Well, I only read reviews addressing games that I've already beaten, and I do that because there's always the possibility of coming across interesting insights, tricks and important details I may have totally missed (those alone are good enough reason as far as I'm concerned), and that was the case for classic AdrenalineVault reviews, which I also ended up agreeing with virtually every time.

CGW sure has a misguided taste for fighting games.

Personally i don't read stuff from the "big sites" anymore, and there may or may not be reviewers from those sites that are genuine but i can't bother searching for them in a sea of probably, probably not, paid for reviews. I like to look for independent reviewers whenever i can, people just reviewing in their spare time.

To me, a reviewer is someone you should get to know better, in the sense that a reviewer is someone you should be able to say something along the lines of "Yeah, i think X and Y person have tastes in games similar to mine." and thus you could rely on them a bit more in regards to recommending you something that you might enjoy with their reviews.

That said though, one should still be cautious about just winging it and following whatever a reviewer says, as it's merely a suggestion to get a game from the perspective of someone that isn't you, not a direct command to go purchase, even if the reviewer is indeed someone you have determined to have similar taste in games as you do, there can always be exceptions where you two disagree on the quality of a game.

And not only in games, you could say the same about pretty much any other piece of media or entertainment out there, of course this is just what i think,

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems CGW Best Game of the Year since mid-1990s and above are always first person shooter of sort. So while others followed CGW's guide and played Half-Life or Unreal Tournament, I played Jane's USAF instead.