Do the casual crowd even pay attention to reviews? Word of mouth seems more likely.
Word of mouth starts with reviews, and casuals absolutely do pay attention to them (if nothing else in the press). All it takes is one guy to say "Hey, I read on IGN that Titanfall is a new game from the makers of the old Call of Duties and that it absolutely shits all over the new ones" to pique a CoD-faithful's interest enough to at least maybe search the word "Titanfall" on YouTube or something.
A lot of casuals read IGN, and you can see Ryan McCaffery's Titanfall boner from space.