There are a lot of classics on this site and whenever a game takes a special status in the history of the genre and/or a person's life there are bound to be loads of reviews highlighting this game as one of the best ever etc. It's like the world was unaware of the mind-boggling brilliance of some of those games before they were re-released on GOG and now gamers have to learn what playing a good game REALLY is like. However many people were probaby well aware of these games and passed over them for trite reasons of personal preference and accessibility or even because they made a dull, uninteresting impression... And even when they were loved in the past and still deserve a special status, they might have flaws in hindsight that might make them not fully enjoyable to play.

I don't want to denigrate the reviews on this site, but I think it's fair to ask: can they really give you a new idea of a game? I personally find some reviews are a bit too much viewed through the goggles of a special lover of the genre, derisive and ignorant of other views towards it, bitter of the decline of the gaming culture, and they don't necessarily provide enough insight for other players to get interested.

Nope. Never did, and never will.

I browse through them. They are far from perfect, but it's better to have some imperfect reviews than none at all. The reviews also sometimes hold important information specific to the GOG version of the game.

I've never read one, simply because I've never seen a user review from a user without an agenda.
These reviews tend towards the extremes, which makes it difficult to take them seriously.

If I REALLY need a review, I look elsewhere.

But I've played a majority of games here and games that will come here (Probably). Because I'm a nerd.

I find them useful. But you should always read more than just the first three. Skip the four-line ones and look at the longer ones, and pay particular attention to the flaws mentioned, as these are most likely what will put you off of a game. I generally find them as predictive (or more so) than the reviews that were written when the game was released.

Sure. The difference between a user review and a review in a magazine is that the person who writes for the magazine is better at toning down his or her personal preferences. In that sense, user reviews are usually far more honest.

That being said - I never buy games based on user reviews only. I always read two or three online reviews by sites like IGN and Gamespot before I buy games.

I think the reviews are useful as a first indicator: if there are universally positive reviews, then the game probably has something special that makes it enjoyable to many people - but as you said, flaws tend to be overlooked by those who like (and therefore buy) the game, so I always look for other reviews online (for some games, there are very thorough and neutral reviews, though). On the other hand, if the reviews on GOG for some game are so-so, I usually don't even bother ;)

Most of the reviews here are crap, but there are usually a few helpful, well-written ones too. They are fairly easy to spot since they use punctuation and are typically longer than a couple of sentences.

As has been said, browse through a couple of pages to find the longer, more informative and well-written ones. The ones that get up-voted the most are the ones that were written first, hence they are usually short, uninformative and heavily biased, as the reviewer won't have spent much time writing it.

Ideally all user reviews of old games would evaluate the games using the retrospective perspective as an opportunity to offer a criticism based on how well it has aged, rather than just basing it on your memories of how great it was back then. So I always look out for reviews from users who have experienced the GOG version as their first time playing the game in question. But it doesn't seem like that is the case with a lot of user reviews on here.

I switch the reviews from Most 'helpful' first to Most Recent first. That actually makes the reviews a lot more helpful.

Also, the longer and better-written a review is the more likely it is to be useful, so I skip the short one-liners.

They're a mixed bag, but I've bought a few games based on the reviews that highlight something that the description doesn't, so I think they can be worth a glance when browsing.

Yeah, I've actually gotten some games that I never would have picked up without the reviews. The earlier King's Quest titles, for example.

Well, I'd read them, but I usually have an opinion about a game prior to that. No point of reading them at that point now is there?

No. They aren't reviews, they're gushing by fans of the game, and about as reliable as most of the innumerable five-star amazon reviews for a certain movie franchise or popular musician (less than that, even). Most people won't bother to review a product unless they're already fans or *lurved* it to death back in the day and their biases are apparent. Even a truly abysmal game in GOGs archives will get stubborn apologists who will beseech people to "accept it on its own terms" or whatnot.

For legitimate criticism one must look elsewhere, either a serious review site or some other form of electronic-print media/blog that can afford to take a tough-but-fair approach to a game's merits.