You know, this may be largely irrelevant, but this whole thing (at least, in regards to Hitman) has taken me from "will look into this game, maybe get when a bit cheap" to "not even bothering considering". And it's not actually a "stance" I'm consciously taking with this, more that there's so much confusion with what reviews are genuine and what aren't, it's too much effort to find out if it'll even be something I'm interested in or not.
There's too much out there game-wise without bothering with reviews that are essentially one long string of hyperbolic terms. I'm more likely to buy a game based on a review that gave it a ~70% rating than a ~90% one, purely because there's usually no critical justification in giving a game a near perfect score. Whereas with the lower one, you're forced to.
That's probably another thing, too. Given that it's really only big-budget, big-hype games that get that sort of treatment, just how many people have been pushed away from buying these sorts of games? Obviously they'll still sell, but I can't help but think that these reviews are turning more people away from the game than drawing them to it.
Another problem is that it's too easy to pick a game that you just *know* will will have reviewers jizzing their pants these days. Halo 4, Hitman, Assassin's Creed, GTA etc.
I'm not sure what the point of this post was. I'm sure there are some good ideas in there, though