What he said...

The reviews that are just one line I skip over, I zero in on the reviews with some meat to it. I also look in the forums to see if there are any problems I need to be aware of.

No. 95% of them are written by GOG fanboys, franchise fanboys, franchise haters or publisher haters. Worse still, the "found this helpful" aspect of the whole thing is useless, because people don't click "Yes" on "Was this helpful?", but because they wish to kiss each other's asses.

Seriously, it's like the fucking Eurovision Song Contest and Human Centipede all rolled into one.

Edit: Shit, I wish I hadn't written that now. I'd just started to get "Satellite" out of my head...

I like user-review videos a lot better.

Meh, sometimes. I click through them to find if I can find an author I know from the forums that I can trust and who shares my playing preferences. This has hardly happened. Also, I'm an old fart, so I know most of the games from "back then" anyway. And once a totally new game is released, I check the reactions on the forum and only take those into account "that I know".
We germans still have the best gaming mag that was ever put to paper.

I miss you PC Player!

Once in awhile I see a really well written review about a game I don't know much about, but it is true that in general user review tend to go into the extremes as people care most about posting when they feel strongly in one way or the other. But that doesn't mean you'll never get the odd, solid review.

this

*Schnief*

That is certainly true. One has to take them with a bit of salt. However I tend to look shortly over reviews before buying to see if they mention things that I really like or dislike. This influences my buying decision. I found that even with a large amount of not so useful reviews, on average they tend to give some insight, i.e. really good games are highly rated, really bad games are poorly rated and also arguments are given for both.

What I learned is however also that many games I liked in my youth, I don't like anymore and they looke really bad now... so I should try to beware of others glorifying the past.

I've read a few good ones in the past, but for the most part I think they are pretty lousy. Even the ones that get voted most helpful aren't that great. I also think a large part of gog is insane when it comes down to gaming tastes
So no.

why not? there are plenty of useful user reviews. you don't have to agree with what a user says - i often don't - but if he/she lays facts on the table, or explains why they like/dislike a certain game, then the review is useful.

unfortunately, a lot of GoG-users seem to have no interest in giving each game fair treatment and prefer to delve into polemics. sometimes the 'reviews' read as if the writer had been personally offended by the fact that the game in question got released here. i ignore those and rate them down.

Most of the reviews are crap, and I really couldn't be bothered to dig through them to find a proper one. I usually check out an aggregate score site to get a general idea of the game, then pick a review or two from that site for a more in-depth perspective. This system has misled me a few times, but in general it has served me as well as I could hope.

No, never did.

There are a lot of reviews that are about "memories" with that particular game, but there are also many good user reviews. I also pay less attention to the very short reviews, but sometimes the shorter reviews can also be informative.
I don't read user reviews very often, but sometimes I'd like to know what others think about that game, and read the reviews.
There's a very special case with the reviews: there are some games that are very old, and it's a bit hard to find a review that's not written by a player (I know, I can Google it but it's not as easy as finding it on - for example - IGN or Gamespot ). For example, it's difficult a bit to find press reviews for Starflight 1+2 (it's - according to the product page - more than 20 years old).

Never. Usually, when I buy an "old" game I'm already stuffed with information on that :-P