How much influence do reviews have on you???

You go to your favourite website/magazine and check out the review for the game you have been waiting for for months. It gets a 3/10, whilst a game which you have never heard of receives a 9/10. How do you react? Reviews are published weekly on many different forms of media from video games to musicals, but with the ever increasing prices of video games and technology, they are seen by many to be the way to differentiate between ever increasingly similar growing amount of generic shooters, platformers and RPGs, which have made it harder for gamers to tell the gems from the rest.

First of all, i am not criticising a review editor's work, I think that reviewers do a great job to express their  opinions on a certain title, and can sometimes be useful for someone who is in two minds on whether they should spend their hard earned cash on a game. But do they have that much of an influence on you? I believe it depends on your situation. For a game which you have been highly anticipating for a long period of time, reviews will not be the deciding factor on whether you will buy it or not. With many people pre ordering the game and reviews not being able to be printed mostly until the date of release, gamers will not be able to read the reviews until they have the game in their hands. With retailers like HMV, who do not accept refunds, many gamers will mostly go on previews, trailers and gameplay videos to decide whether to invest. Like a reader of the IGN website where he left a very unhappy message on the review for Brink,

" I preordered this because of how positive your previews have been about this game...  I was relying on your hands on opinion which turns out to be hyperbole mixed through with bull****. Nice job."

The review obviously had an effect on the gamer, who pre ordered a game which he believed that it would be worth putting some money down for. Reviews can have that effect, but as an opposite to this case, i put myself up to examine. I like to believe that reviews dont generally have a big say on what games i buy, as i believe that previews and gameplay videos and my own judgement can decide whether a game is worth investing in or not. Being able to read other people's opinions are a help but ultimately i have influence over what i spend my money on. A great example is my purchase of Alan Wake. Although it is not a terrible game, it divided opinion. I personally loved it and was one of the best gaming experiences i had in 2010.