I don't like reading reviews from major game websites ala IGN, Gamespot etc. Who's to say they're honest? Who's to say they're not paid by the publishers for a hit review? For example, that time the reviewer got fired because Kane&Lynch 2 (I believe it was that) wasn't rated well, he ranted on his blog that the publishers had paid his employers big bucks for sponsorship and he himself was nudged to make a good review. Pathetic.
That's why I do my reading before a game releases. It's not a guarantee of real information, but the reviewers have no grounds to start something-out-of-10'ing it yet. So they have to provide details. The release review is ALL about marketing, one way or another. If you need information to make decisions about what you'll buy or not, release reviews don't provide that. They assume you trust the author enough to agree with their opinion, then they sprinkle in some actual examples to (maybe) back up their overall score.
The best time to pay attention to the media on a game is 6 months before, and 6 months after release. Prior to, you'll get actual game play information. Afterward, you'll get reviews that have actually played the game and have a much smaller commercial incentive to blather in the positive or negative about it.
That and it's all about where you choose to read. RPS and Kotaku aren't the *best*, simply because all gaming journalism acts as though they can be as goofy and unprofessional as they want because they're writing to the internet crowd. But they're leagues better than a lot of full-time "professional" game reviewers, because they get more freedom to actually talk about the game than the other sites do.
(As a total aside, that's the main reason I'm starting to forgo reviewers. There's so much fucking trash humor and
BS-fap-fap-top-100-something-something-whatever lists that they do in lieu of their actual fucking job. These assclowns get paid to essentially troll the internet, go to cons and press reveals, then screw around writing pointless humor articles and yukking it up on their webcasts. The only reason I still even enjoy reading Gamespy is because of "Objection!", a bastion of information in a wasteland of stupid fucking memes and spam bots. Even though he occasionally says something real about a game, I really blame Yahtzee for this. G4 and that stuff sucked, but it was out of the "nerd-stream" for the most part. Yahtzee has brought that brand of "infotainment" to gaming news, and really, I don't want to be fucking entertained. I want to be informed. If you can be funny while informing, awesome. If your "funny" gets in the way of the information, shut your fucking mouth and do some reporting.)