Did you consider the fact that he might actually...like the game?
Shocking, I know.
I don't know, man. I know he doesn't gel with me. He frequently does shit on games that get good coverage after the fact. But he himself has admitted that he has somewhat of a contrarian streak as far as that kind of thing is concerned. Most recently with Walking Dead.
Personally I just know I find it hard to take seriously anything he writes after that hyperbolic Diablo 3 review. And yes, I know I am "that guy" for bringing up a now nearly 1 year old review but my assessment of that game was just so radically different that I can't help but think about it every time he reviews a game. Diablo 3 bored the ever living fuck out of me when it wasn't being used as a virtual chat room with friends. I found it as rote and paint by numbers as a sequel could be in most respects and yet he literally painted it as a new watermark in the genre by which games would be measured for years to come. Meanwhile I thought it had absolutely no creative vision and was completely soulless.
The most frustrating thing I find about Gies is the pretension with which he states his opinions as if they are objective fact. He will say things like game are "mechanically unsound" as if there is a dictionary definition of what that term actually means.
I have tried to pinpoint what causes the disparity between many mainstream reviewers and my own assesment so I could better use them as a tool to judge what I would think about a game. For a while, I thought it was simply AAA bias and their willingness to automatically give a pass for establish franchises. I still think that is somewhat of a problem but I'm not even sure that pinpoints it for me. I think it is also part of the fact that the environment within which they play games means that mechanics that are familiar to them immediately automatically get an advantage. FPS games that play like FPS games become a comfy fit that they can blow through in a weekend, so what for them is a nice smooth weekend ride toward a review, for me is a bored-out-of-my-mind-I've-played this-a-thousand-times-before experience. Everybody likes things that makes their job easier, but I don't play videogames as a job.
These days I find venues like Idle Thumbs and GB quicklooks give me the best idea of what I should check out.