game reviews kinda died off with 'total biscuit' RIP. Was was good about his reviews is you could understand his personal tastes which may not have been the same as yours but you could still vibe out if it was good or not. Like he might forinstance give a average for a bolmer shooter because it wasn't his vibe. But you'd know 'oh if he's giving it an average' that's actually pretty good considering. But with IGN etc, you get different people reviewing stuff and then everything becomes arbitrary.

Dude discovers tastes are subjective and hard to describe with numbers.