Bah to the naysayers, bah them all(OMGBEEF)

[Artimus Gigan]

Ok, the use of gaming magazines to help make purchases has been deemed "shallow" by a few fanatics. They essentialy claim that any use of media makes you a sheep or some other farm animal that's used for human consumption. All because you listen to the big guy and take suggestions into question. The fanatics claim that you should listen to the masses and not media. However can you really trust the masses to make experianced suggestions? For example reader reviews on sites such as GameFaqs have DBZ Budokai 3 essentialy make it have nearly all perfect scores. However games like Jak 3 some people gave it low scores(3's and 2's) on certain baisises because "it doesn't even play like Halo 2". So it's the whole concept of trust. The ideal situation would be that you could play all the games and versions of them beforehand. However renting 3 versions of the same game for different systems, not to mention exclusive games would be extremely time consuming and probably expensive in the end. If you threw in the handhelds it would further add to it. Usualy when somthing goes askew and fails, people usualy point to the media for the cause of the failure. Which really isn't the cause. People wind-up doing what they want to do anyways no matter who tells them what most of the time. Heck Legend of Dragoon didn't catch on as a RPG Franchise and many people still have no idea what Guilty gear is. Even though many reviewers gave them pretty good scores. So to reiterate, is listening to the media really that bad?

[Bird Boy]

I base almost all of my video game purchases off of IGN and EGM reviews. P.N.03 being the only exception (I don't care what you say, that was a great $20 well spent for me); without IGN or EGM I wouldn't have bought Beyond Good and Evil, Freedom Fighters, none of the "sleeper" titles, or held off on games like "Wario World" to drop to $20 instead of paying full price.

When it comes to listenting to the "video game media", listen to who's been around the longest. It's the new publications and non-video game magazines that talk out their asses.

-BB

[Dark Fact]

In the end, isn't it really all up to the buyer to decide whether he or she wants a certain game no matter how many people say it sucks or it rocks?

To call buyers sheep as a result of listening to reviews from other mags is pretty rude.

[Mynd Hed]

I find magazines to be at least as important as, say, GameFAQs reader reviews. Neither is infallible, but when they DO agree with each other-- say if there's a general critical and gamer consensus that a certain console's version is superior to the others'-- it's pretty safe to go by them.
Of course, nothing beats a good five-day rental.

[Dr Crocodile]

Forget the masses and media, renting is the best option. Next is listening to the opinions of those who trust with similar tastes. Like friends in real-life. As for publications (online or print), I'm most partial to Gamespot.

[James]

These days, I generally know what I'm going to buy. I take a small amount of credence on opinion of others, but generally I've found not to take specific comments too seriously.

Battlestar Galactica had people whining about it's player interface being too difficult and making the game hard to enjoy.. I went around several sites to see this being said by people (buying late as I always do means I miss mag reviews so I don't buy the mags..), but when I ran the gauntlet and bought it I found this said interface difficulty not as impossible as people whined. Yes, it took some getting used to, but then back in my day :D difficult keys and learning curves were part of the territory. You deal. *sigh* Some whine that games aren't hard enough anymore, and as soon as they take practise, people grumble.

It wasn't a perfect game certainly, but I got several days of good play out of it. If I had listened to the reviews I never would have.

In the end I take a little advice from various quarters, and then risk it. Tastes are so specific you can't expect others to be able to cater for them. See what other people think and what their issues have been and then decide whether those sort of issues bother you.